[codeulike]

Any situation where money meets art doesn't make any sense. Is the original of a Banksy painting any nicer to look at than a copy? Is a rare vinyl pressing of a record any nicer to listen to than an mp3 you can download for free?

[brundolf]

The Banksy comparison puts this in an interesting light, actually. Someone like Banksy probably hates the idea of being enshrined in some wealthy person's gallery- in fact, when something he made did go on auction for $1.4m, it was rigged to shred itself afterward.

Beeple's art is similarly satirical (I'm not going to comment on its actual depth, but bear with me). What if Beeple were making a statement against rich-people-art-collection via the entire concept of NFTs? The sale itself is the parody.

I don't think that's what happened here, but it's interesting to think about

[the_af]

> Is a rare vinyl pressing of a record any nicer to listen to than an mp3 you can download for free?

I get your point but this isn't a particularly suitable example. Audiophiles have been arguing for ages that the quality of compressed mp3 and even CDs is not comparable to vinyl, that vinyl is "warmer", etc. Flamewars have been waged about this. So maybe not the best example?

[posterboy]

MP3 is lossy by design but pretty good. FLAC is lossless. Same question by analogy.

Vinyl as a physical medium may be literally warm though, about room temperature. But swinging air waves are pretty much the definition of heat, so...

[the_af]

The point is that, for a lot of audiophiles, this question:

> Is a rare vinyl pressing of a record any nicer to listen to than an mp3 you can download for free?

is answered with a very loud "yes!". I thought this was common knowledge here at HN. I've certainly seen this debate multiple times here. You don't have to pick a side or argue technicalities, you just need to be aware that for many people one format is indeed nicer than the other.

[tim333]

Well a different sort of sense. Price is not just about how nice something is - it's about things like supply and demand too. There is a limited supply of original Banksys and an infinite supply of copies.

[codeulike]

But why is the original special? Just because people choose to believe that it is.

[chipotle_coyote]

Sure, there's a real sense in which that's absolutely true. What I think the article was eyebrow-raising at wasn't primarily the digital nature of this transaction as much as the extremely high price paid. An original by Picasso is going to be worth more -- orders of magnitude more -- than an original by, say, Joan Erbe, a painter who was very well known around the Baltimore area and is "notable" enough to have her own Wikipedia page. Erbe's originals seem to generally go for around $500–800.

I know people are saying "but Beeple is known!" -- and I'm sure he is! I hadn't heard of him, but the chances are you haven't heard of Joan Erbe. What I'm suggesting is that Beeple is, in the wider world, closer to Erbe than he is to Picasso. If this had been a $2-3M transaction rather than a $69M transaction, it would still be in the news and raising eyebrows because of the NFT nature, but it would seem a lot less... bubble-ish.

[codeulike]

Oh yeah $69m is silly money, no doubt about it. Part bubble and part demonstrative crypto evangelism on the part of the bidders.

[tim333]

Well, because people think it is which comes down to psychology, culture etc.

It seems quite time honoured though. People probably thought an original cave painting was cooler than a copy of it.