Maybe I’m misunderstanding some of this, and sure there are differences, but it seems to me YouTube’s ContentID is similar enough in concept to highlight all the pitfalls we can expect from NFTs. For NFTs, arbitrary vendors replace YouTube, the token replaces ContentID, arbitrary digital content replaces audio/video, arbitrary token creators replace arbitrary claimants, reselling replaces reposting, and original content creators are still at the mercy of a system of monetization that is fully out of their control.
Good point! I also feel that the exponentially increasing power required for linearly decreasing returns don’t get enough press. You’d be hard pressed to design a system to waste power better than that. It’s like a slot machine where, every time you pull the lever, n-squared more lightbulbs turn on.
Not to mention that in the end the whole thing is effectively a finite currency pool because of the asymptotic success rate of mining, and well- society spent a few hundred years figuring out the gold standard was a really bad idea. Why go back to that?
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Maybe, maybe very local warming. The reservoir behind the Hoover Dam looks like it has an area of about 640 km2, so about 0.0001% of the Earth’s area. It can affect the global albedo by at most that much, and it’s not cumulative, we are already enjoying the full effect of that dam. Whereas carbon dioxide has piled up to something like 1½ times natural levels, and is still increasing.
There are all sorts of environmental impacts of hydro power, but the idea that it is making the planet warmer regardless of carbon is not one I would take seriously.
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next you’re going to tell us windmills are not actually killing all the birds in the world
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there is some “science” on the subject, but yeah, extremely complex issue. There is also some concern about vulnerable populations downstream of ageing hydro reservoirs, many other factors. I’m also old enough to remember the Columbia river treaty and all the negative affects thereof; I grew up in that area at that time, so my view of hydro power is coloured by that. EDIT: the link I shared didn’t produce a thumbnail…it’s a recent article from ‘Nature Energy’ entitled " The albedo–climate penalty of hydropower reservoirs"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00784-y
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Womp womp.
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See what you did there.
nifty fucking timing.
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Nudge nudge wank wank
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if you’re desperate to tell me that I’m wrong on the internet, don’t bother. I’ve snuck onto the plane into first class with the #5 crowd and we’re busy finding out how many cocktails they’ll serve while we’re waiting for the treadmill to start.
a better analog to nft might be the gamestop stock.
some people made money, some people lost money, none of it was directly related to the value of gamestop.
if you’ve got spare money, or spare influence to generate money, and don’t mind the externalized issues ( in this case environmental disaster, in gamestop… handing transaction fees to wall st firms, and probably helping a few already fat cats pad their wallets ) have at.
like the debates about planes and treadmills, i plan to avoid the whole thing and be like randall munroe sipping cocktails. yeah, ill miss out on the drama and my chance of winning some possible lottery ( with similar odds involved ) and that’s just fine by me
[ edit for clarity ]
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It sometimes feels as though economists of a certain ilk are desperate to prove that conservation does not make economic sense, and blockchain is a last ditch desperate attempt to make sure that cataclysm arrives on schedule.
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This just reminds me of the Beanie Babies craze. It’s weird what people think is valuable but when you ask them to explain it like you’re an ignorant child they just sputter on about something else. Seriously, if you want to properly pay for art you like (as in paying the artist with as little go between skimming off the top) then cool you can do that without these block chains skimming off the top: just commission a piece from your favorite artist or donate to them directly. No need to say “oh look at me I got this fancy digital thingy that doesn’t really stop anyone else from copying it…” and waste your time. That’s something that’s irked me about this. Cause it’s not a problem in my opinion for artists to take advantage of this revenue stream but I do think it’s nonsense that it takes literally a resource intensive programming scheme to get anyone to actually pay for art they like.
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We don’t just think it’s “dumb,” we think it’s terrible for the environment and an obvious scheme to inflate the price of crypto.
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You’re not the only one.
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Proof of work is literally defined as a cryptographic zero-knowledge proof. Even if you could build a Dyson swarm, it’s still bad economics. It’s wasteful by design. You don’t have to pair blockchains with PoW, but the dominant cryptocurrencies and Ethereum NFTs do. In the long run they have a fundamental intentional competitive disadvantage against less wasteful economic schemas. It’s a fallacy to ask what if there were enough energy to obviate competition. Competition will emerge for accessible energy sources.
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Now’s the time to invest in my newest financial vehicle. The first team to successfully capture enough strangelets to precipitate a runaway false vacuum decay will win nirvana. I call it…Extincteum! /s
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… if we have faith that the market will punish wastefulness somehow 
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I should have probably elaborated on that. By in the long run, I mean the actual science of competition, not the Libertarian fantasy of free-market fundamentalism. You said it best upthread: the more energy/computation accessible to miners, the more they have to waste to prevail against one another. Therefore even in the thought experiment of orders of magnitude more energy, it’s inefficient by design. This in no way, shape or form prevents it from wrecking the only viable habitat for us and our fellow life.
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it’s even worse than that, really. Agriculture is terrible for the environment but there may be good reasons to do it anyway, and to allow it to be done.
Proof-of-work blockchains are not just harmful to the environment, like lots of other stuff, they’re an insidious mind virus, a method of implanting bad ideas in the brains of techies and financial people, ideas like “this is a form currency” and “this is a reasonable thing to do with a server farm.”
Bitcoin is not currency. NFT’s are not art. This is all a form of automated gambling.
Traditionally gambling has been frowned upon because it’s a bottomless pit for energy (and wealth) that ultimately produces nothing. It can be an amusing pastime for individual human beings carrying out the operations by hand at a gaming table, but it must not be automated such that players are competing by using more and more power, and it should not be obfuscated so it looks like something else.
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I like how the ads for gambling are always “please gamble responsibly.”
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not just bitcoin either
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