NFTs – what do we know about them?

dendy

@richardyot said:
If we stay on-topic: do NFTs provide something tangibly useful? It certainly seems to be up for debate, and I'm currently deeply sceptical. Time will tell eventually. I'm happy to be wrong though.

At least something on which we can absolutely agree. Biggest use case of NFTs i see in moving money from hands of less smart people to hands of more smart people :-)))))

richardyot

@u0421793 said:

@richardyot said:

@u0421793 said:
The two concepts of immutability and consensus. Once an entry on a blockchain exists it can’t be unwritten or modified, and also in order to become an entry on a blockchain enough other nodes must supply consensus that it is a valid block entry.

So if we take this concept and apply it only to NFTs (ignoring the digital money side), what value does it provide? It still has to run on trust somehow, because there is no obvious way to prove ownership outside of the blockchain - anyone can mint an NFT of the Mona Lisa for example, or steal someone else's work to claim as their own. Just because there is a record in the ledger doesn't really mean anything if that record has no legal weight behind it.

For me this is one of the central flaws of the entire discussion: the blockchain is an attempt to create legal structures through technology rather than the state, but how can these be enforced?

Yep, all true.

Then again, the legal system is entirely based on precedent and consensus of the value of that precedent, the whole jurisprudence thing is surprisingly floaty.

💯

espiegel123

One of the puzzling things to me about Bitcoin is that the utopian “everyone can participate in the distributed ledger” aspect died with the increasing computational/energy demands which has resulted in the mining becoming increasingly concentrated among outfits with the means to participate and access to the required energy.

wim

@espiegel123 said:
One of the puzzling things to me about Bitcoin is that the utopian “everyone can participate in the distributed ledger” aspect died with the increasing computational/energy demands which has resulted in the mining becoming increasingly concentrated among outfits with the means to participate and access to the required energy.

I'm completely with you on this one, though it's not puzzlement but great disappointment on my end. I suppose the beginning of the derailment was incentivizing mining. Remember the SETI distributed computing project? One could participate in something super cool just for the satisfaction of it. I wish it had remained like that. Maybe someone will find an alternative. I hope so because the concentration of it into too few hands is the biggest nagging concern I have over the whole thing.

dendy

@espiegel123 said:
One of the puzzling things to me about Bitcoin is that the utopian “everyone can participate in the distributed ledger” aspect died with the increasing computational/energy demands which has resulted in the mining becoming increasingly concentrated among outfits with the means to participate and access to the required energy.

You can still participate by runing network node. Node is very lightweight computer which hosts whole blockchain file.

By running node you can participate on decisions on network developement (on network code updates). There is also lightning network - layer running above core blockchain - which runs on nodes. Lightning is super fast (in theory up ro millions of transacrions per second) it is super fast and has near to zero transaction fees. It is optimised for micropayments (each individual lightning transaction is not immediately commited into bottom layer for adding to blockchain, transactions are first settled between nodes and only once per some time status is commited into underlaying core blockchain)

This is node: https://getumbrel.com/

wim

@u0421793 said:
A blockchain or distributed ledger has a few qualities that are useful, and possibly future databases might themselves encompass these aspects too, I wouldn’t be surprised.
The two concepts of immutability and consensus. Once an entry on a blockchain exists it can’t be unwritten or modified, and also in order to become an entry on a blockchain enough other nodes must supply consensus that it is a valid block entry.

If a distributed spreadsheet could do this (and I don’t really see why it can’t in the future) it might well turn out to be useful and taken for granted that of course it works like blockchain. The particular type of plumbing behind blockchain isn’t overly glamorous but it does solve a few problems that cropped up a few decades ago when digital money was being talked about a lot but wasn’t implemented widely.

I don’t want to bang on about using blockchain for money as I’m really not interested in that aspect of it but, historically, a few quite good research ideas got off the ground early on for tokenisation of value to represent money. I studied some of this sort of thing when I did my MSc. Tokenisation of currencies can occur in history (outside of technology) for various reasons – when a nation’s currency loses the trust of the people (either politically or due to rife forgeries, clipping, etc); when a village or area decides it should run it’s own currency for whatever reasons; amusement arcades and casinos don’t use money but their own types of token; and even my old Oyster card is a stored-value card which I can put fiat money on but not as easily take fiat money out of (it would if I could just wave my Oyster and buy what the developers called ‘purse value’ items, such as magazines, coffee, but that facility never came to pass).

A big prob with those early digital cash initiatives was verification – could someone else ‘supply’ the digital cash in a fraudulent way? Either by, for example, arranging a double-spend (through various ways, eg time delaying transactions to allow a further spend before the (soon to be realised as invalid) transaction rolled back, but by then the perp has got the goods and is over the hills); or by even bigger means, by ‘faking’ the entire bank of the chosen token, to make it seem as though they are the legitimate store of currency and the real one is not (the 51% problem, which is still a concern in blockchains today, but is generally overcome). The verification would be solved by consensus and the reason for consent would be immutability of successive block entries and also basing those entries on the hash product of preceding entries. I mean, this is simplifying it all almost uselessly, but those two things dropped into place the opportunity for a digital value system that could actually be used properly into the future.

Obviously the first use was for money, as that’s part of the impetus that drove the development, but soon after it became generalisable to other forms of value beyond just money, such as certification of authenticity. That’s the interesting thing for me, as it opens the door to traceability, and while the links to how it fits into the art and creative world are nebulous at the moment, and I consider all the fuss about big money being made by selling NFTs a bit of an in-group joke, when all that dies down, NFTs are probably going to be more useful to us than any legacy ‘record industry’ framework of how to implement contracts; rights; copyright; royalties; etc. Same with the visual arts and other arts. That’s the thing that interests me.

^ Post of the day right there. Nice one. Every point is spot-on. Especially that last paragraph. How NFT's could evolve into something truly useful by enabling artists to profit from their work and prevent others from fraudulently doing so, without the profit siphoning middlemen of the current (failed) system is what I'm fascinated by.

I don't understand the fondness some people seem to have for the existing system of contract law, courts, lawyers (who profit regardless of who wins or loses), publishers, royalty distribution systems, etc. In my opinion, anything that can replace that would benefits both artists and consumers. The current system invites abuse. It's worth it for people to abuse because the burden of proof to defend oneself. I see nothing good about it other than that is what we're stuck with for now.

I hadn't heard of NFT's before this thread. When I discovered what they were, I naievely assumed that they were some bomb technical solution to proof of ownership. I was disabused of that quickly and was left scratching my head over what the heck they're good for.

The thing is, I really do think that a way will be found to make something like this work. That it's been thrashing around for awhile without any meaningful progress doesn't bother me in the least. To me that just puts it in the good company of every other worthwhile new technology that has emerged throughout history.

wim

@richardyot said:

@wim said:
What in the heck is wrong with speculation?

You're right, there's nothing wrong with speculation However in your earlier post you said that blockchain is a fact of life, and I'm simply asking why?

When I say that blockchain is a fact of life, I mean it like saying "automobiles are a fact of life". It makes no difference if automobiles are useful, are bad for the environment, or the best solution for a problem. They just are will continue to be until something better comes along or something causes that system to fail.

Blockchain happened. I see nothing that indicates it will cease to happen. So I move on. I was just putting my question out there to see if anyone had light to shed on the subject that would change my thinking. No one has so far, but I'm open.

Why is a distributed ledger better than a regular database? It's a genuine question, and one to which I haven't seen a convincing answer so far. Maybe that will change.

Humm ... I wouldn't know where to start. To me the advantages of distributed data storage and processing over any centralized system are so many that I would end up writing all day on a subject that is off-topic to the purpose of the thread. I've got 40 years of experience with managing critical systems and data, so I probably couldn't shut up once I started.

But I get the basis of your question: What is the worth of is this wasteful and difficult to understand, disruptive, technology? That is something I'm fascinated by as well. I can't say I have satisfactory answers, but I'm looking because my gut tells me they are, or will be, there.

I think the difference between how we view this is I see enough potential in it to excite me about where it may go whereas you would like for it to go away. I get that.

Anyway, as regards the subject of this thread, NFT's, we're in agreement. They serve no useful purpose. For now.

richardyot

@wim said:
I don't understand the fondness some people seem to have for the existing system of contract law, courts, lawyers (who profit regardless of who wins or loses), publishers, royalty distribution systems, etc. In my opinion, anything that can replace that would benefits both artists and consumers. The current system invites abuse. It's worth it for people to abuse because the burden of proof to defend oneself. I see nothing good about it other than that is what we're stuck with for now.

If anything blockchain-related was to provide some useful alternative to existing contract law, royalty arrangements (or whatever) I would have no objection.

But NFT is meaningless without the backing of a legal system, and it's hard for me to see how mere technology can supplant things like democracy and the rule of law, as imperfect as they are. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this whole endeavour is a mirage.

I guess for people who are suspicious of government it's more attractive. Personally I see governments as being both potentially good and bad, capable of corruption but also of protecting ordinary people from abuses of power from corporations and banks etc... In need of reform for sure, but not abolished either.

richardyot

@wim said:
I think the difference between how we view this is I see enough potential in it to excite me about where it may go whereas you would like for it to go away. I get that.

Actually no, I don't necessarily want it to go away, I've just looked into the specifics of both Bitcoin and NFTs and simply walked away unconvinced. I'm not arguing against the concept in general, but making very specific objections (or at least that's how I see it).

When I first looked into Bitcoin years ago I had no feeling either way, but on digging more deeply I understood that it was merely a reinvention of the Gold Standard, but with computers. At which point I thought no thanks. As I keep saying, Bitcoin is nothing to do with technology, it's 100% politics.

If there is a less ideological application of the blockchain then I'm happy to be open-minded. NFT ain't it though.

wim

@richardyot said:

@wim said:
I don't understand the fondness some people seem to have for the existing system of contract law, courts, lawyers (who profit regardless of who wins or loses), publishers, royalty distribution systems, etc. In my opinion, anything that can replace that would benefits both artists and consumers. The current system invites abuse. It's worth it for people to abuse because the burden of proof to defend oneself. I see nothing good about it other than that is what we're stuck with for now.

If anything blockchain-related was to provide some useful alternative to existing contract law, royalty arrangements (or whatever) I would have no objection.

I think it has the potential to go there. Not for contract law, but at least to reduce the middle-men in the other aspects of it.

But NFT is meaningless without the backing of a legal system, and it's hard for me to see how mere technology can supplant things like democracy and the rule of law, as imperfect as they are. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this whole endeavour is a mirage.

I agree. There has to be some way of enforcement and protection, and for better or worse, that means rule of law and government. My interest is purely in ways that artists can more directly control and be compensated for their work.

I guess for people who are suspicious of government it's more attractive. Personally I see governments as being both potentially good and bad, capable of corruption but also of protecting ordinary people from abuses of power from corporations and banks etc... In need of reform for sure, but not abolished either.

Same. However, I'm always in favor of anything that reduces the need for government to be involved in the first place.

ExAsperis99

From The New York Times today.

NFTs Are Shaking Up the Art World. They May Be Warming the Planet, Too.
Making the digital artworks requires colossal amounts of computing power, and that means greenhouse gases.

richardyot

@wim said:

@richardyot said:
Why is a distributed ledger better than a regular database? It's a genuine question, and one to which I haven't seen a convincing answer so far. Maybe that will change.

Humm ... I wouldn't know where to start. To me the advantages of distributed data storage and processing over any centralized system are so many that I would end up writing all day on a subject that is off-topic to the purpose of the thread. I've got 40 years of experience with managing critical systems and data, so I probably couldn't shut up once I started.

Yes, this is potentially right. Centralised systems are more vulnerable to failure, and a distributed network has the potential to be much more adaptable and resilient. Maybe something will come of that aspect of blockchain.

wim

Speaking of scams and failures of the system (or whatever) ... Bernie Madoff died in prison at age 82 today.

NeuM

@richardyot said:

@NeuM said:

@richardyot said:
@wim what actually is the use case of blockchain? What can a distributed ledger achieve that a standard database can't?

For example: why is an NFT more worthwhile than a certificate issued by an artist?

Blockchain technology for the most part doesn't solve any real problems. I've yet to see a use case for it that isn't completely speculative or wrapped up in cranky ideology.

It’s not at all mysterious why blockchain is valuable. It’s the solution to a problem which had gone unsolved for a long, long time. The very fact that Bitcoin has now a greater than $1.1 trillion market cap is evidence a lot of people recognize the value of the blockchain and Bitcoin. If you are genuinely interested in finding answers, they’re out there waiting for you. Are you willing to do the research or are you committed to an intractable position of opposing something you don’t fully understand?

This post doesn't actually explain the benefits of blockchain though? What are they?

The fact that you keep asking this without bothering to do any substantive research speaks volumes to me.

Why does Elon Musk think it’s valuable to the tune of $1.5 billion invested? Why is Merrill Lynch interested? Why is Bitcoin’s market cap more than 1 trillion dollars today? Do these facts indicate anything at all to you? Are you not curious enough to find out?

Janie

Mark Madoff killed himself in 2010 at age 46. His situation wasn't the easiest thing to sympathize over, but he was one of Bernie Madoff's many victims.

wim

It was reported today that J P Morgan Chase, MasterCard and UBS have invested $65M in Ethereum infrastructure company ConsenSys. ConsenSys stock jumped more than 35% today on the news. (Sadly, I did not pick that one for my modest infrastructure investment a month or so ago.)

"Enterprise Ethereum is a key infrastructure on which we and our partners are building payment and non-payment applications to power the future of commerce,” said Raj Dhamodharan, Executive Vice President of Digital Asset and Blockchain Products and Partnerships at Mastercard.

Mike Dargan, Head of Group Technology at UBS, also commented on the partnership. “Our investment in ConsenSys adds proven expertise in distributed ledger technology to our UBS Next portfolio. This investment underscores our commitment to working with fintechs and the broader tech ecosystem to shape the future of banking for the benefits of our clients.”

I'm guessing these guys a) know more about this than a bunch of lunkheads on a music forum and b) think there's at least some sort of useful purpose for blockchain technology. But I could be wrong.

espiegel123

@NeuM said:

@richardyot said:

@NeuM said:

@richardyot said:
@wim what actually is the use case of blockchain? What can a distributed ledger achieve that a standard database can't?

For example: why is an NFT more worthwhile than a certificate issued by an artist?

Blockchain technology for the most part doesn't solve any real problems. I've yet to see a use case for it that isn't completely speculative or wrapped up in cranky ideology.

It’s not at all mysterious why blockchain is valuable. It’s the solution to a problem which had gone unsolved for a long, long time. The very fact that Bitcoin has now a greater than $1.1 trillion market cap is evidence a lot of people recognize the value of the blockchain and Bitcoin. If you are genuinely interested in finding answers, they’re out there waiting for you. Are you willing to do the research or are you committed to an intractable position of opposing something you don’t fully understand?

This post doesn't actually explain the benefits of blockchain though? What are they?

The fact that you keep asking this without bothering to do any substantive research speaks volumes to me.

Why does Elon Musk think it’s valuable to the tune of $1.5 billion invested? Why is Merrill Lynch interested? Why is Bitcoin’s market cap more than 1 trillion dollars today? Do these facts indicate anything at all to you? Are you not curious enough to find out?

People (Musk, Merril Lynch, lots of other moneyed investors) hedging because Bitcoin might have a strong long-term future doesn’t make something certain to be successful or even legitimate in the long-term. For all you know, some of the people hedging are planning on getting in and realizing profits in the short-term. People with lots of money often invest in things they think have potential and expect some of those investments to pan out big and some to flame out. Also, smart rich people are no less fallible than others.

Market capitalization being high also says literally 0 about long-term viability. There are plenty of examples of companies with high market caps that went to 0.

Merril Lynch’s judgment being used as proof of anything is well...I’ll let you do some research about about how close the financial system came to collapse due to the poor judgment of Merrill Lynch and a well of other institutions.

wim

One can only hope that some of these financial institutions start following this thread so the world can avoid another such debacle.

wim

Coinbase soars in market debut, valued near $86 billion
https://apnews.com/article/coinbase-stock-ipo-price-c3b802074ce4349b5bccf9ba43022800

NeuM

@wim said:
Coinbase soars in market debut, valued near $86 billion
https://apnews.com/article/coinbase-stock-ipo-price-c3b802074ce4349b5bccf9ba43022800

Nearly got some myself. I bid a bit too low.

dendy

@wim said:
Coinbase soars in market debut, valued near $86 billion
https://apnews.com/article/coinbase-stock-ipo-price-c3b802074ce4349b5bccf9ba43022800

ended like pretty much fiasco :-))) classic "buy the rumours sell the news" schema ) (Stock derivatives were available before it started on NASDAQ om FTX exchange for around $600)

i'm expecting it will consolidate for a while in 350-300 range and then will go up..

anyway if you want Bitcoin exposure theough stock, there is $MSTR (Microstrategy) which turned their whole balance sheet into BTC (to the date tehy have around 90k BTC on balance sheet) and even advisory board members are paid in BTC so it is effectively like BTC ETH fund )))

Coinbase holds in their reserves just around 4000 btc which is pretty shame.

Still thinking if somebody wants Bitcoin exposure in portfolio, best way is simply to buy Bitcoin and hold it in personal wallet. Companies and funds are there now, may be there not in future, but Bitcoin is here to stay. And if Bitcoin falls everything connected to it falls too anyway...

Remember. "Not your keys, not your coins" :-)

wim

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/04/with-eye-popping-auctions-news-outlets-are-jumping-on-the-nft-gravy-train

wim

Interesting tidbit here for people in the US primarily : https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/04/20674145/if-you-invested-your-3-stimulus-checks-in-bitcoin-dogecoin-or-ethereum-heres-how-much-youd

The article may be behind a paywall, so here's a selected quote illustrating the value today if all three US stimulus checks were invested in crypto currencies.

Stimulus Check In Bitcoin: Investing in Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) with a portion of stimulus checks may have been a popular option for investors and people looking to store some of the payments from the US government.

Bitcoin traded at $6,926 on April 11, 2020; $27,370 on December 29, 2020; and $57,996 on March 12, 2021. A person who put all $3,200 from the stimulus checks into Bitcoin would have been able to purchase a total of .219 of the cryptocurrency. Based on a price of $55,375.31 for Bitcoin today, that $3,200 would now be worth $12,127.

Stimulus Check in Dogecoin: The meme cryptocurrency known as Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) has seen its valuation rise sharply in 2021 thanks to strong interest from retail investors and the support of famous people like Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk.

Dogecoin traded at $0.0020 on April 11, 2020; $0.0046 on December 29, 2020; and $0.0570 on March 12, 2021. A person who put all $3,200 from the stimulus checks into Dogecoin would have been able to purchase 754,996 of the digital tokens. Based on a price of $0.3327 for Dogecoin today, that $3,200 would now be worth $251,187.

Stimulus Check in Ethereum: One of the fastest growing cryptocurrencies in 2021 is Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), thanks to its connection to non-fungible tokens.

Ethereum traded at $161.17 on April 11, 2020; $737.95 on December 29, 2020; and $1,839.50 on March 12, 2021. A person who put the $3,200 into Ethereum would have been able to purchase 9.02 of the coins. Based on a price of $2,157.25 for Ethereum today, that $3,200 investment would now be worth $19,458.

I am NOT advocating investment of any kind! I'm only passing along information. And before you say it @richardyot - yes, it could collapse at any moment.

Sorry for the OT post.

u0421793

Does anyone have any actual experience with either https://ghostmarket.io/ or https://phantasma.io/ ?

richardyot

@wim you dropped the ball on Dogecoin - the bull run was last week 🤣

https://twitter.com/PeterSchiff/status/1383134331946827776

richardyot

But yeah, this is being driven by "institutional investors"...

R_2

@u0421793 Thought this might interest you. Stumbled upon this post on reddit. NFT release of Gadget tracks (good ones I think).

dendy

i strontly warn eveybody to invest any money into dogecoin... it's pure pump&dump scheme and it ends very badly.. It's casino, few will get rich, most wil loose all money.

Few reasons:

• years unmaintained old code, full of bugs, often stucked transactions
• it's fuelled entirely by tik-tok degens, it's same case like GME was, or even worse, there is NO fundament, zero. It will grow until it reaches point where it crashes back to to all time low
• MOST important - it's network is EXTREMELY unsafe due to very low hashrate. Based on my calculations, to perform one hour long 51% attack agains Doge would cost approx 6.5 BTC (calculated yesterday). This is horibble and it's just mater of time somebody will do it...

51% attack basically means you have more than 51% of hashrate of whole network, so you can do whatever you want with transactions, for example double spend (send same coins multiple times)

Peter Shiff is troll and he is dumb like shit. Even his son is making jokes from him. Gold clown.

richardyot

@dendy said:
Peter Shiff is troll and he is dumb like shit. Even his son is making jokes from him. Gold clown.

I know, but the tweet was still funny

dendy

I followed him for some time... he is doing such shitposts for years.. sometimes it was fun but i'm oversensitive on Dogecoin... really i don't found this thing funny anymore, it's huge risk for all people who throw money there and are not aware of what it really is. This thing ends very very badly. Everybody should avoid Doge.