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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. Who profits from this?

> Proof of Authenticity

Authenticity how? That the user who created this has a nickname @grumpycat on foundation.app? What if I create a new such user on another platform, and sell that? Is it still authentic?

Is the domain actually-authentic-ntfs.com still available?

Edit: looks like it might be the same people that are running Twitter and Instagram accounts @RealGrumpyCat ... whether or not these are the original owners of the grumpy cat (according to Wikipedia), I've no idea.

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I realized a day or two ago what this nft scam smells like. If you're old enough to remember, there was a company that "sold the naming rights" to stars. The perfect gift, name a star for someone. Except this naming right was not recognized by any organization or scientific body. Those cats made massive bank convincing idiots that they had the rights to a star. Not to mention the other dude that sold moon real estate in the 90s. Again, rights that were recognized by no one. "But it's a great investment!"

It's a really really old scam. "I've got a bridge to sell you" is the earliest example in modern history...but there was probably someone selling shares of the Colosseum a couple thousand years ago.

https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c2484200...

https://www.coindesk.com/brooklyn-bridge-nft

Literally selling a lie:

"entitles the holder to the representation of the Brooklyn Bridge depicted herein"

Google holds the copyright for that map image.

Ceci n'est pas une pont.

Yes the other day I realized nfts are an acre of land on Mars... a certificate that means nothing.

Then I realized that no, the Mars example is outdated although the scam still exists. It’s more like an acre of land on Pluto because while still unlikely it’s possible that land rights on Mars could be meaningful in our lifetime, but those one acre on Mars certificates will definitely not be.

Ah, yes, I remember as well! My dad almost bought a piece of land on the moon! Thankfully I did a bit of research, only to realize that there was a bunch of companies selling "rights" with no realistic plan of ever reaching the moon...

I came to the same conclusion. The certificates for stars are still sold by the way.

Someone created an NFT of the periodic table of elements where you can "collect" and "own" the elements.

I wouldn't be surprised if the people selling stars would move their business to NFTs.

I very much dislike your analogy.

The NFTs that you hear about that are being sold for high amounts are created by people that already have reputations. Unlike stars or plots on the moon every NFT has an artist that created it.

Artists and buyers share an implicit (by contact through the platform, in their promotion, etc) agreement.

There’s an important distinction (that I think the NFT market has pretty much solved):

The OP’s point can be said about pieces where the minter does not have the rights to sell the NFT. We have seen some examples of this in the NFT space (as we have with physical art/property/items).

However: in cases where the minter has the provenance, the analogy falls flat, and instead we can talk about NFTs as an upgrade to the art of previous generations.

Might be a useful way to launder money.

> I don't get it. Who profits from this?

The genius scammers who managed to turn timestamp signing into an art form free from all responsibility for the "service" they monetize.

When you "don't get it" in crypto (and startups in general) it's because the person explaining is either incompetent or trying to confuse you so that you can't analyze.

If someone can't explain something simply, walk away and don't give them your money.

The concept of digital ownership really is a complicated topic, even before distributed hash technology people on forums commonly discussed "is (digital) piracy stealing?".

DHT and are new and NFTs are a completely different model of ownership, with it's own model of value.

If you really peice it out you'll find that it's the strongest (but not necessarily useful) form of "digital" ownership that we've got.

To what extend does authenticity matter anyway? Does the seller actually have to prove that he owns the image? After all, they aren't selling the image, they are just selling a cryptographically signed hash of the image. That's all the contract claims, no?

But I suppose the platform leads people to believe that it's the original owners that created that signed hash (not that this means anything) and the illusion that this mattered is important for the auctioning behavior.

I wonder how regulators will react to this. Probably best to not regulate this at all, so that people realize that all NFTs are ultimately meaningless and the they die out quickly.

For buyers a lot of value of the NFT doesn't come from the bits that make up the image but creator's prior reputation. Like art NFT's representation is only secondary to the artist.

This can be plainly seen by looking at the flood of NFTs on opensea that have never been purchased.

It depends on the platform. The platforms that garner the highest bids are also the ones who are vetting the artists.

Isn’t this about bolstering the network around whatever crypto n/w is serving this? The idea is to bootstrap a digital artefacts market I guess and one a lot of people start trading them the value on the network overall goes up and somebody makes big bucks. These shock and awe purchases are just designed to draw people’s interest and drum up a bubble of activity. The immediate beneficiaries are lucky guys indeed, but the “investors” must be half-wits if they don’t realise that just about anyone can see these artefacts are immediately and perfectly reproducible.

Most of the value in digital assets comes from creator reputation. This scarcity is what drives up the price.

It's not a coincidence that the most expensive NFTs are linked to a celebrity, meme or established artist.

I don’t mean the value of the asset itself but the basis upon which that value is vested.

> I don't get it. Who profits from this?

I'm not sure about direct profits, but I usually assume things like this are part of some convoluted money laundering scheme.

The guy who created this just profited ~80k, clearly. And yes, you can create more grumpycat users on other platforms, make an NFT out of those and try to sell it.

Given the huge amount of free coins floating in the system from the prehistoric days, chances are the guy who created this is also the guy who bought it, or a close friend. That was even already shown to be the case for the massive sale last week -- the purchaser was the owner of an NFT startup.

The entire thing is a scam designed to get time in the news. Never forget what kind of folk you're dealing with in this space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneCoin

This is exactly what I thought to. Similarly some artworks value is pumped up with fictitious buys and sales so it makes it into the news (at least in that market these type of sales don’t go unnoticed).

There are scummy folks in every space, can't generalize the way you did at the end there.

clearly false. the same person can sell and buy because it's anonymous.

Is the domain actually-authentic-ntfs.com still available?

I know it's a typo but FWIW, I would buy NTFS for $80k :-)

> Who profits from this?

Remember back when GoldenPalace.com would do stuff like buy grilled cheeses shaped like Jesus and stuff for a million dollars? I thought that was so stupid, who cares? It’s just a cheap way to buy publicity and probably better than a million dollars in advertising.

I thought it was stupid, but people are busy and just getting a second of time for large numbers of people is possible to monetize.

So these stupid novelty things are likely guerrilla marketing at best, pump and dump fraud at worst. It’s like the olden days where you could start a social media storm with a few accounts and small amount of money.

You can complete the chain from the Wikipedia article by following the citations in the "Social media presence" section.

Different platforms have different requirements to be authenticated. Most tailored platforms will have specific agreements against creating the same artwork on a different platform.

this one doesn't really have any value other than being the canonical Grumpy Cat NFT, which time will only tell if that is valuable in the future.

But some include rights to the meme itself like this https://foundation.app/ryder_ripps/deal-with-it-2966

That's quite an intersting follow to see how our legal frameworks react.

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