I feel like the tech bubble is really just an outgrowth of an economic boom; big money rolls in, and needs a place to go. Everyone is happy to invest in dog shit as long as they can buy dog shit at $190/kilo and sell at 10 bucks more. They have to put the money somewhere. Tech companies are just a somewhere, but dog shit would be perfectly adequate, and arguably less overhead...
I just realized NFT's have even less overhead than dog shit.
Hey, the market for dog shit is growing since there's a looming fertilizer shortage due to the Russian invasion. Growth market... add in a scheme for tax breaks through city clean up initiatives, you may just have an opportunity.
You're supposed to compost any shit before using it as fertilizer. Appling poop directly to a plant is never really a good idea unless you water it down a lot.
Interesting. The grass around the cat shit in my garden always seems to grow much better than the surrounding grass. I'm assuming the cats also eat a carnivorous diet.
It all depends on the plant. Some plants, including grasses, take direct shit great. Others, not so much. It has less to do with the type of shit and more with the type of plant. Most shit is composted before use.
I feel like we should kill 2 birds with one stone: Bats and bat guano.
Guano used to be mined for gunpowder, to the point where the US annexed a few islands after the Guano Islands Act of 1856. If bat guano is usable as fertilizer, we could design some basic guano-collecting bat shelters that act like an automatic litterbox for cats.
The bats get a home, and the equivalent of a flush-toilet, while we get bats, less bugs, and plenty of batshit ideas.
"...and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore"
> The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) established the Plowshare Program in June 1957 to explore the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The program took its name from the Bible (Isaiah 2:4), "they will beat their swords into plowshares."
How much will energy really cost in a world that's "fully" renewable in 10-20 years? Its not much different then all the datacenters built on the Colombia river in Washington state/Oregon so they get cheap hydro-electric power.
The question is will crypto and NFT's push us over the edge before we get to that point. Alongside the thousands of other similar things like people driving large SUV's instead of fuel efficient cars before we go fully electric.
Pretty much any collectible could be called a pyramid scheme. It doesn't really matter in the long run. Humans like these things because they attach value to them as irrational as it might be.
No one is melting down their Rolex for base metals. Lol. Yet they can be an extremely sound investment.
Collectibles are never 'an extremely sound investment'. They sometimes are a lucky investment.
There is no way to determine what collectibles are worth 'investing' in, they generate no cash flow, and they have a large carrying cost. Further, the market for purchase is extremely small; even if you manage to luck out in collecting something that appreciates in value, finding an actual buyer is itself hit or miss.
Even with Rolexes, which you call out, every article I've seen talks about -specific models- of Rolex. Not all of them. And the reason for that is the scarcity; if you happen to buy a sufficiently rare model, that is sufficiently iconic when you want to sell, yeah, it'll be worth more, and provided you can find a buyer (the scarcity compared with demand likely means you can, but the market is inefficient; there is no obvious safe place to sell the watch that will get bids from any and all interested parties, unless it's so high value as to warrant a well known auction house) you can liquidate it at a higher value. But that's a lot of ifs.
I never said all collectables were an extremely sound investments, just Rolex. I agree not all Rolex watches either, obviously some due diligence would need to be performed.
But yes, scarcity is precisely it. That is what NFTs are trying to bring to digital assets. Whether it will succeed or not is an outstanding question but I wouldn't straight up dismiss it altogether. Especially considering the sheer amount that has been spent on digital goods in video games which you would say have precisely zero value. Don't get me wrong, the space will be filled with scams just like real world collectables are (late night infomercials for coin collections right?)
"Due diligence" - except you can't. Did people in the 1950s know that Submariner watches were going to be a big gain? No. People bought them to wear. Why did Rolex watches persist and gain value, while Bulova watches did not? We can come up with reasons -now-, but in the 1950s you wouldn't know.
Just like with the NFT of the first tweet, 'due diligence' for collectibles is just speculation because there is nothing to base it on. Most investments have cash flow of some sort you can evaluate. Not collectibles. The expected value of every collectible trends negative, since it's a physical thing subject to wear and tear, and most physical things depreciate.
NFTs are worse than collectibles in that the scarcity isn't even of the thing; it's just an artificially created scarcity around "ownership" of an infinite thing. Unprovable ownership, no less.
If you 'invest' in a Rolex, at the end of the day you have a nice watch. If you 'invest' in an NFT, at the end of the day you have a freely available graphic.
In terms of digital goods in video games...yeah; companies have been selling digital goods for their games without NFTs for years. Not sure what NFTs are bringing there.
> Pretty much any collectible could be called a pyramid scheme.
Collecting physical items is different than NFTs even if you want to collect things just to resell them. With an NFT you've just got a database entry saying you "own" a thing. You don't have any exclusive rights to it. If anyone else can view it they can save a copy and happily enjoy it forever.
With a physical item you have possession of it and exclusive control over access to it. If you let me see it I can't make a copy of it to keep for myself. Even if you don't melt it down for its raw materials it retains some value due to just being a physical artifact that can be experienced.
The blockchain entry is meaningless. There's no canonical blockchain. There's no enforcement around blockchain entries. It's got the same real world validity as a text file on your desktop that says you "own" the Mona Lisa.
Even if someone did, I'd be super curious as to the actual return. The highest priced card sold at auction for a "you could just find it in a random pack of Pokemon cards" I could find was around $20k; all the higher priced ones were either due to printing errors (so -extremely- limited runs that you were unlikely to actually get ahold of just buying cards), or were special runs for special events (so also not something you could just buy).
Given that, the decades now that Pokemon cards have been sold, the implications buy in would have (i.e., if you went all in on Pokemon cards as soon as they hit the market, you presumably are going all in on every big IP CCG as a potential investment path, or just as liable to pick losers as winners. Those Star Trek CCG cards haven't exactly held their worth), I'm pretty sure you're not coming out ahead even if you did.
The closest analog I could come up with something like a baseball card with an authenticated signature of the player. Yes you could copy the baseball card, and even the signature, but I have the original, and it's been authenticated by by a third party expert.
In this case, the card is an image file and the third party is math (the smart contract that issued the token).
Sentimental value is based on sentiment, so you probably shouldn't try to apply objective logic to something that is subjective to every person and expect useful results.
> In this case, the card is an image file and the third party is math (the smart contract that issued the token).
There's no canonical block chain. So the same image can be resold on any number of blockchains and every buyer can claim to be the "owner" with the same legitimacy. Which is zero legitimacy. There's not even a meaningful way to verify the person selling an NFT had any rights to do so.
With a signed baseball card if you have physical possession of it then you're the owner. You have exclusive control over access to the card. Even if the card's inflated value drops because no one is willing to buy it, you still have a physical card to enjoy.
Sure there is. Anytime someone says "NFT", they are almost certainly referring to an ERC-721/777[1] token on Ethereum. What other blockchains support NFTs and have any kind of use?
Re legitimacy: how do you prove that any piece of artwork for sale in the real world is legit (the seller isn't violating someone's copyright or selling something stolen)? With an NFT at least, there's no such thing as a fake bored ape; the contract address that defined those is known. You can copy the image, you can even mint it, but it will be a trivially differentiable from the original, since it will belong to a different contract.
It's more of you own a receipt issued by a certain authority that backs your claim to the collectible item but not the item itself.
As with regards to sentimental value, I'm actually in favor of the concept in this context of collectible trading but I hardly see any application in the NFT world like for example yesterday someone posted an article about an NFT built atop Dorsey's debut tweet on the platform that plummeted a whooping 99% in value and the investor lost around $3 mln on his trade, that made me think what sentimental value could this tweet for him to warrant such a ridiculous valuation but I couldn't find an answer except it was just a vehicle of speculation for him, a very risky and foolish one in the end.
Rolex has a powerful brand for how many decades now? Not gonna Google it but probably at least 40 years. The chance people will suddenly decide Rolex sucks is very low. NFTs have a few decades to go I think before we can compare them to Rolex.
What about Supreme? or Stone Island? or Common Projects? These brands have value because of the current culture. And they will not have much value once that culture shifts.
People will spend money on status symbols and will continue to for a long time. NFT's (or something else like them) in a world with metaverses will likely become status symbols. Doesn't mean any individual aesthetic NFT has value but the general concept could survive and mirror the trends seen in (expensive) clothing brands.
And the majority of people won't care and will think it's a complete waste of money.
Well you made me Google it Rolex was founded in 1905, that is quite a few culture shifts coming and going...we can safely call it durable.
It's very possible NFTs will be the same we just don't know yet.
Yeah, but you can't generally re-sell a Rolex watch for a profit. There are some particular models for which you can, and probably a very old still-working watch will always have some kind of collectible value, but otherwise Rolexes are not really a collectible market.
I'm saying a double digit chunk of these companies' expenses and IP production is yielding no economic value: either through lack of product market fit or getting cancelled before they launch.
These companies are dripping with untrimmed fat and lack of focus on serving customers via building dumb projects that never get used.
> In particular dog-shit has more intrinsic value than NFTs.
That’s a kind of weird thing to say.
NFTs are uniquely identifiable, self-executing code, that conveys legal ownership to the holder of the NFT. NFTs can and often do represent ownership of an asset, sometimes the asset. That in and of itself gives NFTs tremendous amount of intrinsic value as a tool that represents title of ownership and can facilitate trust-less transfer of title/ownership. I think you are right NFTs in their current use case are most often, but not entirely, used to represent ownership of classes of assets that are meant to be transferred/sold, but intrinsically NFTs still value as a tool that can represent ownership of a give asset.
In other words one might say dog-shit has more intrinsic value than a written contract, except that contracts can and often do create enforceable terms (though not always) thus giving contracts intrinsic value, as evidenced by contracts being one of the most successful tools in all of human history as part of the historic record as far back as the written record goes.
> NFTs are uniquely identifiable, self-executing code, that conveys legal ownership to the holder of the NFT.
> NFTs can and often do represent ownership of an asset, sometimes the asset.
> That in and of itself gives NFTs tremendous amount of intrinsic value as a tool that represents title of ownership and can facilitate trust-less transfer of title/ownership.
That is a lot of word salad.
Does an NFT confer ownership to any real, personal or intellectual property as understood by any currently existing legal authority?
My understanding is that the answer to that question is "No", invariably presented as "No, but..."
Yes. NFTs can convey ownership of real, personal and/or IP.
For example, take Bored Apes Yacht Club NFTs. If you own a BAYC NFT, then you receive commercial IP rights to an underlying image.
Assuming we both reside somewhere in the US, if I were to begin commercially producing products bearing your image, then you individually (as opposed to Larva Labs the company that created the copyrighted image) could sue me for injunctive relief and damages.
Alternatively, if someone were to mug you and force you to open your phone and transfer your BAYC NFT to their wallet, it would most likely be considered grand theft because the dollar amount of the property involved. Further, you would also have a remedy in civil law to sue the criminal for the damages. It’s not treated any differently that any other property theft.
And of course if you buy the BAYC NFT and later sell it for a profit, the IRS treats it as a capital gain and you have to pay taxes subject to penalties and enforcement action.
From the legal perspective most recently Wyoming passed a law creating and establishing the first DAO LLC legal entity, which is a LLC that can be algorithmically managed by smart contracts/holders of NFTs. This further formalizes legal recognition under the law.
>>"Does an NFT confer ownership to any real, personal or intellectual property as understood by any currently existing legal authority?"
Conceivably you could use it the same way you'd use a ticket to be redeemed for a later good or service which would presumably be recognized by existing legal authority.
I haven't heard of any actual NFTs that granted any powers that your average pog doesn't though.
> I haven't heard of any actual NFTs that granted any powers that your average pog doesn't though.
Not sure how familiar you are with the NFT space, in another comment I used Bored Ape Yacht Club as an example, let’s start with that.
If you own a pog, does that give you commercial rights to monetize the copyrighted artwork on the pog? Admittedly I’m not overly familiar with the pog market, but I don’t think purchase of any pog gives the own any underlying commercial rights to the IP.
It’s true not every NFT/NFT collection bestows the owner with commercial rights to a copyrighted work, but Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs is just one example which provides owners commercial rights to the underlying copyrighted image.
More importantly copyrighted works, like artwork, are not the only assets an NFT can represent. Further, you are correct with your example that they can be, and in fact have been, used to represent the right to redeem for a specific good/service by any bearer. Ticketing is in fact one such real world example.
I can make you a pog that does that, yeah. It's just a matter of writing it on the pog.
I can make you a pog that bans you from a club while you hold it too, for the bored apes example. Generally a bouncer will remember you when you come back the next day without the log though, which is a slightly better ban than NFTs can handle
What I can't do is make a pog that burns your house down when you try to sell it or give it away. That's a feature unique to NFTs afaik
You attach to the pog the same meaning in the same way. Non-fungible tokens by design solve the problem around "how do I trust that this is the correct token", but thats only a problem you need to solve in low trust environments.
> Non-fungible tokens by design solve the problem around "how do I trust that this is the correct token"
I don’t agree that is the only problem they solve, but assuming arguendo all an NFT did was solve the problem of trust, then that alone makes them more intrinsically valuable than dog shit. I mean I think HN has really lost the forest for the trees when it comes to NFTs.
They don't solve "the problem of trust" but instead the much narrower "how can a group of entities, who mutually do not trust each other, have a ledger whose state they can all agree on". Crypto loosely solves trust in trustless environments, but I'm having a hard time finding where that is nicely applicable. Most transactions already require a certain base level of trust. So, yeah, dog shit has a pretty clear use case and value whereas NFTs do not. Would love counter-examples for that though. The best I've found is in the art world, where having a token that corresponds to a given work would make it much easier to track the "official" version (vastly reducing the value of any more than one forgery substantially), and I guess the various traders and dealers don't have a high degree of trust in one another so this public and distributed ledger would help with that. Obviously a lot of other problems but it at least demonstrates a hint of some value.
> Does an NFT confer ownership to any real, personal or intellectual property as understood by any currently existing legal authority?
I can use my imagination and predict a future where some form of the tech can be. But on a different note, traditional art doesn't need to be understood by any existing legal authority and people collect art. Although a lot of high value art is also used for money laundering. I just don't see a huge difference between the two in the creative category and at least NFTs have some interesting tech to them.
> traditional art doesn't need to be understood by any existing legal authority and people collect art
The content of the artwork is immaterial. Physical possession and real ownership are very well legal concepts and well covered by the corpus of laws essentially everywhere. There's even international laws covering possession of physical things.
Sure NFTs can be a useful tool, but they are more of an 'idea' than an object at that point so it gets hard to assign a value to them.
Indeed the whole problem here is that we're trying to assign intrinsic value to something which isn't fungible in the first place (which makes the notion of a market for them somewhat problematic).
So yeah I'm going to maintain that NFTs are, by design, all extrinsic value. And if someone is offering free NFTs or free dog shit you're more likely to get some use out of the latter.
> And if someone is offering free NFTs or free dog shit you're more likely to get some use out of the latter.
I only own 1 NFT that was free to mint (NFT Worlds) and the floor value is ~$20k, plus they airdropped some tokens worth over $5k. It also just so happens this is one of the NFTs someone will get more use out of than dog shit.
Market value aside, the intrinsic value of the NFT is that at any moment I can trustlessly make it available for acquisition and the prospective buyer doesn’t need to worry that it’s a counterfeit, and I don’t need to worry about any chargeback. However, you are correct that depending on the asset a given NFT represents, there could be additional real world components rendering the NFT to something of legal title to a real world asset, but the intrinsic value of the NFT remains (the ability to trustlessly sell/acquire legal title in a censorship resistant global market).
You should consider the opposite. Keeping interest rates artificially high by borrowing ever more money.
I don't know where people get this idea that reducing demand for borrowing and increasing savings is supposed to raise the interest rate. Borrowing more money increases the demand for capital and thereby the interest rate.
If the government didn't have to borrow a dollar for every dollar that was taken out of circulation the interest rate would be negative and people would be discouraged from saving more than others want to be in debt.
It goes even further than that, rates are low for about 40 years now. Yes they are super low now at around 0% , but when/if they go back up to 4-5% that is still historically low.
> I feel like the tech bubble is really just an outgrowth of an economic boom; big money rolls in, and needs a place to go
This is true, but missing an important aspect: This is what happens when you have an economic boom that primarily goes to the already-wealthy.
When there's an economic boom that goes proportionally (or more) to the middle-class and below, there's no need to figure out where the money should go. It goes to fixing up the house, to paying down debts, to paying rent, to buying new clothes.
The only time money "needs a place to go" is when it's coming in to people who already have more than they know what to do with.
But capitalism is all about wealth concentration. Giving more to those who don't need it is the entire point because that excess capital can be used to run an economic siege. Just wait until your enemy runs out of capital.
Decentralizing wealth and giving employment opportunities to those who actually need them is more of a Rootbug/Freiwirtschaft thing.
Sure would be nice if we parked all the new money in beneficial social programs instead of billionaires’ accounts just aiming for their new high score.
Except that thesis is just wrong when your mother uses Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Uber, and the kids pay for Netflix (oh shit, your mother too), and their bosses buy SaaS apps for the team.
Yeah, it’s not a place to “park” money. That idea at this point sounds like conspiracy theory stuff.
I still don't, I'm afraid. I don't know which "point" you mean, having listed several, and I don't know what "take the trial into semantics" means.
I'm not sure why you rant at someone trying to understand you, and why you'd choose such vague, rhetoric-heavy wordings if you would like people to comprehend you.
I just realized NFT's have even less overhead than dog shit.