[jmathai]

Was it really just 4 years ago that NFTs were "the next big thing"?

The tweets don't age well in hindsight but sometimes there are technologies which feel like they might break through but never do. Having been bullish on the concept of NFTs doesn't make a strong argument for or against having good intuition of breakthrough innovation.

[4er_transform]

NFTs from first principles looked like a bad idea even then. They solved 0 problems. When a technology solves 0 problems, it’s doomed to fail.

[IshKebab]

They solved the money laundering problem pretty well!

[almostdeadguy]

Why are we pretending like his comments about any of these things are as a neutral observer instead of as an investor cheerleading his investments? Why should anyone take Gary Tan seriously as a futurist?

[jacquesm]

Well, that's a good question but the answer isn't going to be to anybody's liking. Because he's got money. People equate having money with wisdom rather than with intelligence and intelligence is dual use, you can use it for good and you can use it for bad just as easily. It may lead to wisdom but that's fairly rare. Most of the time it just leads to money.

So people will follow those with money (or that they perceive to have money) without much critical thought about where that is going to lead them, they're hoping for wisdom but may end up being misled. That's why all of these ultra wealthy folk turned on a dime when the political weather changed, they don't really have principles, they just want more zeros.

[_bent]

No no, NFTs were ridiculously stupid, that's why it was so controversial, that's why there was so much backlash. Tan having been bullish on NFTs is a very good indicator that he isn't hyping $TRENDING_THING based on technological merit

[nyc_data_geek1]

Having been bullish on NFTs, which were never more than hype in the primary use case promulgated for them, is absolutely a strong argument against having good intuition of breakthrough innovation. It demonstrates an inability to differentiate between hype and utility.

NFT's for real estate ownership, container tracking etc. could still have some form of utility. But what people think of when they hear NFT's isn't that, it's shitty monkey jpg's.

NFT's were never the next big thing, except for a very specific subset of very gullible idiots.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Having been bullish on NFTs, which were never more than hype in the primary use case promulgated for them, is absolutely a strong argument against having good intuition of breakthrough innovation.

I always thought that NFTs were completely ridiculous and essentially nothing but hype. But then again, I thought that amazon wasn't going to work either, when I was there building it, so I'm not sure that even in a given individual "good intuition for breakthrough innovation" is a unitary thing.

[jacquesm]

That's a good point. I've had the same: I lost a bet on HN for a hundred bucks that Facebook would never break a billion in revenues. I - mistakenly - thought people would not be so stupid as to hand over their private lives to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg. But they did.

NFTs are just as stupid, if not more so and this time at least it looks like sanity prevailed. But the problem is more complex than just boolean 'made' or 'fail', and I think that's where the investment angle comes in. Investors bet on 'the next wave' all the time. And NFTs looked to the clueless as much as 'the next wave' as mobile phones or the transistor did at some point in time. The big differentiator to me is whether or not a thing like that requires a belief system or not. If it does then I don't give it much chance. But then we have all of crypto as a counterexample and quite a few people got stupidly rich peddling that.

[rchaud]

NFTs followed the exact same path as crypto, which many predicted would happen. Crypto became a speculative asset traded on exchanges because it was too volatile and transaction-cost heavy to ever be used as a medium of exchange. NFTs being crypto-based were soon descended upon by finance bros and scammers who saw the opportunity for a quick buck, eliminating any possibility to develop it for utilitarian things like house deeds and concert tickets or whatever.

[rsynnott]

Yes. Blockchains in general, then 'metaverse', then NFTs, now AI. The hype-ier bits of the tech industry always need _something_ to be over-excited about.

(There was actually a short gap between the final collapse of the NFTs and ChatGPT; it's a wonder VCs were able to get out of bed in the morning)

> Having been bullish on the concept of NFTs doesn't make a strong argument for or against having good intuition of breakthrough innovation.

It makes a good argument that he is inclined to be overly impressed by whatever old nonsense people are currently pushing on twitter.

[jinushaun]

NFT was never a good idea. Popularity of NFT was top down, not bottom up.

[mvdtnz]

> Having been bullish on the concept of NFTs doesn't make a strong argument for or against having good intuition of breakthrough innovation.

This is true for some technologies but not for NFTs.