I found the article beating around the bush and expecting the reader to be in on several other stories, but this line stood out to me:
> it is very much part and parcel of his drive for wealth and power, as evidenced by how vocally he compared Comedian to NFTs and blockchain entries while eating the thing.
I'm not really sure what the author wants us to take away, but it feels like we should somehow be insulted that Justin Sun compares "Comedian" to an NFT.
But I'd say that Comedian is the perfect example to use when explaining what an NFT is.
When you buy Comedian you do not buy the duct tape or the banana - those are changed regularly, as the banana will go bad. Instead you buy a recipe and a certificate. The recipe tells you at what angle to tape the banana and the certificate validates that the banana you taped to the wall is the original Comedian art work.
If you tape a banana to a wall without the certificate, it is a fake.
And that is how it works with NFTs. You don't buy a picture of a monkey, you buy a certificate that you own a picture of a monkey - and anyone who right-clicks and downloads that picture now owns a fake, because they don't have the certificate.
I’d argue that what an NFT really is is a vehicle for laundering huge amounts of dirty money.
The banana, the angle of the banana the certificate itself are all theatre, designed to be a plausible high value good that can be created from thin air with the sole purpose of being an excuse to transfer someone some money that they can then claim to be legitimate earnings regardless of where the money originally came from.
Anyone who gets suckered into this scene without understanding its true nature is, well, a sucker.
> it is very much part and parcel of his drive for wealth and power, as evidenced by how vocally he compared Comedian to NFTs and blockchain entries while eating the thing.
I'm not really sure what the author wants us to take away, but it feels like we should somehow be insulted that Justin Sun compares "Comedian" to an NFT.
But I'd say that Comedian is the perfect example to use when explaining what an NFT is.
When you buy Comedian you do not buy the duct tape or the banana - those are changed regularly, as the banana will go bad. Instead you buy a recipe and a certificate. The recipe tells you at what angle to tape the banana and the certificate validates that the banana you taped to the wall is the original Comedian art work.
If you tape a banana to a wall without the certificate, it is a fake.
And that is how it works with NFTs. You don't buy a picture of a monkey, you buy a certificate that you own a picture of a monkey - and anyone who right-clicks and downloads that picture now owns a fake, because they don't have the certificate.