Comment by lloeki | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lloeki | Hacker News Reader

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What does the tokens even mean anyway? It doesn't mean "I'm the owner of this one in five paper canvas art", it just means "I'm the owner of this one number, which someone decided is related to that digital piece of art for which there can exist infinitely many copies that are perfectly identical".

What does it even mean? Let's say I buy a NTF $1000 and get a digital copy, what prevents me (barring legalities) to perfectly duplicate it and massively redistribute it (not the token, the distributed supposedly high quality file) for a fraction of $$$ and turn a profit (because since it had such a high price it must be in high demand)? The question is not about the legal consequences but about the thing you own: of you have one original painting you have only one, it's quite hard to exactly duplicate it for resale.

I may be naive (the dropbox-is-just-rsync kind) but I've yet to see a tangible explanation of a use† of CryptoArt/NFT that could not be done with `xxd -l 128 -p /dev/random` and PGP[0].

† No. "being in the blockchain" brings absolutely nothing (except burning watts). If the author wants to reissue anything he readily can. You. Just. Own. A. Number. I also hear some picture the author getting a cut of resales of the token, which is even more crazy when you manage to entertain the thought while trying to keep a straight face.

[0]: https://twitter.com/lloeki/status/1366804865943556106

> Let's say I buy a NTF $1000 and get a digital copy, what prevents me (barring legalities) to perfectly duplicate it and massively redistribute it (not the token, the distributed supposedly high quality file) for a fraction of $$$ and turn a profit

The file is usually publicly accessible, why would anyone give you money for something they can just download?

Some rich dude has bought the "first tweet" for $2.5 million, despite the fact that it's publicly accessible [0]. I imagine it's about showing off how rich they are. They could achieve the same result by throwing $2.5 million into a furnace.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/20

I don't think that's the question. That guy paid for the exclusive NFT thing, but no one else is going to make a profit selling cheap copies of that tweet.

Everybody who wants a copy already has one for free, that's what "publicly accessible" means.

What rights do you get with ‘owning’ the first tweet? Who could you buy those rights from? Do you get any responsibilities along with that? Like if UNESCO declare the first tweet a culturally significant artifact, could you be held liable for allowing it to fall into disrepair?

And what does the existence of an NFT allow you to do with respect to that bundle fo rights you bought that couldn’t already be done by having someone write down a rights assignment on a piece of paper, sign it and hand it over to you in exchange for some consideration?

The buyer gets to own not the tweet but a "digital certificate of the tweet" which is the actual NFT thing. So what they buy is a certificate although I'm not sure what it certifies.

It certifies two things:

1. That you paid a certain amount for the certificate.

2. That there will never be another certificate for the same thing, from the same brand of certificates (e.g. "Valuables BY CENT").

Pretty much exactly like owning a baseball card, then.

> it certifies ... that there will never be another certificate for the same thing, from the same brand of certificates (e.g. "Valuables BY CENT").

How many "brand of certificates" are there now, and what is the barrier to entry?

I suspect 1) several and 2) low.

Also, how is "there will never be another certificate for the same thing, from the same brand of certificates" technically enforced?

Correct. Although there is only one brand that has sold a Tweet NFT for $3mil.

The enforcement, interestingly, is more traditional; the owners of the "Valuables by CENT" trademark can use existing legal structures to prevent anyone else using that name.

Meanwhile the NFT is digitally linked to the Valuables by CENT smart contract on Ethereum, which will presumably have an 'author' property attached to it, set to the string "Valuables by CENT".

> The enforcement, interestingly, is more traditional;

Ah, so they pinkie swear not to do it a second time?

It would be equivalent of Sotheby's starting a second brand competing with themselves, but yes.

Sotheby's was founded in 1744 (1). They have a track record, a _brand_ to maintain.

Your average blockchain was founded recently, and have a lot less to lose taking the money and running, or popping up again under a new name, for a second go at the same shtick.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotheby%27s

> Also, how is "there will never be another certificate for the same thing, from the same brand of certificates" technically enforced?

A Merkle chain[0] append-only ledger contains a transaction minting the certificate, and the consistency rules for that Merkle chain mean that any extension of the chain which mints another such certificate is not valid (the same as a extension that spends money from a account with no money in it is not valid).

0: technically a blockchain specifically, but that's not actually relevant

But when you buy a baseball card you get a card. Here it seems that you only get a receipt stating that you have paid (aka the certificate) AND NOTHING ELSE.

If I understand it correctly, that receipt in conjunction with your keys allows you to prove you own the NFT and can control it on the blockchain(sell it, trade it, etc).

> If I understand it correctly, that receipt in conjunction with your keys allows you to prove you own the NFT and can control it on the blockchain(sell it, trade it, etc).

And one should be happy to control the receipt of their purchase of imaginary goods? Ok.

Currently, when it comes to Dorsey's tweet? Yeah I agree. But there is more going on and it will not always be "imaginary goods".

https://medium.com/treum_io/on-chain-artwork-nfts-f0556653c9...

But the NFT is the receipt, if I understand correctly. You own a receipt (the NFT), and you can trade it, but why are people buying and selling receipts? You make a payment, you get a receipt, and nothing else, which makes absolutely no sense. Usually, when you buy something you get a receipt for free and then the actual thing that you have bought.

I think at that point the platform upon which the receipt resides will prevent people from making duplicates on their chain, and the owner of the receipt have control over buying/selling it.

If you have essentially bought a jpeg image, you have as much control over it as anyone else: Anyone can view, transmit or edit it, etc. Your "proven purchase" grants you exactly nothing extra.

But this would only make it unique on the CENT blockchain, no? What if another blockchain becomes the standard offerer, wouldn't that devalue everything on the CENT blockchain? Further, wouldn't we expect multiple blockchains to be competing to become the "primary" chain in which these items are deemed valuable, i.e. CENT and blockchain A & B & C trying to be the medium which holds a unique cert to Jack's first tweet. Jack's first tweet has a unique copy on each blockchain, but being that each chain has it's own NFT of jack's tweet, the digital certificate of the tweet is not necessarily unique. Or is twitter supposed to maintain their own blockchain that creates NFTs for each of their tweets and users are going to assign the most value to this chain since it's maintained by the company itself?

Further, I don't understand how this works in music/art. Grimes' copy of her music is issued on Nifty Gateway, but isn't that art only valuable as long as users assign value to the Nifty Gateway platform? What stops another art blockchain from becoming more desirable/valuable and creating a NFT of Grimes' art there? Doesn't that erode the value of the original NFTs?

What am I missing here?

That's correct. Which makes it all even more absurd. Although the smart contracts are there forever, so at least it can't "go bust" (although the web front-end certainly could).

This is the argument that gets me applied to bitcoin. It's first mover advantage. And the "gold2.0" market value is this perceived incorrectly if there is no other moat. That's why today we are announcing ... Bitquan!

There's no social validation in throwing $2.5 million into a furnace. Spending $2.5 million on a tweet means you are validating everyone who believes that NFT's are real and an industry with a promising future. Especially in an environment where these objects are so hyped and driving a lot of venture capital investment, participating has large social benefits.

It's not just some "rich dude". The highest bidder [1] (so far) is Justin Sun, creator of TRON crypto [2]. I see this as a big publicity stunt for his personal branding.

Not too different than paying $4.5M to have a dinner with Warren Buffett [3].

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-is-offering...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Sun

[3] https://www.coindesk.com/trons-justin-sun-finally-gets-4-5m-...

Why do people pay extra for signed books? A signed copy is literally identical to a non-signed copy aside from the signature ink.

I'm not sure how that's relevant to the question of reselling stuff?

My prior response was at the "why would someone pay for a NFT when you can download an identical version for free" question of the parent comment.

> "I'm the owner of this one number, which someone decided is related to that digital piece of art for which there can exist infinitely many copies that are perfectly identical".

Which the ARTIST has decided is a digital certificate for the price of art.

Just I could make a duplicate of the supreme brick, my duplicate wouldn't have as nearly much value if I tell people it is a duplicate. Supreme could sell bricks again but they probably won't. There's nothing physical that's stops them but there's still an implicit agreement between artist and buyer.

I may not wish to buy own a supreme brick, but I can at least understand why people find it valuable.

The all-caps "artist" brought this to my mind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit

A can of old shit sold for €275,000???

Jesus Christ Mary and Joesph, what is the name of all things pure and holy...

Look, I get it outside of the money laundering scheme to modern art, throwing around how rich you are by buying "stuff". I get it. Tiny pecker syndrome. But let's stop and remember that Rockefeller and Carnegie, the OG capitalist titans, were dick measuring by donating their money. Sure "to the arts"... at least they were building halls and museums. They participated in some solid currency velocity that helped pay the wages to construction contractors. Still, they were assholes, but a lot better than just shoveling money between other rich cunts as a form of showing off.

Personally I think these should have a legal license associated with them. Like if the author transfers NFT it transfers the creative license as well (so the purchaser actually owns the art). For instance, Nayan Cat beanie babies can now only be manufactured by owner of said token, and whenever the new owner transfers the token the license goes with it. Etc.

Basically, if Token == Intellectual Property ownership then it makes sense.

This would mean if a creator, say a musician wrote a song and transferred the NFT and it became a wild success in the future, the owner would earn profits from the investment, but so too would the content creator receive the mentioned dividends proportional to the value.

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