[douglaswlance]

A Michael Jordan rookie card is worth tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on grade. If I print a Michael Jordan rookie card onto cardstock, it will be worth basically nothing. The reason that something is valuable to collectors is the social contract between creator and recipient.

The value in NFTs exists by that same social contract. You can't ignore that relationship when criticizing them, otherwise you're attacking a strawman. Try attacking a steelman argument for NFTs, and you may actually convince some proponents.

[zepto]

> The reason that something is valuable to collectors is the social contract between creator and recipient.

No, it’s because the valuable object is physically scarce, and exists as a material historical artifact independent of any ledger. NFTs have never and will never have these attributes.

You can't ignore this reality when advocating for them, otherwise you're peddling a fantasy.

[douglaswlance]

>No, it’s because the valuable object is physically scarce, and exists as a material historical artifact independent of any ledger. NFTs have never and will never have these attributes.

Collectible cards are scarce by design. Manufacturers print millions every year. They could reproduce the same card for decades. They could also print them on demand. Whenever someone orders the card, print it for them, and ship it out. It is artificial scarcity.

Collectible cards must be graded and registered to be valuable. An unregistered Michael Jordan rookie card would be assumed to be a fake. They exist in a ledger.

The social contract between collectors and manufacturers is what creates the value. The manufacturer agrees to generate verifiable scarcity, and the collector agrees to purchase seemingly worthless cardboard and ink at a markup.

[danuker]

> independent of any ledger

This seems an arbitrary restriction to me. Why must something be independent of a ledger to have value?

[zepto]

This is a property that NFTs can never have, so claiming that NFTs are equivalent to physical collectibles is certainly false.

If you are saying that something requires a ledger entry to have value, then you are simply proving that it has no intrinsic value.

[danuker]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value :

> An intrinsic theory of value (also called theory of objective value) is any theory of value in economics which holds that the value of an object, good or service, is intrinsic, meaning that it can be estimated using objective measures.

If you use "what someone last paid for it" as a measure of intrinsic value, then they have intrinsic value.

[zepto]

> If you use "what someone last paid for it" as a measure of intrinsic value, then they have intrinsic value.

Clearly this doesn’t meet the requirements of an objective measure.

A single tulip bulb was purchased for 2500 florins in 1636. That represents 10 years of a skilled laborers earnings at the time.

If you believe that the price an NFT sold for on a ledger represents its intrinsic value, then you must also believe that a tulip bulb’s intrinsic value was equivalent to 10 years of skilled labor.

Obviously this is absurd, and history proved it so.

[danuker]

> objective measure

How would a bunch of subjective meatbags be able to come up with an objective measure?

If everyone agreed that X is an objective measure, it could still be wrong.

Give me a concrete example of what you think is an objective measure.

[oneplane]

A card that people want to collect in your example is scarce because it cannot be re-created with the same properties that the ones that already exist have; all one could do is create a replica.

NFTs are artificial scarcity ahead of time with the purpose of emulating ETFs, hidden behind a fake 'new' concept of a digital deed (which is what a blockchain already is, no need for NFTs for that). Digital 'goods' however, are always replicas. There is no 'true' version. All they are is an attempt at monetary manipulation of people during the time in which they aren't as well-known and regulated as ETFs are.

[0x500x79]

A Michael Jordan rookie card is rare because only a certain number of them were physically made. An NFT is rare because we decide it is rare (the physical constraints are not the same as the rookie card), I don't know if they are exactly the same. The minted copy here is exactly the same, pixel by pixel, to the original.

I also find that when we start applying analogies to something as an argument we are detaching from the reality of what we have. It is meant to simplify, and appeal to people who are not familiar with the topic at hand. No matter how wrong the analogy is (or right) we are inherently shifting the conversations to something different. I know this analogy is trying to say an NFT is scarce, but it IS quite different than a Michael Jordan rookie card in its execution, management, and a lot of the things that make a Michael Jordan rookie card worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[bootlooped]

Funny part is that I don't think the actual image even has to be copied. What is on the blockchain is just metadata, including a URL (or multiple) where the actual image is stored. You can just copy the metadata.

[altdataseller]

A MJ rookie card is worth a lot because it’s MJ, the best ball player of all time.

How is a NFT drawn by a random artist of a random image worth so much?

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

If we're steelmanning the argument, then I think you'd have to ask what makes an NFT of a digital artwork by a famous digital artist worth so much.

[zepto]

A bubble inflated by people rich from crypto-currencies.

[altdataseller]

They are less than 1% of all the NfTS with inflated prices. No need to argue about the outliers

[moksly]

It’s sort of the same, but what I don’t get is how things like that rainbow cat and other famous internet pictures are NFTs. I mean, if the picture was around for twenty years before it became a NFT, then how is the NFT the “original”.

Going that line of thought, what happens if two people make the same picture into a NFT?

[douglaswlance]

It depends who the people are.

Anyone can make an NFT of Nyan cat. That doesn't give it value.

If the original creator of Nyan cat creates an NFT of it, and only one NFT, suddenly it has a ton of value.

[psyc]

Clearly people believe it's something more than what you're saying, for some reason. I have no problem with the concept of collectibles and collectors. But "collectibles, but on a blockchain" doesn't warrant the current levels of mania and "entrepreneurial" exploitation.

[bootlooped]

That social contract is stored off-chain (if at all), and the work itself is stored off-chain. Combined with the fact that you can perfectly duplicate the thing that is stored on the blockchain and I think that all radically reduces the value proposition of NFTs.

[pg5]

This is not a good comparison, because an NFT gives you neither legal ownership nor physical access to the item it is for. For digital items, NFTs don't even provide the actual file.