Don’t - every time I try to work out the NFT thing, I end up feeling a little dumber. If this carries on I’ll be stupid enough to think they are a good idea.
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Of course, that image file isn’t worth millions of dollars; that’d be ridiculous. A reference on a virtual ledger vaguely associated with that image file is worth millions of dollars; that makes sense. 
They don’t want you scaring off any marks from the con.
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I think most of the time, you can’t. The money is in crypto (ethereum in this example), which is only valuable if you can find someone to buy it all for USD. The vast majority of this wealth is only theoretical until you can cash it out into some real world currency that merchants actually take, and that is comparatively rare. It’s like the worst kind of derivative financial instrument, in that the stated value is all theoretical bullshit. It makes for flashy headlines though.
“Man bought JPEG of rock for $1M!”.
Well, no.
Man exchanged picture of rock with blockchain position value he got by exchanging other JPEG for other blockchain position value that fake markets say would be worth $1M to theorized imaginary customer willing to pay that amount of USD for said blockchain position value.
That’s not a catchy headline, though, so nobody says that.
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This just smells like the kind of viral story NFT bros cook up all the time.
After all, the flip side of ‘fool accidentally sells valuable NFT for faction of its worth’ is ‘Somebody made a huge profit off this fool! NFT’s are big money!’
And that’s not even counting the convenient loss in net worth, just before the end of the tax year…
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This part I think I can give you some insight into: The image is of a rock. And those are, of course, in high demand, since…
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used to be you’d beat your clothes against a rock to do laundry, now the russian oligarchs beat this dude’s hypothetical net worth against a picture of a rock to launder money… my how we’ve progressed
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Yep, that was my instant assumption: the story itself is a form of wash trading. I’d be surprised if he even bothered to create the ledger entries to back up this story.
The whole scene is like talking to the kind of 4th-grade boy who casually lets it slip that his uncle’s truck has a 24-cylinder engine, or that his dad brought back a new Playstation 7 from Japan. Basically, any story involving numbers, you just increase the number according to how cool you want to sound.
I suspect even the “real” finance industry is mostly boys who never outgrew that, plus a handful of hard-drinking adult supervisors who just barely keep it all from going off the rails. The innovation of the crypto scene is to only involve the former group on both sides of every transaction.
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Or if you wanted to make your crypto even more cryptic, start a story where you’ve lost everything you own from a typo, while secretly you’ve hidden your assets in an NFT of a shadow, or perhaps Ernie’s classic picture of a cow eating grass.
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No worries, he’ll probably be able to buy it back for $0.0012 soon.
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Must be the same kid who’s uncle works for Nintendo.
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Listen to the sad sounds of this NFT of the world’s smallest violin…
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People who had been absent from Holland, and whose chance it was to return when this folly was at its maximum, were sometimes led into awkward dilemmas by their ignorance. There is an amusing instance of the kind related in Blainville’s Travels. A wealthy merchant, who prided himself not a little on his rare tulips, received upon one occasion a very valuable consignment of merchandise from the Levant. Intelligence of its arrival was brought him by a sailor, who presented himself for that purpose at the counting-house, among bales of goods of every description. The merchant, to reward him for his news, munificently made him a present of a fine red herring for his breakfast. The sailor had, it appears, a great partiality for onions, and seeing a bulb very like an onion lying upon the counter of this liberal trader, and thinking it, no doubt, very much out of its place among silks and velvets, he slily seized an opportunity and slipped it into his pocket, as a relish for his herring. He got clear off with his prize, and proceeded to the quay to eat his breakfast. Hardly was his back turned when the merchant missed his valuable Semper Augustus, worth three thousand florins, or about 280 pounds sterling. The whole establishment was instantly in an uproar; search was everywhere made for the precious root, but it was not to be found. Great was the merchant’s distress of mind. The search was renewed, but again without success. At last some one thought of the sailor.
The unhappy merchant sprang into the street at the bare suggestion. His alarmed household followed him. The sailor, simple soul! had not thought of concealment. He was found quietly sitting on a coil of ropes, masticating the last morsel of his “onion.” Little did he dream that he had been eating a breakfast whose cost might have regaled a whole ship’s crew for a twelvemonth; or, as the plundered merchant himself expressed it, “might have sumptuously feasted the Prince of Orange and the whole court of the Stadtholder.”
– MEMOIRS OF EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS - Charles Mackay
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That is the problem I have too - 14 long boxes of good comics…not valuable comics
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If this dude tries to claim that incident as loss of net worth, he’s gambling on nobody at the IRS looking at it, because they will definitely disagree strongly with his assessment. The IRS does not recognize NFTs as a value store.
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This indeed. I have the best of my late brothers 80’s comics collection, all mint in sealed bags, and even complete sets not worth more than a few tens of pounds. See also Beanie Babies (per @snigs photo) - same reason cryptocurrencies get referred to as ‘math Beanie Babies’.
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See also Douglas Adams - The Universe - Currency:
" Monetary units: None
Actually there are three freely convertible currencies in the galaxy, but the altairian dollar has recently collapsed, the flainian pobbel bead’s is only exchangeable for other flainian pobbel bead’s and the Triaginic Pu dosnt really count as money. Its exchange rate of 8 ningis to 1 Pu is simple, but since one ningi is a triangular rubber coin 6800 miles long each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningi’s are not negotiable currency, because galactic banks refuse to deal with small change. From this small premise is very simple to prove that the glactic banks are also products of a deranged imagination"
(edited for typos in the h2g2 entry 
)
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You know what the difference between NFTs and Beanie Babies are? You can snuggle with a beanie baby… it looks cute and kids can play with it… NFTs are just fully useless…
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