[danielvf]

I work in the crypto industry right now - my job is to keep bad guys from stealing XXX millions of dollars. I've also worked on a team that has done the tech side of several record breaking NFT's sales. And I've sold my own NFTS for fun, and strangers have bought them (wat!).

I'm not a "believer". Crypto is indeed full of idiots - and scammers - and crazy people who will say anything to see the token they hold go up - and scammers - and crazy people chasing a 100x buck - and more scammers. And even ignoring the scams, it's like living in an alternate Alice-in-Wonderland world where the rules of normal physics, normal economics, and normal society no longer seem to apply. It is truly a frothing zoo of non-normality.

And yet I'm not a "skeptic" either. There are really, really hard technological problems out there, and there are really wonderful people working on them. In the middle of the economic silliness, there's a lot of new things around groups and economics being tried. And amidst the flurry of insanity in NFT world, there is some genuinely good art being created.

For example, take the stuff this person creates (https://tylerxhobbs.com/fidenza). The process of making it is exactly the kind of stuff hackernews loves, and it is genuinely good art. It's stuff I put on the wall. The whole game around who gets to pay a stupid amount of money to say they own it (https://opensea.io/assets/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aeba...) of them doesn't diminish the fact that art has been created, and the art can be enjoyed anyone.

It's easy, when you see lots of people making absurd claims, to go beyond just refuting those claims, and to slip into purely dismissing everything without ever checking to see if there's something of value there.

But there is good, interesting stuff going underneath the madness frothing on twitter around crypto. Deep behind the apparent wall of film-flam artists, there's work going on in super weird math, formal software proving with billions of dollars on the line, new programming languages, new ways of scaling consensus, and lots of art being created.

[Kapura]

> It's easy, when you see lots of people making absurd claims, to go beyond just refuting those claims, and to slip into purely dismissing everything without ever checking to see if there's something of value there.

> But there is good, interesting stuff going underneath the madness frothing on twitter around crypto. Deep behind the apparent wall of film-flam artists, there's work going on in super weird math, formal software proving with billions of dollars on the line, new programming languages, new ways of scaling consensus, and lots of art being created.

I'm reminded of a tweet: "drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,"[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762

[mysecretaccount]

Remove "drunk" from that tweet and the opposite point is made: why must we demand that a thing is all bad or all good?

Edit: not sure why this is being downvoted. I am not defending NFTs, just saying that a comparison to something clearly wrong like drunk driving needs to be established with more evidence than hyperlinking dril.

[meepmorp]

All you're saying is that if you leave out a crucial word in the initial statement, the meaning changes. Fine, but so what?

[mysecretaccount]

That is a very uncharitable interpretation of my comment. Here is an explanation for you:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29281263

[Kapura]

So are you defending drunk driving because it helps people get to work on time?

[azundo]

Not at all, they're suggesting that even clear benefits like driving have some negative outcomes. Whether NFTs/Crypto is more like driving (positives outweigh the negatives) or more like drunk driving (negatives outweigh the positives) is the question.

[_dain_]

is the dril tweet even wrong though?

[b3morales]

> And amidst the flurry of insanity in NFT world, there is some genuinely good art being created. ... The whole game around who gets to pay a stupid amount of money to say they own it of them doesn't diminish the fact that art has been created, and the art can be enjoyed anyone.

It is good art, and thanks for the link, I hadn't heard of them before.

But I don't see what the NFT aspect adds. They've been creating art for years. Are they creating more art because of NFTs? What's the practical difference in outcome for the artist between selling an NFT and selling a print?

[danielvf]

Yes, some people are selling a lot more art because of NFTs.

For one thing, there's only so much space on your walls for prints, but a huge enormous amount of space in your wallet to hold NFTs. Whales / superfans can spend even more than they otherwise could - which isn't a bad thing for artists.

Another thing is the immediacy of selling. Tweet little corners of something while you make something, tweet about it when it is done, and one or two days later when the auction ends, you have money. A whole of of the friction and delay is gone.

On the other hand, super fast distribution, and direct artist to buyer "connection" on a mass scale means that to make the mega-bucks requires being something like a music star or an instagram / reality star celebrity. Or maybe it's like YouTube / twitch. There are a lot of creators, and some percentage of those creators have massive audiences and some have ten people. Or zero. That kind of change we've seen before in other types of art, and now it's coming here. There are a lot of people who have made NFT's that have never seen a sale. It's not a magic money tree.

[kibwen]

> For one thing, there's only so much space on your walls for prints, but a huge enormous amount of space in your wallet to hold NFTs. Whales / superfans can spend even more than they otherwise could - which isn't a bad thing for artists.

This is quite silly. Digital art has been a thing for years. By raw numbers, the majority of independent artists these days make a living doing digital art commissions. And yes, to whales; I have multiple artist friends who make an absolute killing drawing one-of-a-kind commissioned pornography (furries are loaded!). NFTs did not invent digital art or the digital art market, it's just that techbros are finally realizing it exists now that it's possible to attach cryptocurrency scams to art.

[iskander]

You can make art according to your own creative impulses (and get paid for that) or...you can make commissioned porn for furries. Choose wisely.

[miracle2k]

Cool! So now there is one more way, especially for artists you'd rather not do commissions.

[bonestamp2]

> But I don't see what the NFT aspect adds.

It's a very good question, and the answer was conveniently left out of the blog post at hand. The reason art NFTs were created to begin with was because in the traditional art world, the people who make nearly all of the money are not the people who actually make the art. It is the art dealers and the art collectors who take the lion's share of the money.

The purpose of putting art in an NFT is to better balance the economics of art so that when the dealers and collectors continue to sell the art for increasingly higher prices, the original artist also gets some of the financial reward. This is especially important for young artists who are talented but are not yet able to sell their originals for a liveable wage or get any interest in a distributor to make prints.

A lot of people think NFTs are a waste of time and money, and I completely understand that paradigm, but NFTs are very important to the Artists who are trying to make a living wage from their passion. Ideally, this will contribute to even more imaginative art in the future.

I'd argue that Art NFTs actually share the values of open source software that were listed in the article, at least when it comes to improving "abundance, post-scarcity, universal access, and equality" for artists.

[wpietri]

There's no particular evidence that NFTs will change the economics of art. Indeed, given the rich history of scams, money laundering, grift, and fraud in the fungible token space, I'd say there's good reason to think artist will end up at least as screwed over. Indeed, given that the traditional art world will be eager to get in on it, it could be worse.

> Art NFTs actually share the values of open source [...] improving "abundance, post-scarcity, universal access, and equality"

This is flatly wrong. The whole point of an NFT is to create artificial scarcity in a post-scarcity medium. And it is the sort of "up is really down" crypto promotion that has turned me into a reflexive skeptic.

[bonestamp2]

> The whole point of an NFT is to create artificial scarcity in a post-scarcity medium.

That's not true for art NFTs. If you don't own the rights to an image, whether it's a regular old bitmap or an art NFT, there's no difference in scarcity as an observer of that image. But, as the artist who created a digital image vs an art NFT, there's a massive difference, and THAT is the whole point of an art NFT.

[wpietri]

Nah. A post-scarcity, open-source-like solution is letting people sponsor art creation. An NFT is creating artificial scarcity: one person thinks they "own" a digital asset. And there's plenty of agita when people don't play pretend with them: https://mashable.com/article/non-fungible-tokens-nfts-right-...

[bonestamp2]

> An NFT is creating artificial scarcity: one person thinks they "own" a digital asset.

This is true for most digital images, NFT or not... one person usually does own it. In either case, there is no scarcity for observers -- anyone can look at the image as much as they want.

In both cases, people can even copy the image and it use it without the owner's permission, if that's what you're really concerned about losing. But at least the NFT makes it very clear who that owner is, for those who do seek permission or licensing (unlike your average jpeg). For anyone who believes in intellectual property, that seems like a step forward.

[damon_c]

> What's the practical difference in outcome for the artist between selling an NFT and selling a print?

With NFTs, the artist gets the money before they're dead!

[vkou]

What stops me from getting paid for selling an NFT of your art?

[iskander]

It wouldn't have any value for lack of actual provenance (you can test this by trying to sell your own copy of Fidenza, please report back).

[vkou]

What part of the NFT protocol verifies provenance?

And why did this not work for Davidson Carvalho, who hasn't seen a cent of the money made by someone selling NFTs of his work? If there was no provenance, why did anyone pay $170,000 for them? [1]

Could it be the case that the NFT market doesn't give two figs about provenance?

[1] https://twitter.com/colorblindmess/status/145059819884259328...

[iskander]

Social interpretation of the contract that the token is attached to.

e.g. if your Art Blocks NFT is on the Art Blocks contract, it's authentic. If it's the same image on a different contract, it's inauthentic.

Just saw your edit: now that it's known that the art is stolen from a different artist, I would expect the original NFTs to lose most if not all of their value. The convention of authenticity is a social one. If an artist misrepresents art as their own then it seems authentically theirs until shown otherwise. Same as e.g. selling prints of someone else's work.

[dbmikus]

I really agree that it's good to go in with a level head. If you highlight the extremes of either "believers" or "non-believers", both sides seem like low effort takes.

I bucketed crypto projects into two categories: (1) things that are only possible on crypto networks, and (2) things that people aren't motivated to do on other networks. For example, the US is woefully missing a banking API, especially for consumers. DeFi takes a stab at this. DeFi is still mostly closed circuit and too expensive, but if it continues to grow and integrate with non-crypto financials, that's a strong basis for a banking API.

The blockchain ecosystem has also fueled a lot of work into zero knowledge proofs and its components like homomorphic encryption, which has uses outside of blockchain. So even if the grand experiment fails (strongly doubt the whole thing fails) there will be a lot of cool technical progress that has been made alongside it.

[mleonhard]

Any technological progress obtained from cryptocurrency research will be the most expensive progress ever purchased in human history.

The costs come from:

- Opportunity cost of having lots of smart people focusing on cryptocurrency who could have been researching medicine, clean energy, or space tech.

- Money spent on manufacturing and maintaining the cryptocurrency mining equipment. Those factories could be making other products that directly benefit peoples' lives. We currently have a shortage of electronics because of the pandemic. Cryptocurrency mining makes that shortage worse.

- Environmental pollution produced by the power plants used for cryptocurrency mining. For every $1 a miner spends on electricity, the rest of society will pay $N to remove the CO2 later. Also, emissions from coal power plants often poison people and soil nearby.

- Increased environmental destruction caused by digging up energy and building and running more power plants.

The ultimate benefit will not be worth the cost. How could it?

[dbmikus]

It's an interesting question, but in my personal view trying to weigh the total moral value proposition of new technology is so incredibly difficult. If one could do it well, you could predict the future.

As an interesting hyperbolic comparison, is our understanding of nuclear fission and fusion worth it because two cities in Japan were bombed and thousands died? IDK

Edit: and this isn't to say we shouldn't be critical of Blockchain technology. I think the criticism of proof of work is important, and I'm glad that most chains are proof of stake or transitioning. Would we have made proof of stake if we first didn't validate the idea with a simpler proof of work implementation? Maybe. Maybe not.

[smegger001]

thats just not the case.

firstly you objection to opportuity cost is flat wrong. those many smart people as you refer to them aren't going to just jump inot what ever the best for mankind research is because you want them to. Researchers and scienetist aren't a fungible resource, someone with a master ins mathmatics and a focus on cryptography isn't going to join a clean energy start up join a biotech firm or work on space tech. If crypto currency didn't exist they would probably work on other cryptography related fields.

the chip shortage has little to do with this as large scale mines use dedicated bespoke 'application-specific integrated circuit' or ASIC chips not used for anything else. try to run a mineing rig on CPU, and GPUs just isn't cost effective anymore. Secondly they didn't cause the chip shortage, shortsighted manufactures ending their orders both the immediate term and for years in advance that did. The chip foundries did the only logical thing and resold the slots for those canceled orders to keep the fabs running.

as for the enviromental impact crypto, cryto thrives on low cost energy as it gives the miners a higher coin/dollar spent mining. and currently building new solar and wind is cheaper than building coal. so really what we need to do is stop burning coal.

[rodiger]

Many people in the world don't have access to a functioning financial system- what's the benefit in building one?

[mleonhard]

Private companies already build functioning financial systems cheaply. Many companies in developing countries have deployed electronic payments that work on cheap feature phones via SMS and WAP. They have massive adoption by the unbanked. None of these systems use cryptocurrency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_banking#Mobile_banking_...

[dbmikus]

Reductio ad absurdum, many people don't have access to computers, so what's the benefit of computers?

[Vetch]

> Opportunity cost of having lots of smart people focusing on cryptocurrency who could have been researching medicine, clean energy, or space tech

It's doubtful many of those smart and obsessed enough to contribute to medicine, clean or space tech would be moved. What we would have seen is the same smart decentralized consensus obsessed people still working on formal proof systems, distributed consensus algorithms robust to adversaries, precursors to the vile offspring and post-capitalist or post-communist economies.

It's interesting that a lot of people lodge similar claims as you have, against crewed space missions even though you count it as having value.

> Those factories could be making other products that directly benefit peoples' lives.

Things were like this before cryptocurrencies and what you say is already possible despite cryptocurrencies but still does not happen. You might be interested in [Dives, Lazarus, and Alice](http://bactra.org/weblog/841.html).

> We currently have a shortage of electronics because of the pandemic.

Robustness sacrificed at the alter of efficiency means extra vulnerable to shocks and surprises.

> Coal Powerplants

Countries with or without PoW mining presence are still building coal fired and other CO2 generating powerplants. The world has not been smart about moving to clean tech fast enough.

[majormajor]

Not many of these things depend on crypto or blockchain, though. People on the internet made great art pre-NFTs. Even in terms of recent phenomena, "buy a copy of the constitution" would work just fine as a Kickstarter.

[015a]

Last night, I was buying some dumb something on some random website, as one does. And they offered cryptocurrency as a checkout option.

"Well, I've got some money in coinbase; why not try it? Its only $10."

It was the best "stateless" checkout experience I have ever had. Sure, Amazon is easier, but I already have an account with them. I'm talking specifically on a totally new website. Select a currency; pops up a QR code with the amount in crypto; punch it in to the coinbase app; scan the QR code; five seconds later its done.

This could even be trivially improved, if that QR code also embedded the amount and the currency type. Just scan and go. Hope we get there.

Of course, its predicated on me already owning crypto. Can't dispute that point.

But not only was this a far better experience than "run to the other end of the house, find my wallet, rip it out, punch in twenty dumb numbers that have faded to near unreadability from being in my wallet, op security code". I'd argue Apple Pay is roughly as convenient as crypto; traditional solutions do exist.

But to think that it was both the easiest checkout experience I've ever had, and (in theory) it doesn't rely on some centralized megacorp gatekeeper taking 5% of the transaction (Visa, Apple, etc), or acting as the centralized merchant every consumer has to interact with (Amazon).

Nothing is perfect! This website was using one of them "centralized gatekeepers" to proxy the transaction. They probably never saw the crypto; they just see USD. I had to overpay a bit in the USD conversion to account for risk spread; speaking of which, the price was still set in USD. The gatekeeper probably took X%. And I use coinbase, which is another one of those centralized gatekeepers.

Yet, I saw a sliver of the promise! It was shining in my eyes with undeniable brightness. This is why crypto exists. Its the Best Path toward allowing independent businesses to digitally transact with their customers, no Visa, no Amazon. Its not finished walking the path it has laid. Maybe it never will. But in our current economic climate, there's no other hope that I can see. Maybe if our government could compete with Visa and lay down a public, digital cash network (crypto or no crypto); but they aren't.

So while it isn't perfect, even in its ideal state (intrinsic implications: environmental, sovereign economic policy, etc); nothing ever is.

[stanleydrew]

The ability to dispute a charge has value, and the cost will be borne by someone. Removing Visa just means replacing it with some other entity that fills this need.

Truly peer-to-peer cash transactions without recourse is a bad idea that I think will actually increase friction in the market, since people will take longer to make purchasing decisions.

[015a]

Its true. I think this is the strongest argument against cryptocurrency-as-a-currency which proponents too easily gloss over.

Security issues e.g. disputed transactions is arguably something which would naturally happen less with crypto, given the higher security bar to accessing funds. 16 digit static card number versus real cryptography, pull versus push, etc. Additionally, most people (including me) shouldn't be managing their own wallets, and I feel too many proponents go all cut-and-dry "don't use coinbase, they're centralized finance"; the advantage is the ability to fall off coinbase and still have your money and transact with it, not to get rid of all centralized entities.

Chargebacks are something that simply can't be done in crypto. Well, they could be, with a more complex new currency that looks more like escrow rather than currency. Optimistic take: Its still a fantastic option today for goods which really don't qualify for chargebacks (think: digital downloads). Pessimistic take: Merchants hate chargebacks, and are the ones who ultimately decide which currencies they want to accept, so the lack of chargebacks won't actually impact uptake/usage.

In fact, this last point is why tons of porn providers already accept crypto. Adult content is an industry ripe with chargeback, which is why most processors won't touch them. The ones who do charge a ton in fees. They love crypto; no chance of a chargeback, and lower fees. Customers probably love it too; better anonymity.

> people will take longer to make purchasing decisions.

I'd be interested to know how many people seriously consider "I have recourse through my credit card if things go awry" as a major factor in purchasing decisions. I've DEFINITELY spent more to buy something from Amazon or direct from Apple, because I know their customer support is fantastic, and that's an avenue that won't go away with crypto. Card specific protections, I can't say I've ever considered, but that's just me.

There's still plenty of room in crypto for centralized entities, like Coinbase, to take on the role of a bank and absorb some of this responsibility. I'm imagining a "pay with crypto" versus "pay with coinbase" option, where the customer can opt-in to an additional X% transaction fee, paid to coinbase, for "purchase insurance" or something. Its not pure-crypto, but again: balance in all things.

Crypto is important not so it becomes the One Thing All Consumers buy Everything With in a Wholly Distributed and Decentralized World. Its just another option; an important one because it provides recourse for humans who have traditionally be spurred by the established western and wealthy-oriented banking system.

[NikolaeVarius]

Well, I saved a bunch of that art and can view it any time.

[iskander]

That's kinda the point. The "collector" can feel like they own it -- using an idiosyncratic new definition of ownership that you don't really have to agree with but other collectors/speculators/crypto peoplke also feel is real. The artist gets paid (kinda rare for art, much less digital art), everyone else can enjoy their artistic output. System working as designed.

[Cederfjard]

I’m curious if anyone actually feels like it’s real, or if it’s 99% speculation. I tend to think it’s the latter.

[iskander]

Some people really feel it, I know a few long-term collectors. Some people are into the VR galleries they assemble, others buy non-standard sized displays fit for specific NFTs to display in their homes. It's definitely an odd little community of rich people collecting digital art. And more broadly people feel attachment to their Twitter PFPs and feel like they can't truly use it unless they own it. It's a new social convention that's very unevenly distributed.

[Cederfjard]

But what is it really that they own? Bragging rights, that they paid for the artist to proclaim them the first (or subsequent) person to own a hash on one of multiple blockchains, that contains a link pointing to an image file of an artwork hosted on a CDN? And the artist can create infinitely more? And the image file might be taken down at any time? And while you can trace the provenance on the blockchain easily enough, linking the originating address with the actual artist needs some external evidence off blockchain that might not be around forever? And the blockchain it’s on might well lose popularity at some point and be forgotten? Etc?

I just can’t see why it’d be valuable to anyone, unless they’re just caught up in the hype and don’t think too hard about it. I can however see people taking advantage of the many, many people who feel like they missed out on, say, Bitcoin and want to get in on ”crypto”.

[iskander]

A provenance certificate which is socially interpreted as ownership. Not going to argue whether that's a good or durable interpretation of ownership, just attesting that some people really do feel it.

[majormajor]

How can anyone possibly be considered a "long-term" collector of something so new yet?

[iskander]

It's essentially a state of intention: people buying art to appreciate having it rather than with an intention of selling. Most people in the NFT space are flippers riding bubbles, but a few actual collectors really do exist.

[esja]

Speculation and money laundering. NFTs are perfect for the latter.

[chizhik-pyzhik]

Does anyone have evidence for nfts-as-money-laundering? I keep seeing this thrown around without any actual reasoning...

[paconbork]

Really that's just an inherited property from physical art

[kibwen]

Digital art has been free of this "inheritance" for years. We don't need to impose the arbitrary constraints of physical art on digital art. It's as backwards as Blockbuster trying to ban digital video so that they can sell more DVDs. It's philosophical DRM for jpegs.

[danielvf]

Open source funding hits art. Anyone can view it and get the benefit of doing so, the artist got paid to create, somebody gets bragging rights. Everybody wins.

[egypturnash]

Everybody wins except for the part where a bunch of people wasted a bunch of energy competing to be the one whose computer confirmed the financial transaction in an absurdly inefficient distributed database.

Patreon's been solving the problem of "open source funding" for about a decade without that part.

[Vetch]

> in an absurdly inefficient distributed database

Suppose you wanted a distributed system where arbitrary nodes can enter without vetting. You'd need to be robust to adversarial nodes that lie and collude. Distributed consensus under asynchrony and adversaries seriously ramps up the difficulty of already challenging problems typically solved by Paxos derived algorithms. The first moderately scalable solution to consensus within such a hostile environment and with relatively few moving parts was built on a proof of work scheme inspired by hashcash. It's not inefficient, it's just a complex domain.

It should be noted that NFTs run on Ethereum which has been in the process of moving to the vastly more efficient proof of stake scheme.

> Patreon's been solving the problem of "open source funding" for about a decade without that part.

There are a number of developing nations whose citizens cannot participate on Patreon. For others, there are workarounds that involve hurdles like navigating providers with worse customer service rep than paypal, giving out sensitive identification, high fees, high withdrawal friction and chaining various third parties who themselves might disappear or be indirectly connected to fraudulent banks.

[meowkit]

> wasted a bunch of energy competing

A problem of PoW based consensus, and will not be relevant to PoS/X based consensus.

> absurdly inefficient distributed database.

A decentralized distributed database with read/append commands available to any participant.

> Patreon

A centralized company.

You're not wrong, but you aren't making any points that people who are interested in crypto don't already know, or care about.

[egypturnash]

> will not be relevant to PoS/X based consensus

It's relevant now.

"Maybe someday crypto will move off of PoW so you should completely ignore the fact that there the networks exist entirely because PoW is how people get paid" is a bunch of bullshit that does nothing to change the fact that Proof Of Wasting A Lot Of Power On Nothing is how it works right now. Right now I consider crypto finding a way to work that doesn't burn shit-tons of energy to be about as likely as The Year Of Linux On The Desktop finally coming to pass.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

We already had pateron, github sponsors, etc. for that with significantly less complication and barely any scams.

[paconbork]

Do any of those allow you to resell purely digital art?

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Yes, they just don't have any mechanism to assist you in doing so. Not that resale is of any use as regards funding the artist anyway.

[remote-dev]

Yes, it is a completely contrived marketplace based on bragging rights. It seems to work, but it is incredibly stupid and eventually people will move on.

[vineyardmike]

Welcome to the art world.

[ausbah]

this is another instance of the phenomenon in tech and startup culture where someone claims to solve an already solved problem with a needlessly overly complicated technical "solution"

[0x1062]

Original copies of (popular) physical art is expensive. Unknown imitations of (popular) physical art is also expensive. Known imitations of (popular) physical art is generally never expensive.

Art isn't some magic phenomenon. Many many people know that it has value! They pay a lot of money to exclusively own something that can almost always be trivially copied, not because they care it can be trivially copied, but because they _don't_ care.

[Talanes]

Most physical art can't be perfectly imitated though. A print is not a perfectly accurate rendition of a painting, or even of a physical drawing.

[shrimp_emoji]

NFTs are like a combat mech the size of the Solar System.

Someone can use it to have a really ironclad DRM implementation, guarding the art you saved and to make sure only its approved owner can view it (mimicking the tyranny of physical scarcity of meatspace for cyberspace goods).

The reason you saved it and can view it is that nobody's doing that yet. And because there are way easier and cheaper ways to implement DRM than Solar System-sized mechs, nobody probably ever will use NFTs for that. : p

[remote-dev]

Please explain how someone can have an ironclad DRM implementation that guards access to download a link to a jpeg on a public blockchain that you want everyone to be able to view.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

DRM is a fundamentally broken concept. I feel like there has to be a mathematical proof out there somewhere that it is impossible to both make information consumable and, at the same time, prevent its duplication.

[jimbob45]

Why couldn't you just have a SQL DB where you store the ownership of these assets though? There's no reason to use an NFT - it's overkill.

[cool_dude85]

What, and trust the central planners at Sotheby's to not steal my apes and slimers? They'll sell off half the pixels to the government because of my back taxes.

[jimbob45]

Is that different from how crypto operates though? Cryptocurrency exchanges already have to report to the IRS/government and they'll still come after you if you have unpaid taxes.

If NFTs get big enough, there's no reason to believe that the NFT exchanges wouldn't have to register with the government/IRS.

[whateveracct]

A simple example:

You wouldn't trust your NBA Topshot ownership to .. the NBA? Of course you would - SQL DB strictly better.

[TigeriusKirk]

Sounds like a business opportunity.

[thatguy0900]

Typical right clicker mentality /s

[chana_masala]

The article agrees with you that there is interesting math and good art in crypto. But disagrees about why it's being done.

[kwertyoowiyop]

“There are a lot of smart people working on this stuff” is something I’ve heard several times recently. It gives me reason to hope, but it’s not sufficient. At some point, concrete results are needed. Fingers crossed…

[s5300]

Well, you had me until you brought up Fidenza.

It’s something somebody with less than a CompSci or SWE bachelors could do. It looks like something a nerd who can program that just took an entry level mechanical engineering fluid dynamics course & thought it was cool made.

In other words, practically worthless, and hardly art. You would put them on your wall? Poor wall.

[mikeodds]

Recent Damien Hurst piece was a coke machine in the corner of a gallery that dispensed cans of coke with his signature on. Obviously a lot of easy criticisms there but still considered a collectible by some.

[lozaning]

Modern art = I could do that + yeah but you didnt