Better than bitcoin: NFT

I'm thinking NFTs are the new baseball card (sorta). I mean, ultimately baseball cards are just a picture of a player on paper, and can trade for $$$. NFT is sorta kinda just the digital version.
 
I am fascinated by NFT's. I have yet to see one I would want to own, especially at the *insane* prices they are currently getting, but it really is the birth of digital art collection. I hope that as time goes on the artists get more creative in making the NFT version much more unique, perhaps including some physical aspect.

OR - picture this. You buy an NFT (say, this special animated version of the infamous Nyan Cat https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/business/nft-nba-top-shot-crypto.html ) and, since you spent almost $600,000 on it, you want to show it off. But how do you do that w/ a digital object?


Well, you need a screen. So I imagine a special frame, like the one your mom uses to display a series of images of the grandkids. You put it on the wall, and all it does is show your Nyan Cat animation 24/7. Include a note explaining its provenance. Voila, digital meets real world.


In all seriousness, it won't be long before Christie's and Sotheby's, Lloyd's, etc. get in on this. Too much money bypassing them right now...
 
If your looking around the table wondering who the mark is, it is probably you. Think expensive beanie babys.............
 
dixonge said:
I am fascinated by NFT's. I have yet to see one I would want to own, especially at the *insane* prices they are currently getting, but it really is the birth of digital art collection. I hope that as time goes on the artists get more creative in making the NFT version much more unique, perhaps including some physical aspect.

OR - picture this. You buy an NFT (say, this special animated version of the infamous Nyan Cat https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/business/nft-nba-top-shot-crypto.html ) and, since you spent almost $600,000 on it, you want to show it off. But how do you do that w/ a digital object?


Well, you need a screen. So I imagine a special frame, like the one your mom uses to display a series of images of the grandkids. You put it on the wall, and all it does is show your Nyan Cat animation 24/7. Include a note explaining its provenance. Voila, digital meets real world.


In all seriousness, it won't be long before Christie's and Sotheby's, Lloyd's, etc. get in on this. Too much money bypassing them right now...
Click to expand...



Christie’s sold the Beeple one in the OP link.
 
dixonge said:
Well, you need a screen. So I imagine a special frame, like the one your mom uses to display a series of images of the grandkids. You put it on the wall, and all it does is show your Nyan Cat animation 24/7. Include a note explaining its provenance. Voila, digital meets real world.
Click to expand...

If you get past the fact that it's digital, and look at it as owning art, then it's not that crazy. Though...$6m for anything seems crazy to me, so insane-headline prices notwithstanding. It's equivalent to physical art in that sense, and that's where it becomes rational.

Just another medium, good for artists I hope.
 
The difference is that the art is digital. You don't get exclusive rights to hang it on the wall. Anybody could "pirate" a copy and it would be identical. You're paying for the token.

I can sort of see it for something like domain names, which have some utility value and exclusive-use attributes.

I still have some good domain names I got in the 1990's. I may experiment with one of these newfangled marketplaces. :)
 
twaddle said:
The difference is that the art is digital. You don't get exclusive rights to hang it on the wall. Anybody could "pirate" a copy and it would be identical. You're paying for the token.

I can sort of see it for something like domain names, which have some utility value and exclusive-use attributes.

I still have some good domain names I got in the 1990's. I may experiment with one of these newfangled marketplaces. :)
Click to expand...


From the OP's article:

The buyers are usually not acquiring copyrights, trademarks or even the sole ownership of whatever it is they purchase. They’re buying bragging rights and the knowledge that their copy is the “authentic” one....
Click to expand...


Quite expensive bragging rights! And who do they brag to, and about what?

"Hey, look how rich I am to blow dough on something like this?"

I guess this happens when people run out of more useful things they can buy, like food and housing, even fancy cars. When everybody you know already has a million-dollar Hermes handbag, you need something like this to be one-upper.
 
These are just signs of the asset bubble we are currently in. I saw Mark Cuban on YouTube video explaining these. First of all they need a better name. Some of the insane prices are for things like a video collage of Labron James dunks. You can still find and watch these scenes on conventional media but there is irrational exuberance for this new digital “thing”. OTOH if it’s original art the artist can benefit from a perpetual residual each time it changes hands which seems like a real benefit.
 
There was another big one today. $5.8 million for a picture of a baby on Mars.

Made by Elon Musk's girlfriend.

I suspect Elon Musk is the only buyer, and only when he's stoned. :)
 
There were a couple of news stories on back to back days (I think, getting my days confused) on CBS News. Digital basketball rights (I think called jumpshot) and also digital art. I guess both are what people will pay to own the bragging rights.

Don't know if this is just a fad or more. But I guess, if you own stocks, do they even give out certificates anymore? So perhaps not really that different.
 
One can see how digital signatures, blockchain, and related technology has many potential uses in the digital domain and as related to physical objects. But when applied to the digital representation of a text message or artwork it seems irrelevant. A separate token to indicate that my copy is somehow special when compared to yours? The copies are the same, we can enjoy our individual copies irrespective of each other. I only have a partial understanding of NFT and must be missing something, but the example of digital artwork just seems like a way to display one's wealth.
 
Blockchain is the dot com of the 2020's. This will all eventually work itself out into something useful and ubiquitous. In the meantime, be careful out there. A lot of people lost a lot of money being early adopters of dot com stuff back in the late 90's.
 
I imagine they are easy to buy, but much harder to re-sell since they are so unique and non-fungible. They do fill a need though, to give digital art a legitimate provenance - and an opportunity for the same level of monetization as physical art. People are endlessly creative at finding new markets for things. It will be interesting to see how this hot new trend shakes out in the end, and where the money flows.

It's a great technology innovation for artists and creators, but probably a crap shoot investment for anyone but the biggest insiders. For some reason The Producers comes to mind...

It reminds me of what Banksy is doing with his work and his rights managements company, Pest Control. His is a genius way to control the flood of potential counterfeits that are bound to occur with such a prolific and enigmatic artist. NFTs are the logical and creatively agnostic extension of that activity.
 
This is definitely a hot topic, whenever I switch on CNBC channel app there is a new segment about NFT. I watched this interview with NBA Topshot investor Michael Levy, and he made an analogy to the Mickey Mantle baseball card that recently sold for 5.2 million. How he could produce a near replica of this 5 million dollar card using modern printing technology. Although I could see his point, I still disagree with that premise, as a digital image is a logical stream of bits, so it is always the same by definition. Whether it is stored in computer memory, flash drive, or replicated a billion times across the internet. Still it will be interesting to see where the technology can go beyond tagging tweets or Jpegs. (Including the video as a reference, not suggesting anyone should watch it.)

 
Based on your description..

twaddle said:
This blows my mind. NFT = non-fungible token. I.e., bitcoin-like things that can't be used as currency.

Anybody can mint one. And then you can associate it with some digital asset, like a GIF. The idea being that you "own" it and then can sell it to somebody else.

One just sold for > $6 million.

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/beeple-nft-artwork-nifty-gateway-sale-1234584701/
Click to expand...

wouldn't that be iTunes? In all seriousness, it could become a thing as artists move more to digital mediums. Maybe as a photographer I could use NFT to protect my images? I'm sure there are use cases for it, just like twitter. But I'm still not sure how, or why you monetize either one to any great extent. Seems like it's the IP that's being tokenized that's fetching the money, but I could be confused. Why is a sqigely line drawn by me worthless, but one drawn by Picasso worth a lot?
 
twaddle said:
This blows my mind. NFT = non-fungible token. I.e., bitcoin-like things that can't be used as currency.

Anybody can mint one. And then you can associate it with some digital asset, like a GIF. The idea being that you "own" it and then can sell it to somebody else.

One just sold for > $6 million.

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/beeple-nft-artwork-nifty-gateway-sale-1234584701/
Click to expand...

Look up digital rights management (DRM). This already works, but without blockchain. Which is maybe an improvement and the reason for the buzz. In your example above, if I tried to view that .gif file in a container/viewer, it would " phone home" to check on whether I had the right to play/view the .gif. If not it would deny access, and potentially register data about my identity like my ip and ISP so that I could be sent a strongly worded letter to cease an desist.
 
Athermos4u said:
Look up digital rights management (DRM).
Click to expand...

There's no copyright or copy protection mechanism associated with NFT. The analogy often used is that you're buying an autographed copy of some digital thing. Not a lot of added value.
 
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