I take no pleasure in pointing out that cryptocurrency nonsense is the finial form of fintech nonsense.
I look forward to the day when we stop playing with numbers to make imaginary-ish money and get back to productive science.
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Can I trade them in for tulips?
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Like so many other parts of anything involving blockchain technology, this is interesting at a high level and increasingly horrifying as you zoom in.
The basic premise - how do you create a non-replicable digital item in a fashion that doesn’t rely on a single monolithic entity - is very interesting! I think ultimately a lot of the stuff around the general concept of blockchain tech is pretty neat.
But it’s essentially just saying 'Hey guess what DIGICERT we’re gonna have a way of authenticating things without YOU! We’re just gonna do it by just WASTING AS MUCH ENERGY AS POSSIBLE."
Blockchain tech reads like someone tried to figure out a way to decentralize things but also hated humanity and the environment in equal measure.
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The Treachery of Images
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I think that might be the problem. It’s digital, duh.
Couple of quick questions
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If I was evil, is there anything to stop me issuing multiple NFTs against the same piece of art (that I may or may not own), each of which claims ownership of the original?
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How is this even an issue for NFTs issued against pieces of work without the permission of the creator or publisher? Copyright law is well established in the US and Europe and this would seem to be an obvious breach - only with extra polar melting
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NFT’s do not claim ownership of anything
Issuing an NFT is like making a Xerox copy of something, signing it, and selling the signed copy
No one is claiming that the signature has anything to do with the original or its creator
and no one is claiming that the bearer of the signed copy owns the original, or any rights to the original
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If I’m understanding NFTs correctly, they really don’t have anything to do with art. The art is just a red herring that distracts from the real function of minting unique cryptocurrencies (i.e. intangible commodities for speculation), at most it functions as a marker to distinguish one NFT from another. Since the art’s not, in any way, the point, it doesn’t matter that the NFT doesn’t involve either an explicit or implicit promise of ownership or any sort of license involving the art.
I suppose this is where the disconnect between the art and the NFT becomes an advantage for the artist. At best, the art acts as an advertisement for the NFT, like bootleg Mickey Mouse cartoons on packages of dish soap, so the artist is losing out only in the sense that someone is making money on something that tangentially uses their work. It’s only if the artist decides to mint some NFTs of their own that maybe the existing NFTs using that work interfere with their ability to make money. But there’s no expectation that the NFT gives any rights to or ownership of the art, and since anyone can currently mint an NFT with images or links to data that is not their own, there’s not even the expectation the original seller had any rights to it either. No one is ever buying the art.
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May the odds be ever in your favor. /s
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This fad is quickly turning into a real mess in general.
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Thanks - they’re actually even dumber and less valuable than I thought.
Cryptokitties, but you don’t even get the virtual cat.
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Yeah, now there is the actual irony … It’s hard to prove ownership.
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If a financial bubble inflates in a forest and nobody was paying attention, does it make a sound?
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They don’t make it clear if each ‘celebrity’ name/identity can only be used once or not. There are NFTs based on tweets, where each tweet seems to be good for minting one NFT - except there are multiple such sites. None of the NFTs based on art are exclusive. I don’t see how they can stop multiple people from minting NFTs referring to a single famous person, just by using name variations, even if each name is unique.
That particular implementation is kind of hilarious - especially pretending that the value of an NFT will vary based on the celeb’s actions, and not the Bitcoin it’s ultimately tied to. (The whole added bit with the social network, where celebs can claim “their” accounts is weird - desperately trying to add some measure of legitimacy, to somehow tie it into the person when it has nothing to do with them.)
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this all reminds me of those “registries” where we send money to name a star in the sky after our mom
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Your star name will be recorded in “book form” in “a Swiss vault” really could change to “your star name will be permanently immortalized, sealed using the cryptographic power of 10,000 kilowatt hours of computer processing and electricity”… :-/
(I have no idea how much electricity is used to make an NFT…)
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You could make, like a CD, a single copy and then destroy the master.
You’ll get digital art instead of analogue art.
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Yo mama’s so fat she gave her name to a red giant.
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