Cryptocurrencies and NFTs

It was absolutely necessary to say this because even the presence of ALF and a guy in a pig mask in the thumbnail do not seem to indicate in any way that the video will not be actual crypto news.

No sarcasm.

4 Likes

lol

4 Likes

Who the hell named it “Smart Contract” and not “Code of Scammurabi”

2 Likes

LMAO

3 Likes

It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

https://twitter.com/search?q=%40tropofarmer&src=typed_query

2 Likes
1 Like

I honestly have no idea what’s going on here. It’s like Poe’s Law is in effect, but I’m so far behind on crypto/NFT shenanigans that I’m missing even that.

The NFT world is in shock that “save as” exists.

7 Likes

Tangentially related, the State of Missouri thinks that “View Page Source” is hacking and anti-vaxxers think asking asking about vaccination states violates HIPPA so… What a world we live in.

3 Likes

Baically, the fatal flaw in NFTs (that you can save them and post them anywhere because we’ve had the ability to post images online since CompuServ) has finally been exploited.

Isn’t the whole point of an NFT just that you have paid to have a certificate that says “[username] is the current holder of the cert”? I always assumed that distribution of files/data that the NFT are assigned to is basically outside of the scope of what’s actually being claimed, but guess somehow holding an NFT is seen as equivalent to copyright ownership? And maybe in some sense it is but then good luck because when has good ‘ol copyright kept people from bootleggin’ and samplin’ and remixin’ and just straight going pirate-mode on some good 'ol content?

1 Like

That’s exactly the thing. Owning the NFT is not equivalent to copyright ownership. It’s not equivalent to any kind of ownership whatsoever. When you own something that means you have some form of rights or control over the owned thing, whatever it is.

Owning an NFT is just the certificate with absolutely no ownership rights whatsoever.

Let’s say there’s an official NFT of the Brooklyn Bridge. The city sells it to me.

Meanwhile you go and write down on a piece of paper “whoever holds this paper owns the Brooklyn Bridge”.

Both of us have equal ownership over the actual Brooklyn Bridge. Meaning, none at all.

1 Like

I made a flow chart to explain the complex dynamics and market forces going on here:

image

5 Likes

Yeah I mean I agree with your view on it other than if the City has an official NFT of the bridge, then that still is the official NFT of the bridge so while it has no ownership stake in a real-estate sense or custodial sense it is valuable as some sort of token/certificate that the city issued and recognizes. It seems like it would be the equivalent of a digital Adopt A Highway sign.

It’s still bullshit and stupid but like, I could see someone wanting to own the official Brooklyn Bridge NFT (Or an official one, if there was a series) while no-one wants my scrap of paper…

Unless I was some well-known street artist and my scrap of paper was seen as a valuable piece of anti-NFT artwork and that slip of paper goes to auction for a cool half-million.

The city might invite the holder of the Brooklyn Bridge NFT to special events and put their name on a plaque on the bridge, at least as long as they hold the NFT. They aren’t going to recognize or care about who owns my slip of paper regardless of how much it goes for at auction.

The idea of selling sponsor NFTs, the sale money of which went directly to funding infrastructure maintenance or artists, or programs; actually seems like an almost good way to use the concept vs trying to sell artwork and other pointless shit. But the end of the day it just becomes an alternative Patreon. Like a Patreon where the top tier is auctioned to the highest bidder(s) every month and only that top tier gets special perks.

You keep making common sense assumptions that there must be some benefit to being the official owner of the NFT. There are none.

And let’s say someone were to do so. Perhaps a restaurant might create an NFT and say “whosoever owns this NFT at any given point in time may eat at our restaurant for free.” That’s well and good. But there is no need to use an NFT for that. They could simply take the name and photo of the current person who has “free food status” and mark it down in their files. If that person wishes to transfer that status, they could just let the restaurant know.

The NFT part is completely pointless superfluous, and made even worse in that using the blockchain causes severe environmental harm.

Again, this already exists, and it isn’t Patreon. It’s called bonds. They work and have real legal and monetary value.

1 Like

Here’s a fun blog post summing up all the ways the press falls for and over values bitcoin.

3 Likes

Hahaha! This is a new to me, yet unsurprising, analysis. Cryptocurrency fans have long touted the ethos that this monetary system will get around the cronyism, wealth horders, and elite investors & institutions of traditional monetary and investment systems. And it should be surprising to nobody that the same wealth disparity and possibly many of the same individuals & institutions are present in the cryptocurrency world.

Then there are the so-called “whales” that hold most of the bitcoin, whose dominance of the market has risen in recent months. The top 2.8 per cent of bitcoin addresses now control 95 per cent of the supply (including many that haven’t moved any bitcoin for the past half-decade), and more than 63 per cent of the bitcoin supply hasn’t been moved for the past year, according to recent estimates.

2 Likes

Another data point of cryptocurrency’s failure as a stable store of value:

the idea that you can get out of your bitcoin position at any time and the market will stay intact is frankly a nonsense. And that’s why the bitcoin religion’s “HODL” mantra is so important to be upheld, of course.

Because if people start to sell, bad things might happen! And they sometimes do. The excellent crypto critic Trolly McTrollface … pointed out on Twitter that on Saturday a sale of just 150 bitcoin resulted in a 10 per cent drop in the price.

It is mind-blowing to me that crypto has been able to maintain such breathless excitement in the media & public discourse for years with these types of realities, that it isn’t just treated like people collecting baseball cards & comic books and trying to extract money out of those items. I mean, cynically I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.

1 Like

This is it.

4 Likes

https://twitter.com/iamRahul20x/status/1455950490366263301

This is a long Twitter thread that I don’t feel like embedding all at once, so here are the bulletpoints:

-Karma points become tokens.
-All 500 million users of the site will be initiated into the crypto program.
-It’s part of a new monetization strategy called Web 3. (This is also a long Twitter thread.)
-Reddit will become open-source. I guess it already was. I’ve never used Reddit, so I didn’t know.