The smart money have already sold their NFTs and bought tulips. You heard it here first.
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I am cautious about giving hints towards my IRL existence online, but I’ve worked in the art world for 15+ years now. Basically, my take is that NFTs aren’t entirely stupid.
If you drop an astronomical amount on exactly that particular NFT and get nothing in return 5 years from now, don’t come to me and complain about it. But do keep in mind that a lot of the physical art that’s out there has been traded on similarly flimsy terms. Sure, a painting is a painting, but owning a photograph by, say, Thomas Struth is basically owning the certified right have a new print made whenever your current print gets too faded by sunlight. And with the certificate in hand you can feel assured that the new print is just as valid as the old one. (Btw, you need to send the artist or the artist’s representative a broken off piece of the old print for this to be valid. Most artists/reps will demand a piece with the artists signature on it.)
Good on the geeks for trying to take this practice to a new level technically. Bad on the crypto bros for making this into a vulgar pissing contest before we even got started.
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In a digital format, you can always make copies. Just as exact as they would be without the NFT’s nonsense attached.
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But an NFT is not a contract. Unless you have a contract that says the NFT is the contract. All an NFT does is bundle up a JPG or other file (or worse, a URL) into an object listed on the ledger. You own exactly as much of the art as you would if you owned a JPG of the art.
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This just another wave of hype trying to reach for the whole cyberspace concept that goes back to the 80s and even earlier if you look through some of the silver age of science fiction stories. The real hurdle these projects have is adoption of a protocol which I still don’t see gaining traction. Using the blockchain concept is just one way to piggyback onto that but it too still has issues particularly storage issues as blockchain ledgers, iirc, contain the entirety of all transactions that ever happened in a given crypto-currency. I’m aware of proposals of truncating the blockchain records in a relatively secure manner but the inertia against the adoption of such proposals I don’t believe have been overcome so either Facebook and company would have to store the blockchain records on their own servers which defeats the purpose of cryptocurrencies on paper (to be distributed ledgers) or force such truncations unilaterally which will isolate them from the rest of the blockchain in a one-way fashion. All the proposals wrt the ‘metaverse’ have talked up this two-way connection between games on different platforms, so I don’t see how they’ll even square this circle at all as a developer.
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Well, yeah. But that was kind of my point. If we get to a point where artists, auction houses, art dealers etc can agree on what legal and formal status the NFT will have, then anchoring the status of this arrangement in some sort of decentralised code can have meaning.
As it stands now, there are artworks where, if you loose the piece of paper the certificate is written on, you’ve effectively lost the artwork – because you know that the material the piece is made of will eventually fade/break or somehow have to be recreated if you want to sell it.
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Wait, you mean the unregulated market won’t solve all problems?
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You’ve heard of it before. It was just called “cyberspace” and Zuck didn’t invent it.
Edit: Sorry @KathyPartdeux I responded too quickly, before I saw your reply.
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Isn’t that what makes the artwork/collectible valuable though? Like a first-edition book or an old toy in mint condition, if one doesn’t take care of it, value it, then it’s gone forever, never to be recreated.
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How well did DRM work to stop people copying other kinds of content…
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What I find goofier is the fact that some think they’ll be able to enforce the value absent scarcity which goes against historical precedent with respect to goods which are very common or easily accessible save for those who intentionally are crafted as being Veblen goods (diamonds for example). I don’t see NFTs having that hook that diamonds have. I mean the NFT grifters can try to turn them into Veblen goods and maybe there will be a niche segment that will accept that concept in terms of marketing, but it’s not like these folks have the backing of someone like de Beers to fund such an experiment/venture.
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But intellectual property rights exist entirely independently from NFTs. The existence of the NFT grants no more rights and no more assurance against illegal distribution than the legal contract alone.
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If scarcity if part of the value of a work, the fact that it isn’t reproducible is a plus. The value of an artist’s painting vs a print. The fact that you can’t reproduce much of art with a digital picture. I mean- I guess you could 3D print a copy of a ceramic. But I doubt anyone would value it the same as the original.
And formats will always change. The value of a digital work in an outdated format compared to newer, better ones seems suspect. Other than historical value. But anyone can have a copy of it. Why pay more for your copy because it’s on the blockchain?
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The fact that you have to continuously burn fuel in the real world for them to have value is the part that drives me insane. it might be gambling or money laundering or whatever, but at least you aren’t destroying the planet by owning a painting or the rights to a real life photo.
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NFTs are only valuable until the power goes out.
I know some people who started making NFTs recently, “My buddy made $40,000 on NFTs last year, and he’s a straight up idiot.”
Yes, well. . . .
Telling them that they are contributing to the worsening of the world doesn’t seem to have any impact.
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If there isn’t one already, I vote for some form of either Clarisse or McClellan, based on the Fahrenheit 451 character.
“I’m so clarissing this analog time,” or, “I’m mcclellan my unplugged status!”
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I had my fingers crossed that in 2022 the word “cyber” would become cool again 
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Wait… it was cool before? 
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