[joshdance]

1. Artificial digital scarcity is usually not needed. 2. It costs an enormous amount of energy to create this artificial digital scarcity. 3. If you own an asset you can generate revenue from it. With NFTs you can't really. The only way to generate revenue is to sell the NFT, for increasingly higher sums. 4. Someone will be left holding the empty bag at the end.

[facorreia]

> Someone will be left holding the empty bag at the end.

This. It's a modern variation on tulips.

[hmrtn]

> Someone will be left holding the empty bag at the end.

I fail to see how this is different than any speculative asset?

[pjc50]

There have historically been attempts to restrict the sale of purely speculative assets to the general public (Howey test, binary options ban etc), because gambling is such a compelling addictive product that people ruin their lives by it.

[eqvinox]

> I fail to see how this is different than any speculative asset?

To drive home the point from pjc50's sibling post, NFTs are "empty" speculative assets.

If you speculate with company stock, housing, or whatever else — there's generally at least some material value that could be liquidated. Even during a bubble when it's overvalued, it's generally not zero. And the cases where it can become zero (companies going completely bankrupt), there's warning signs and possibly even fraud.

NFTs just have no backing. Even "fiat money" (frequently said to "only have value because people back it", after gold standards went away) is different since it's backed by some country. NFTs? Nope. Just nothing.

[hoseja]

Countries are just successful memes that pulled up the ladder as well as they could.

[VoodooJuJu]

>Countries

Populated with real, physical resources, and real, physical people, who will take real, physical action to secure themselves, their resources, and their ideas.

Who is defending my unique set of bits? How are they defended? What is gained from defending them? What is lost if they're not defended?

[pkdpic]

Possibly a separate question, but I was wondering just how serious the energy use problem is. I haven't actually seen what the stats are for carbon footprint etc.

[pjc50]

https://kylemcdonald.github.io/ethereum-emissions/

Estimates that Etherum alone is responsible for a couple of coal power plants.

Proof-of-waste is the worst invention since leaded petrol and CFCs.

[zepto]

Thanks for being the first to introduce the term ‘proof of waste’ to me!

It’s so obvious on seeing it that proof of work is just not an accurate term to describe what is going on.

[pkdpic]

Thank you so much for the link! And ditto on the thank you for introducing the term proof of waste. Extremely helpful.