Pretty ignorant about it.... what does it do better than Spotify for musicians? Seems like it's trying to digitize collectibles and certain types of intellectual properties, but it also might be a scam.
Eh - is it really any different than regular art? People who have money want to own stuff as a status symbol. Half the time it gets locked up in a safe or vault somewhere anyway - I guess this saves the trouble of having to spend money to keep it secure. This sold for $44 million a few years back:
Well even the work of the elite Abstract Expressionists took decades to reach high valuations -- as I said I see the merit of NFTs just not the extremes some of work has reached so rapidly. With Abstract Expressionists there is a solid argument that the high prices the paintings are selling for is not completely organic and is the result key players creating an industry for various scams (forgeries, money laundering, tax evasion, etc). Abstract Expressionists are an extreme example of what happens across the fine art world and it wouldn't surprise me that the same thing is happening on an ultra rapid pace with NFTs.
I think NFTs can increase the value of cryptos in the sense that it will introduce more whales to the crypto market. It will also make the average person want to get a piece of the pie. Maybe I'm wrong in that, or that's just optimism. The world is crazy though. Lots of people slangin' lots of meat around these days. The more decentralized we are, in my opinion, the more you could make a case of the traditional monetary social constructs being on the verge of collapse, in my opinion. That said, this is me talking out of my ass, speculating, and even still, I want to be a part of the crazy ride. FOMO 4 lyfe!
I think FOMO does drive alot of these things I saw where a footballer got half his pay in bit coin and it doubled on him . . .. So dropping a 100$ or so into it does not seem a bad thing . .. never know where it may go Rocket River
BTW, I still see a lot of people saying "I don't understand paying ~$69M for that digital art." Re-read my first post that contained some more context about that deal. It will make a lot more sense as to why that (and other NFT deals) have such huge dollar values (beyond the cryptocurrency conversion rate issues, which are also a factor). Hint: I don't think the buyer actually felt the art was worth that price either. But he and the artist will probably get a good payday thanks to all this good press. Does it make a bit more sense now? (to be fair, this applies to lots of things, including physical art, not just NFTs) The internet is a combination of specialized hardware and software that allow for some pretty nifty things. NFTs are more or less just software that creates artificial scarcity for digital items. Is that a fair description? I see NFTs as being more comparable to something like data caps or maybe even more appropriately net neutrality (or rather what net neutrality protects against). ISPs threw out some crazy cool ideas of what they *could* do without net neutrality, but it really just seemed like another way to nickel and dime people (which is probably why net neutrality gained support). Not a perfect analogy of course, but this seems appropriate than something like the Internet IMO. Maybe someone else can come up with some better examples...or maybe NFTs are kinda one-of-a-kind. I'm assuming you're implying that copyright/licensing laws are updated to acknowledge NFTs as anything beyond a meaningless digital certificate that says "I own this! Sort of." Even in that case, I'm not sure why we couldn't be doing this kind of stuff now, or at least most aspects of this. Probably the reason it doesn't happen is it isn't actually a thing most artists and their fans actually want or find useful. Google tells me there are nearly ~30M+ musical artists in the US, and I would guess 99%+ of them will never have a "huge" hit that actually would result in a successful use case with NFTs (i.e., people actually valuing their NFTs, movies licensing their songs, etc.). This is especially true if we don't fix the transaction costs involved in creating NFTs (I think current costs start at just under $100 or so?). You're going to create 1000 tokens for every song you make, hopefully sell some (good luck finding buyers), then keep a stash...for that one day you'll make it big?! Which will never happen for 99% of these folks. And they're out a good chunk of change due to the costs in setting these things up. So...why would they pursue this vs Bandcamp, Patreon, Cameo, Kickstarter, direct commission, etc.? If we want to help out Nike, Kanye West, Lebron James, Christopher Nolan, etc. expand their businesses, then maybe NFTs are a great thing to accomplish that. Can't say I really lose sleep at night worrying about those folks though. I'd rather worry about the other 99% of content creators. I think you're correct. I think there is a lot in common with some of this NFT stuff and the real physical trading of art. For one, they both heavily involve money laundering, scams, etc. Unfortunately, we are forced to deal with scarcity of items in the physical world (at least for now ), but this isn't something we *have* to implement in the digital world. Unless we somehow think these things are a good thing for society. I don't.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...eSt1wtD0huhFQ9-tofXgI-iNw5jfu8rRK9hXLQJDGUYt0 For digital artists, who often toil anonymously in studio roles, the explosion in the market for uniquely authenticated online art has led to unexpected paydays. On March 3, Ben Mauro, a concept artist who worked on the Hobbit films, Man of Steel and the upcoming Halo Infinite video game, made more money in seven minutes than he has in 12 years of entertainment work. That’s when he sold a dozen pieces of his digital art for $2 million, each authenticated with unique codes called NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. Eight days later, the NFT phenomenon exploded when an artist known as Beeple sold a montage of his digital files for $69 million at auction at Christie’s. Now, many who make their living in Hollywood are seeking to capitalize on an innovation some consider as significant for visual media as the founding of Napster was for digital music. “This is a revolutionary moment,” says Mauro. “It’s what all of us have been waiting for our whole careers.” NFTs use the same type of tech that underpins cryptocurrencies to verify the authenticity of other digital assets, potentially making a collectible out of a JPEG, a GIF or even a tweet. “You could take images from any entertainment product and create a collectible and directly distribute it to fans immediately,” says A3 Artists Agency co-managing partner Alec Shankman, chair of the agency’s new NFT task force. In a perk especially intriguing to artists and agencies, this tech also allows creators to collect residuals on those objects through subsequent sales. “This is the Holy Grail of the art world,” says Brent Weinstein, UTA’s chief innovation officer. “NFTs can help redefine the relationship between artists and their fans. There’s no way this is a fad.” The potential upside has inspired agencies. UTA, which has worked on NFT deals in recent weeks for singer-songwriter Halsey and visual artist Roger Dean, created a digital assets initiative and made one of its fine arts agents, Lesley Silverman, its first full-time executive focused on digital assets. Endeavor purchased a stake in Otoy, the software company Beeple uses to create his NFTs, and CEO Ari Emanuel sits on Otoy’s board. And A3’s task force was created to to educate its agents about the so-called “smart contracts” that govern the sale of NFTs, which use crypto code to verify transactions. Courtesy of Subject NFT from concept artist David Levy, who goes by Vyle Art. Mark Cuban, Steve Aoki and Elon Musk all have sold NFTs, as has the NBA in a model that could be adopted in Hollywood. Multiple studios are exploring their own licensed marketplaces for NFTs, but they’re also grappling with how to protect their intellectual property. A former DC artist recently made nearly $2 million selling Wonder Woman NFTs. (DC declined to comment on whether it would seek to block such sales.) By the end of March, Rick Carter, a two-time Oscar-winning production designer of Avatar and Lincoln, will be dropping NFTs of his collages onto OMGDrops, a new NFT platform created by his son, Jim Carter, who runs Legacy West Media, a Beverly Hills agency representing fine artists, and tech entrepreneur Jon Vlachogiannis. “We’re trying to explore what the value is of art in this new realm,” Rick Carter says. There is more than a little skepticism about the high prices some NFTs are garnering, even among the artists making money now. “There’s a lot of fear of missing out,” says Nicolas Bouvier, senior art director of Microsoft’s Halo Infinite, who just sold two personal pieces as NFTs under his artist name, Sparth, for $35,000 and $40,000. “It’s clearly a bubble. I don’t think we’ll see people streaming out of the studios. I don’t predict all digital creators will become millionaires tomorrow.” But for the often anonymous digital artists whose work has fueled animated, science fiction and fantasy films, the NFT craze represents a rare opportunity. “We don’t get royalties on any movies,” says Star Wars and Black Panther concept artist David Levy, who as Vyle Art is selling his personal digital art as NFTs. “If we stop work, we lose health insurance, we lose income. We never expected anything like this could happen. But now that it’s here, we’re not going to let it go.” Interesting - I copy and pasted this article. . . a NFT for the article could make sure the Writer got a semi copywrite on it. Credit if you will. Also a bunch of TWEETS that go viral . . .could someone get some credit/money for being the creator of the newest catch phrase Rocket River
To be clear, the writer already gets credit in terms of you viewing the article, and they probably know which articles are copy and pasted too (if that is worth any extra credit). They probably don't like that regardless though as they'd rather keep you on their site, so they can continue serving ads. Some places even try to prevent copy and paste. I guess you could pay for a NFT license...or just a regular license, which would allow you to copy and paste their content elsewhere. I don't know how they could enforce any particular limitation (e.g., you can only paste it 5 times or the first 1000 views), or why they would allow for unlimited pasting (unless the price was high...in which case, why would anyone buy this?). Barring a pretty big rework of how the Internet works, don't think NFTs would really make sense for this, unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean. As for Tweets and memes that go viral, NFTs would definitely allow people to make money off of them, yes (assuming people want to buy them...which they probably do if there's a buck to be made trading it). Until the NFT people figure things out, you'd have people stealing the memes to enrich themselves, so the creators themselves might not actually be getting the money. Someone can create a NFT for Rickrolling, but it probably won't be Rick Astley or the first person to Rickroll someone. It would probably be some techbro that never even Rickroll'd anybody. You could make sure to NFT every new potential meme you create, but as I mentioned with my example of musical artists, that could be pretty costly if none of your memes actually take off.
pls do! The last time I brought up energy issues in the thread, I got serious replies (I think) that if price goes up big bitcoin owners will have their own nuclear plants to mine and secure the network...
