Why an Animated Flying Cat with a Pop-Tart Body Sold for Almost $600k | Hacker News Reader

Why an Animated Flying Cat with a Pop-Tart Body Sold for Almost $600k

nytimes.com

This strikes me as so frustrating...

Its buying swampland in Florida or land on the moon. You’re paying for a certificate no one respects or cares about.

Owning a Mark Cuban tweet? What does that even mean? Without legally requiring Twitter to keep that tweet up, we all know Twitter really owns it. Can Mark Cuban delete it or shut down his account? If Mark Cuban gets banned from Twitter is he legally culpable for this persons losses?

> You’re paying for a certificate no one respects or cares about.

Somewhat tautologically, the people paying big bucks presumably care about the tokens. Sometimes that is enough

No one cares, because no one has assigned any value to it. Now that someone has, I would bet more people are going to start caring.

The point is that the crypto token doesn’t actually give you any ownership over the actual digital asset, so any of the things GP could happen and the token owner would have no recourse.

I don't understand how Nyan Cat has this value as anyone could make an NFT out of it. How is this one more valuable than a copy and how can I be absolutely sure it was created by the original meme creator?

From what I understand the NFT doesn't actually contain the image itself. So the actual art could get lost.

EDIT: ok, so it looks like these NFTs point to IPFS URLS. However IPFS items can also disappear if no one replicates it.

This seems like a crypto milioner is throwing money around for showing of or appreciating the meme creator.

Who know maybe it means something to him, etc etc,

Good for him, at least he is spending the money on something.

Think of the NFT not so much as the art itself but as the artist's signature on the art.

Much as a widely reproduced celebrity photograph can go from essentially valueless to thousands of dollars with the right signature, so too can digital art with the right digital signature.

Yeah ok, but what prevents the artist from signing the same piece again and selling this other signature?

A "limited edition" of something easily reproducible can have value (like a photograph) but I don't see on Foundation where the number of signatures for a given piece is advertised.

It seems Foundation only sells signatures / NFTs that are indeed verifiably attached to an artist, but the link from the signature to the piece of art isn't guaranteed.

>Yeah ok, but what prevents the artist from signing the same piece again and selling this other signature?

Nothing, yet signed photographs/books/collectibles still fetch a healthy premium compared to their non-signed counterparts.

In the physical world there are visible numbers, like "2/15" for instance. And experts that try to make sure each number is in fact unique.

I don't see that here, although it would presumably be easier to implement / verify.

But maybe it exists and I simply didn't find the info.

How is this any different than encoding "2/15" in the NFT? Furthermore, even in the physical world, what's preventing someone from making two "2/15" signatures? At least with blockchain/NFT you can be sure only one "2/15" exists.

This is the first time I'm even hearing about NFTs so I might be way off, but I would imagine that the token would be somehow linked to the identity (keypair) of the creator, and that is where the authenticity aspect comes from.

Imagine getting some crypto years ago, seems fun, wasting it on an NFT, seems fun, and then getting hit with a giant tax bill in real dollars for capital gains on the transaction. Good luck clawing back the losses at $3k a year tax deduction. Not so fun anymore.

All art or collectibles can be destroyed and nothing lasts forever, as Banksy commented on with the shredded painting stunt. This cat art piece is just as valid as other modern art sales, including the original "upside down toilet" that founded modern art. I recommend the book "What Are You Looking At?" to better understand modern art.

Banksy also showed that the value of art is subjective with his movie "exit through the gift shop".

Toilet, it was a beautiful autographed fountain!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)

to be pedantic, it was a urinal.

http://archive.is/Bizpl

aside: why isn't this redirected to the original post a day ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26223648

Reply on news.ycombinator.com