[klodolph]

> The people receiving royalties are the artists in these cases...

This is just factually incorrect. I don't know why there's so much confusion here... it's the creator of the NFT that controls where the money goes, not the creator of the artwork. I don't know why people think that it's the artist that gets the money--that doesn't make any logical sense--how would a system like that even work?

[dschnurr]

The creator is almost always the artist. Provenance is what gives NFTs their value. The value of a Beeple NFT minted by a random user is $0.

[geofft]

The value of a Beeple NFT minted by a random user is exactly what the market chooses to value it as.

If it's minted by an agency that helps creators do marketing, and the agency gets the creator to say "Yes, this is a legitimate NFT created on my behalf by this agency, which has been very helpful to me in understanding NFTs, I don't understand these fancy computer things," why would the value be zero?

(This exact scenario plays out all the time in the real world. People bought "Taylor Swift's" album Fearless, which was authorized by her and contained her actual voice and songwriting and paid profits to her and was in all senses legitimate, and paid well over zero dollars for it. And then over a decade later she tells her fans that she doesn't control it and she's recording her own version of the album actually owned by her.)

[AlexandrB]

What stops a record company from including a clause assigning any NFTs (and/or the revenue therefrom) created by the artist during the contract term to them?

[pmulard]

Nothing. Just like nothing stopped Taylor Swift from rerecording her entire library to license her music herself. If artists sign their NFT rights away, that's on them.

[btilly]

What Taylor Swift did is an imitation of what Prince did long before her.

See https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/cover-story/7348551/... for more.

[packetlost]

That's not really relevant to this discussion though

[NicoJuicy]

What stops someone from creating a nft with the same metadata?

[jjulius]

Absolutely nothing.

[btilly]

Provenance is what gives NFTs their value.

The question is how you prove that provenance if a niche artist has created an NFT on a niche piece of art. (And, honestly, most of the people who would want to create NFTs are going to be in this category.)

Now imagine an agency whose job was simply to create a digital signature on a work that indicated what they had done to prove a particular piece of art really was produced by the artist who then goes on to sign the NFT. If the agency has an established reputation, then that signed NFT has much more solidly established provenance than an unsigned NFT. Of course that agency has non-zero costs to establish provenance. And adds a non-zero amount to the value of the NFT.

What then, can said agency reasonably charge the artist for this service?

[echelon]

The value of a Beeple NFT minted by Beeple is $0. The market just hasn't discovered that yet.

An NFT has no more value than a JPG.

I'll longbets anyone that says otherwise.

[arcsincosin]

I agree but it's worth noting that Beeple was selling JPGs for $5000+ in the mid 2010s as a commissioned artist in the music industry. So the NFTs have also brought some transparency to a successful digital artist along with the crazy valuations.

[sashimi-houdini]

This seems like a dangerous bet to make... my take on the NFT "market" is that it's money laundering, wash trading (inflating prices to attract suckers to the market) and perhaps in a small part conspicuous consumption. Mostly fraudulent... but would you bet against a fraud?

[berberous]

I would take a broader bet that is not tied to Beeple (i.e. that NFTs of significant artists will have long-term value in a similar manner as a painting).

[echelon]

I would take that broader bet that NFTs will have zero long-term value.

[usehackernews]

Explain why -

Is this because you don't have interest in it, or do you have a true justification of this?

I'm willing to take this bet. Just like art, 99% can be bought for $1 at a garage sale, but there will be the 1% that has value to someone.

You are betting against the generation who spends massive amounts on video games costumes, and puts more value into their online image (instagram) than real life image, not finding value in a form of digital scarcity & status. I find that hard to believe.

[intotheabyss]

So the condition of your bet would be that all NFTs everywhere have zero long term value? So something like, by 2030, no non-fungible token will have a monetary value?

[saalweachter]

I'm not interested in taking the counter party in this bet, but if you were to take a bet in the form "The highest sale price of a NFT in calendar year 20X0 will be no more Y0% of the highest sale price of a postage stamp in that same year.", what would you fill in for X & Y?

[lottin]

You're god-damn right.

[rcxdude]

In most legitimate uses of NFTs the creator is the artist.

[klodolph]

How would you know if an NFT is legitimate? There's no "legitimate" bit on the NFT that distinguishes it.

If you wanted to support the artist, wouldn't it be faster, easier, cheaper, and more reliable to support them directly, through Patreon or something similar?

[crazygringo]

But the NFT is supporting them directly, if they minted it.

I personally think NFT's are silly, but there's zero argument to be made that they aren't supporting the artist. The artist minted them in the first place.

[klodolph]

> The artist minted them in the first place.

That's completely false. Anyone can mint an NFT. Artists have minted some of them, and other NFTs are created without the artists' permission.

I don't get why people are saying this when it's so obviously false, like, it does not pass the smell test for basic credibility.

[rcxdude]

Are pirate NFTs selling for a significant price? Clearly people are making them without permission, but are people buying them? The high-profile mega-money examples for sure are being minted by the artists.

[crazygringo]

Obviously the discussion is about NFT's the artists minted themselves.

Counterfeits isn't relevant to the discussion here. It's like complaining that tipping a server doesn't work because the cash might be counterfeit. It has nothing to do with the main point.

[pshc]

I guess the buck stops at Blue Checkmark providers really.

[rcxdude]

Generally when the artist endorses it. NFTs give you a token that represents a piece of art they made which you can move and resell independently, even if the artist is no longer around. I personally am not very likely to buy any, but I can see the appeal (it's much the same as owning the originals of any other bit of art as opposed to a copy). The current cost of creating and moving them around is unfortunate, however (and reflects the immaturity of crypto as a whole. I believe ethereum is working hard to improve their scaling with a plausible plan, so this should improve, but it is a definite problem at the moment)