Why would anyone spend millions on what's essentially a link to a JPEG file? | Hacker News Reader

Why would anyone spend millions on what's essentially a link to a JPEG file?

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17 pointsAnon8426 comments

I think almost all Art is just to hide and launder money. So it does not really matter if on blockchain or traditional.

As someone who lost $5m ether in a boating accident, being able to sell a random jpg to an anonymous entity for $5m ether has been a life saver.

I think of Andy Warhol, who became famous silkscreening Campbells Soup can labels. Often it wasn’t even him making the prints, but his assistants in his “factory”. Should a Warhol be worth more than an identical silkscreen you could buy in the gift shop? Regardless of how you feel about that, I have a hard time seeing a big difference between that and an NFT.

If you ever have the chance to see a Warhol retrospective in a museum, I highly recommend it.

I’ve seen a few! And I second that.

My comment above only scratches the surface of Warhol. Some of his work would be classified more as paintings, some as happenings or installations, some as films.

In this narrow context of NFTs — I think it’s something he would have been fascinating by. The idea of reproduction, ownership, value, business as art, etc.

It is truly nonsense. The 'owner' is essentially identical to everybody else, except for the losing-millions part. Its akin to the old potlatch, where you wasted resources just to prove how powerful you were. Its got nothing to do with the art, and everything to do with society.

It makes perfect sense to pay that much if you are running a business selling links to a JPEG files.

Why would anyone spend millions on a tulip bulb?

I think this is exactly the same situation. Caveat emptor.

Why would anyone post guards around a field of potatoes, widely known as worthless? Maybe I should go see if they'll take a bribe, perhaps there is something to these potatoes after all.

Because you can prove you own it. Why would you pay millions for an autograph? You have a pencil and you can draw if you want. So if you have a transaction from Jack that includes a jpeg he made with his first tweet, that's the value. It's difficult to understand art. Have you seen paintings with nothing than a red dot selling for millions? Probably not and that's why you are confused.

Usually a signature worth 60m is from somebody stupendously famous and on an object that is also famous. Things like signing a record breaking baseball. That somebody would pay nonzero dollars for a signature is not surprising. That somebody would pay millions of dollars for a signature from a previously unknown and unremarkable artist... that's surprising.

beeple is for sure not unknown, I think you need to dig a bit more. Like my mental model is "does this sound ridiculous but many people go crazy for it for long periods of time? Maybe I should try to understand instead of only critisize". Do you think Sotheby's and Crhistie's are victims of a mania and are selling beanie babies? Did they sell beanie babies during that mania? Nope.

fair enough. Do you happen to know the previous high price for any of beeple's works? I cannot seem to find any on the google.

> beeple is for sure not unknown

If you were to ask 100 people on the street one month ago who Beeple was, do you think a single person would say yes? 1000 people? 10,000 people? The record breaking home run ball from Barry Bonds sold for 1/100th the most expensive Beeple NFT. Some of the very most famous and well loved paintings in the world sold for much less than the most expensive Beeple NFT.

Beeple isn't completely unknown, but even now he has only a few hundred thousand followers on twitter. If you look on Google trends you can see the search interest in Beeple, prior to the NFT thing, was substantially less than for relatively unpopular things like pogs or zip drives.

Given that pogs are 2-3 times as popular as Beeple, would you expect that if the inventor of pogs started selling an image of the first slammer as an NFT that it would sell for at least 70 million too?

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2021-01-01%202...

No I don't think so because being first always pays more. Beeple was the first on Christie's and that's it. Some people were first in North Pole and the people after them were not as important. Basic stuff in my opinion. It just weird people out but again as I said, art is weird for the uninitiated (me included).

It is sorta surprising, because there isn't really anything intrinsic to that baseball. It was a witness to history, but in a very passive way. A few moments earlier it was identical to every other baseball. Without its certificate of authenticity, it's still just another baseball.

That doesn't really answer the question here, except to note that this is kind of a a self-bootstrapping thing. The crypto money itself is only worth $X because people say it is -- without even a government fiat behind it. And in so doing it makes itself famous, which is why we're talking about it.

Once money becomes that far divorced from the base of the Maslowe pyramid, it all becomes pretty wonky. It really is the same as paying money for a "famous" baseball that has no real claim to fame, either.

This is a question I've been trying to ask ever since NFTs became the hot new "thing."

It's less about the thing than it is about being able to say they own said thing.

But do they? We can all have it. Its digital. Their access is identical to mine.

If you believe in this stuff as 'ownership', then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you. I can even register it on a blockchain!

Hilarious, but it's not about access though is it? I'm not saying they claim to own the artwork. They own the NFT, and ergo the bragging rights. I think of it as just another indulgence that is a conversation starter or whatever. It'll either go out of fashion or stay in. They're hardly the first useless commodities to suddenly be deemed valuable and they won't be the last.

I have a buddy that doesn't buy lottery tickets. I say "I like to fantasize about if I win." He responds, "I fantasize without buying the lottery ticket."

If I imagine I own the NFT, then I can have the bragging rights too. I just make it up. Which is pretty much the same thing.

I suppose you're right, but you'll look silly if someone decides to call your bluff and ask you to prove it right after the brag.

Then I'll register it on a backwater blockchain somewhere. Voila!

The only thing I can see is for gaming, where you want to sell your sword or something. There's needs to be a way to transfer ownership in the game.

If the game servers do let you transfer ownership, then why do you need the NFT? If they don't, then why do you need the NFT?

If I sell the NFT of my game sword but my character still has it, what's the NFT doing? If I trade my sword in game and don't bother with the NFT what purpose would the NFT have?

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