John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT
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https://nakamotoinstitute.org/secure-property-titles/
At the very end he says:
> Largely unaddressed above is the problem of divergence between actual conditions and directory rights. [...] When divergence becomes too great, a solution to address the unreality of the title registry is needed.
Almost nobody selling NFTs today has even bothered to address Szabo's final "correspondence to ground" point, i.e., why anyone should think that the ownership of a particular NFT means anything!
It would be nice to believe that eventually we evolve beyond bragging about being an idiot.
> I certainly do
...
You don't buy a jpeg, you buy the unique item that John Cleese sold.
Same for movie props. You can buy a nice lightsaber below $200. The ones that were used in the movies... a bit more.
A NFT is not an item.
> Same for movie props. You can buy a nice lightsaber below $200. The ones that were used in the movies... a bit more.
Those are things. There is no correlation. NFT is selling you a pointer. It's a hash that on one software platform says "that thing over there". When Bob buys a NFT, he isn't buying a lightsaber that he can display, loan out, or hold . Bob is buying a number.
It would be more impressive if Jack can sell his first tweet, once on each major platform. Now they are somewhat fungible, non fungible titles. If one is worth more than the other, why?
I do agree that it's completely ridiculous, but I feel that way about the stock market.
Just, -poof-. Gone.
Ownership of that land was simply taken from them, and evenly divided amongst their tenants.
There's a very similar danger with i.e. property rights inside of videogames and stuff - until and unless there's case law about it, I can go into my buddy's proverbial minecraft server, wreck all of his (potentially months of) work, and there's really nothing he can do about it. I might lose a friend over it, but I won't lose a lawsuit.
The illustrative bit about the minecraft server is I'm at the mercy of "the community of people who agrees that thing has value", and in this case, it's one person.
Luxury and self-image and [silent] bragging rights were always part of the economy, now it just also includes lulz, which happen to be much more accessible to create :)
> The point is not to argue over what qualifies as “art.” It is simply that it is a mistake to assume that NFTs will fail in the art world.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-17/the-nf...
It's fresh, it's pushing boundaries, it's making people think and wonder, it's generating snark and discussion.
If readymades are art, if a blank canvas is art, then art is just a scam!
Not sure if it will stand the test of time though (I mean technically in terms of the artifacts persisting, and conceptually, aka whether it will still be interesting in 10 years or seen as a fad).
Survivorship bias. The successes are highly visible, and we never hear of the failures.
> If readymades are art, if a blank canvas is art, then art is just a scam!
Ceci n'est pas une pipe. All art is a kind of deception.
Not necessarily. Creators who toil in obscurity during life but receive posthumous recognition do happen.
Meanwhile, in craftsman's art fields (all of the many ingredients that go into filmmaking, videogames, etc), if you're merely competent at what you do, it's like being a programmer - you learn the skills, and you get a job doing it, and my goodness - it pays a salary. There's no lottery involved. If you're a good matte painter, concept artist, 3d modeller, et cetera, illustrator, figure artist, etc, etc - people gladly pay money for it.
--
Anecdotally, as someone in the games industry (and knowing some folks in film), the difference between these two fields (con art and skilled art) is pretty stark. Every person I've know who's tried to do con art has failed to make a career out of it, and every person who's gotten a degree-equivalent level of skill/effort into skilled art has earned a living doing it (in much the same way they would in programming).
Not for the folks I know. I know plenty of authors, painters, photographers, and ex-film-students who need day jobs. It's practically a trope. These are people with degrees in the subject who have already made professional money at it, but can't make enough steady money with it.
(guessing here) If you met these people on the job, you'd know a lot more gainfully employed folks simply by definition.
I don't think anyone's under the impression that people paying lots of money for extremely stupid things is a recent phenomenon. I deride those buying single-colour canvasses for 8 figure price tags just the same as I deride anyone buying into the litany of crypto pyramid schemes.
I get it that some people buy it as investments, hoping to find a sucker to sell it to at a higher price. But that just sounds like pump-and-dump to me. Or maybe it's rich people who have run out of fun things to do with their money.
Me, I'd rather do what Elon Musk does. I wanted to buy stock in SpaceX, but it is privately held, so I bought TSLA instead. Lucked out on that one.
People buy and collect all kinds of worthless tuff. I know several people that spent between $3k and $10k on Magic the Gathering cards. From a non-player's perspective it's ridiculous. The cards are worthless and you could just print out images of the cards on a printer or copy machine if all you cared about was playing the game itself.
And yet people do it.
Is a NFT really any different? Is it wrong for people to spend their money on whatever they want?
It’s digital baseball cards and pet rocks, “but crypto”.
I also remain convinced that NFTs are a fad in their current iteration. To use a rough analogy, NFTs are taking the record store into crypto when the future lies in building Spotify/Netflix in crypto.
Overcome a challenge that presses your personal limitations? Worthy of a brag: you took up the task, persevered, and conquered.
Open your wallet to purchase something? I just don’t see that there’s any legitimate boasting to be had there: any damn fool with the same money could do it. There is no challenge, there is no accomplishment, there is nothing to be proud of at all. It’s such empty bragging.
IMO people who brag about owning things have deep personal insecurities and would be better off putting the money spent towards therapy.
Bragging with an expensive Rolex is very different than bragging with the NFT of a terrible image of the Brooklyn Bridge by John Cleese who sold it as a joke.
The person who built the watch might have something to brag about.
The item isn’t the brag. The purchase is. People don’t buy Rolxes because because it doesn’t anything radically different than a $50 watch. They buy it because it tells people they have money. That’s what art is. That’s what NFT is.
Yeah, but who gives a shit whether it's centralized or not?
If some intrepid reporter figured out that NFT has a backdoor that means it is being controlled as a-- god forbid-- centralized service, what bad thing happens to the dipshit who paid a million dollars for Rick and Morty digital art?
A) The world biggest fan of Cubism and a lifelong fan of Picasso.
B) A person with a shitload of money, that has nowhere else to put the money than in some famous artwork.
Chances are most will expire worthless, but a select few may be early works from people who go down in history.
You certainly seem to be right, but where's the authority for that observation coming from? Or what would the actual Brooklyn Bridge look like as an NFT?
Having knowledge of this business for some time now I believe it's an issue of when, not if, real property will move to a blockchain of some sort.
That a title can be contested is actually a feature of the existing system, not simply a problem.
Just because your "final" title search doesn't produce anything doesn't mean a future one won't, so I don't see how the blockchain solves anything here.
What are the obvious solutions for stolen keys or people dying with access lost? (which don't translate to the blockchain not mattering at all)
NFTs aren't attempting to be bearer instruments which convey ownership of some physical good, or even of a piece of intellectual property. Those require a corresponding Ricardian contract. This remains a good idea, but, to put it mildly, there are unsolved problems associated with it.
A NFT is just a baseball card, what you're proposing is more like a baseball player packaging up 10% of his lifetime earnings into 5000 instruments and selling those.
Baseball cards have provenance, scarcity, and IP protection of their appearance: that is, they're demonstrably produced by a company with a right to do it, there are only so many in existence, and it's illegal to make identical copies of the baseball card.
NFTs have two of these properties and an adequate substitute for the third. They're signed, giving provenance, and scarce, due to blockchain-verified artificial scarcity. It's not illegal to make copies of the referenced digital artifact, because what fun would that be? No one could load the image or whatever in a browser.
Nor is copyright currently assigned. I don't believe it's conventional to purchase copyright for an artwork along with the artwork itself, but I could be wrong about that, and it doesn't matter: this would be a cool thing to add to some NFTs, but we can just agree that it isn't a part of the package right now and move on.
But it is impossible to make an actual copy of the NFT itself, even with the private key used to sign the original. That makes IP protection an inferior good: it's fraud to make a forgery of a rare baseball card, but it's quite profitable fraud if one happens to get away with it.
Disclosure: I own no NFTs in the usual sense of the term, and don't intend to.
It's more like a pointer to a JPEG of a baseball card.
Personally, I don't care for baseball cards, I value them about as much as the paper they're printed on. But collectors like them, so if I found one (I dunno, dropped in its sleeve into a tip jar?), I'd check if someone else wanted to pay for it before I started using it as a bookmark.
Same deal with NFTs. The difference is they're brand-new and white-hot, and it remains to be seen if they have enduring value.
My guess: NFTs will continue to be valued, but the vast majority of those which exist right now (and of every NFT ever minted) will be worth so little that it isn't worth the transaction fee to transfer ownership.
The John Cleese Brooklyn Bridge though? It's a great joke! Might not be worth whatever it goes for down the road, but it will probably still be worth something.
Who can make an NFT?
NFTs are Beanie Babies, but instead of a limited edition toy, you get a barcode. Anyone can make them for anything, so there's no scarcity. They're pogs you can't play with.
And just like pogs, when Pizza Hut and Lunchables started making pogs, it was over. Pizza Hut and Lunchables NFTs are coming.
I'm going to go sell an NFT of Jack Dorsey's fist Twitter post NFT.
Any decently print operation? The MLB would come after them if they tried to sell them, of course, but it's not like pictures on cardstock is a tougher technology to recreate than NFT.
Both are only worth something because of their provenance, ease of manufacturing is irrelevant.
NFTs aren't scarce. Anyone can make them for anything. I can sell you the couch I'm sitting on as an NFT.
If I own a Picasso, I could burn it, have my tigers urinate on it, or make sure no other human ever sees it again. I can do whatever I want. What exactly can I do with Jack Dorsey's first tweet? Get him to delete it? Change it into an ad?
There's no legal framework behind NFTs. Ownership is meaningless. If you bought my couch as an NFT, good luck coming to get it.
Also, when the cryptography behind NFTs is broken (and it will be!), what happens to the ownership? If the chain switches algorithms, not everyone will update their keys. After breaking the old scheme, ownership will instantly be impossible to prove.
Next you have the copycats, people selling shovels, and uber drivers investing in it.
Then comes the eternal stagnation.
These are worth jack shit except to the temporary evangelicals buying the craze. They aren't rare, you have to explain it ("I wonder if anyone knows I own the NFT of this song"), and the crypto will be broken before the holders update their wallets to safer algorithms.
Nobody will ever honor your CryptoKitties. You can't use them in Nintendogs or Neopets. The creators won't build a compelling platform for them and they'll simply die from waning interest.
These are moon certificates, except with crypto.
I expect quantum to pick up major steam, especially if major state actors want to screw over the Bitcoin network.
If I buy the baseball card, I get whatever (limited) utility it offers. I can put it in an album, frame it and hang it on the wall, stick it in the spokes of a bicycle wheel, use it as a very small shim or insulator.
If I buy the rights to the card, I get the utility that offers. I can contract out and offer reprints of the 1990 Topps Juan Agosto card for the millions of people who want one.
If I buy a NFT corresponding to the photo on the card, what utility have I bought? What new capabilities or rights do I possess? As best I can tell, nothing.
NFTs are the MMO version of the "I am Rich" app with factions and customizable skins. You can demonstrate your economic might by exchanging large quantities of money for something with negligible if any actual utility. But you at least get to pick which particular piece of uselessness you're associating yourself with, so you can use it as a more precise social signaling thing.
[1] At the price levels we're discussing.
Those are some of the means by which we arrive at price.
> Take this concept to its logical conclusion, and you get NFTs
Mistake this concept for an end by itself and you get NFT.
(Leaving aside the carbon emissions - let's assume everyone finally switches to Proof of Stake)
They are stupid. They are pointless. But then so is most of the art world - and going a step forward - so is much of what we value.
As several people have pointed out they are no less arbitrary than a limited edition print vs a commodity print. The value of fine wines escalates exponentially whilst the extra utility you get from any quality improvements trends towards nothing.
Much of what we value is pointless and bordering on delusional. But unless you're a wandering ascetic or superhumanly utilitarian in your consumption (hint - you're probably not even if you think you are) then the difference is one of degree rather than of category.
The problem with NFTs is a conceptual one not a technological or psychological or societal one. The problem with NFTs is digital "products" by their nature cannot claim originality.
Art might be stupid, but you can actually make the claim of having an original insert_coin drawing, despite its value.
A print is a print is a print. The artist simple decides to make a set of 5. If someone later makes a run of 10,000 - why is the former more valuable. The artist might never actually touch the print. They are simply authorizing them.
For modern graphic arts, the value has always come from being part of a serialized limited edition.
The value to whom? To the artist the actual negative is clearly the most valuable to own. Original Ansel Adams negatives are actually very very valuable.
Things, actual things, have value because they are physical, and the closer to the original the more value they have. Negatives have the most value, prints have less value, and a digital jpeg of an Ansel Adams photo has almost no value. I know, I "own" several.
Do you see the step you've just taken?
It's no longer about authenticity, it's about proximity to authenticity. Would a reproduction from the original negative by someone other than Ansel Adams be more valuable than a different type of reproduction? If so, why?
I am fully aware of what I am saying: things have value not only because of what they are or what they are made of, they have value for other reasons.
NFT people claim things only have value because of what they are, an art piece has value because it is an art piece, because it is beautiful to look at or whatever, and that visual property can be stored on the blockchain. That is where they are failing. They are missing 99% of the reasons things have value, and why they cannot understand two seemingly identical things having widely different values.
> They are missing 99% of the reasons things have value,
Can you clarify?
> they cannot understand two seemingly identical things having widely different values.
We're not talking about the value in a piece of art - or even the value of owning an original piece of art.
Ownership itself is a social construct. Back to my limited edition print comparison:
You own one of a series of 100 prints or a photograph by a famous artist.
I "own" a reproduction of the same work that is high enough resolution to be indistinguishable from your print.
Assuming you can prove the authenticity of your print (maybe there's a chain of custody you can verify) - your print is worth thousands and mine is worth simply the cost of making another copy.
How is this less silly than NFTs?
Sentence 1 is trivially true. Sentence 2 differs from my understanding but more importantly - I don't see how it connects to our previous discussion.
So far, "ownership" has meant "vague association." If people really wanted to own IP, you'd think there'd be a boom in song rights, but there isn't.
That's the beauty of it. Yes, the digital good by its nature is infinitely replicable [0], but everyone knows and (hopefully) understands that, and that is not what it is being sold with the NFT. The NFT, as I understand it, represents a totally new type of "ownership" that has no analogue in previously established forms of ownership. The closest thing to NFTs are securities, where the value of the security is almost always speculative in nature. NFTs just take this to its teleological end. Yes, an artist or John Cleese can go ahead and mint another Brooklyn Bridge token, but doing this would degrade their reputation and make their future work less valuable and attractive to buyers, just like a company that keeps minting stock indiscriminately is going to have a harder time selling that stock. John Cleese selling a token is actually very cool in my opinion, because he didn't have to call Goldman Sachs to make it happen. I see a future where we have premier blockchains where all the top assets will be traded. Someone selling farts [1] and such will not be on those blockchains (unless those farts become highly regarded, which they might), and the blockchain itself will be a sort of crypto-artistic expression. I think this is just the beginning.
[0] https://twitter.com/_Lord_Enki_/status/1372976176411578369
[1] https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/nyc-man-sells-fart-for-85-cash...
I may not be able to put it back in the same blockchain, which is a different issue, but if I only care about the bits that make up the “coin” I can absolutely copy them. I could even copy the entire blockchain.
AND the problem is not with the token, you can own all the original tokens for an image you want, you still don’t have anything different than a jpeg.
Look, if you can figure out how to double spend BTC, go for it. There's $1 trillion on that chain right now just waiting for the first genius with a copy-paste button to come along and take it.
It's not a different issue at all. A Bitcoin is not a thing you can copy. The UTXOs only exist on the chain and only mean anything in terms of the chain.
> you still don’t have anything different than a jpeg.
Yes, you do. You have verifiable providence of a unique digital signature (not unlike an autograph). You have a programmable, pluggable, leverageable, tradeable, asset that interacts seamlessly with hundreds of different applications (and rapidly growing).
Copying the value is a different question, but I can copy the data all I want.
> Yes, you do. You have verifiable providence of a unique digital signature (not unlike an autograph)
You have a signature that a token is valid on the chain, cool. As long as it stays on the chain of course. But that’s all it is, it does not make one jpeg the original and another one with the same bits the copy.
I don't know how you get to defend something when you're sidestepping the biggest problem with NFTs.
I'm fine with stupid and pointless things as long as your stupid and pointless things don't wreck the environment. If someone decides to poison the local water supply because it's an "art project" they still poisoned the fucking water supply.
So all I'm doing is hoping everyone uses these instead.
I really enjoy NFTs conceptually, much more than crypto in general actually, and I really don't get a lot of the hate. If you remove the emissions aspect (which is the non-starter for me), I think it's so cool that there is a way to create scarcity in the digital world, even if that scarcity is totally "meaningless." Yes, there are some goods with inherent value: food, shelter, heat sources. But NFTs are far from the first type of asset that has no inherent value, and that includes both the cyber and real worlds. Humans like to curate and collect, and NFTs are just an expression of that drive.
What I wonder if why NFTs suddenly took off now. I remember hearing about them years ago.
Tezos, Cardano, Algorand just to mention a few of them.
Example of creating an NFTs using Algorand: https://developer.algorand.org/tutorials/create-and-manage-n...
However, Ethereum has virtually monopolized the DeFi space. It is supposed to move to PoS, especially considering that transaction fees are insanely high due to recent demand.
Like the first live real money implementation of a PoS chain was done by SunnyKing back in like...I want to say 2012, but maybe 2013. SunnyKing was the same guy who went on to make the somewhat interesting PoW function via finding largest prime numbers(arguably somewhat useful PoW, certainly more than double SHA-256), Primecoin.
Then in a larger scale there was NXT which was like 2013-2014ish, full PoS.
I don't care about the merits of these particular chains, but PoS was one of the earliest innovations in blockchain tech. The lineage was roughly something like:
0. All the centralised pre-Bitcoin cypherpunk digital currency stuff from the mailing list like Bitgold, Chaumian ecash whatever.
1. Bitcoin
2. Namecoin(decentralized DNS)
3. Feathercoin/Litecoin(Bitcoin with 0.25 block target time and 4x total coins), arguably shouldn't be on the list for 'innovation' but Litecoin is successful(at some point they changed the PoW work function to scrypt so I guess it counts, there were other scam coins around this time too doing the same thing. So I don't necessarily mean Litecoin was 'third place' overall, just that it ended up rising from the pile of shit).
4. Different forms of PoW functions. ie Litecoin doing scrypt so people could still use their ATI Radeon 4xxx to mine and not order ASICs from shady companies), Cryptonight stuff maybe(lies about it being 'developed on the darknet for years and being related that cicada thing' before and such, hard to make an accurate timeline for that one(ended up forked off as Monero, possibly post-PoS tech)).
5. PoS, 2012-2014ish. Probably didn't come before different PoW functions but it might have switched with #4's place, hard to remember the exact timelines, but people were trolling and making fun of PoS ever since it was theorized. Probably because a true fully realized PoS that is superior to PoW is a threat to the massive investments one must put behind PoW systems, which also becomes the root of their 'nothing at stake' arguments against PoS, which certainly had merit back then with early PoS implementations. I wonder if those truly got solved.
This was all like 2014 at the latest. Very old stuff but crypto is full of sales snakes(not targeted at you at all) who try to sell other peoples old open source tech as new modern innovations. It's a familiar pattern. People sold Bitcoin as private and anonymous for years...like way too long.
I'm imagining now there will be a point when PoS is 10+ years old and people will acting like it's the newest thing on the block still.
It's like expecting good intentions and then being surprised when a few bad actors ruin things for the larger group. Tragedy of the commons is exactly why stuff like this should be called out, each and every single time.
I hang up decorative lights around Christmas time. Is that not okay with you, or do you not find it pointless?
Thankfully we have an amazing new technology called Light Emitting Diodes so we don't have to worry about that theoretical problem.
Most of ou current Christmas folklore is pretty pointless lights being a pretty recent invention when compared to christian religion timespan. Same as for Christmas trees, they were pretty much on point when everybody had a wood stove to throw them in after Christmas and warm the house. Pretty pointless nowaday when you live in a flat...
If my mom is any indicator, many consider video games stupid and pointless. Value is in the eye of the beholder.
Source?
I can't think of a way to immediately gather any evidence for this either way but it seems like a plausible position to take.
(However - I think the value > utility chain is easier to argue for with gaming. I'm not making the same argument as the parent post.)
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257768246_Electrici... - US energy consumption by video game consoles in the US alone was 16 TWh in 2010
[2] https://grist.org/article/video-games-consume-more-electrici... - Globally, PC gaming (not console gaming) was estimated at 75 TWh in 2018
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257768246_Electrici... - US energy consumption by video game consoles in the US alone was 16 TWh in 2010
[2] https://grist.org/article/video-games-consume-more-electrici... - Globally, PC gaming (not console gaming) was estimated at 75 TWh in 2018
Whether or not gaming as a whole consumes more power than crypto as a whole isn't the question, it's whether or not crypto would consume more power per person using it than per gamer playing games. As in, give everyone a ~fixed power consumption quota - where is that power "better" spent, gaming or crypto?
But I also don't think judging the industry on power consumption is particularly fruitful, unless we want to look industry-by-industry and weigh utility vs energy, which we do not do. We do this for blockchain because calculating this is easy. We don't even have these numbers for, say, the stock market, so we don't even know how good or bad that is. We can't answer the first questions that arise from this kind of analysis.
Crypto isn't competing against the stock market, it's competing against something like Visa. And we can answer that comparison: https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co....
1 bitcoin transaction takes more power than 100,000 Visa transactions.
> But I also don't think judging the industry on power consumption is particularly fruitful, unless we want to look industry-by-industry and weigh utility vs energy, which we do not do.
That's exactly what I think we as a society should do. We are limited on the amount of sustainable power generation, so looking at cost vs. value is exactly what we should be doing. Especially when something comes along that does the same basic thing as an existing system, but 100,000x more expensive.
Proof of Stake doesn't have this problem. The mere act of owning a coin does not entail the destruction of value. In proof of stake, you just make money, probably harming the environment along the way as you do, and buy the coin. That's it. The resources you obtained are not destroyed, they are passed on to whoever you bought the coins from.
In proof of work you work to obtain mining equipment and electricity and then use that to perform the work of securing the network (nothing is “destroyed”). You are then paid for doing that work. The more work you do relative to other miners, the more you will get paid.
In proof of stake you work to obtain eth (for example) which then grants you the privilege to run validators. The more you stake, the more validating you can do. You are paid money for successfully validating, and charged money for failing to validate. You will need to do more work to replenish money spent on unsuccessful validation. Ultimately, the more work you do relative to other stakers, the more you will get paid.
It’s going to be a little more difficult than it is for proof of work to measure how much total energy is used by proof of stake, but it still should be doable. Maybe it will be less than the energy used by proof of work, but maybe not.
Does crypto have a (significantly) larger carbon footprint than video games? Probably not. I think video games (and crypto) are pointless. ymmv.
There can be as many NFTs for the same thing as the (edit: anyone) artist feels like producing.
[1] https://nitter.eu/joshmillard/status/1370088760663179266
[2] https://blog.erratasec.com/2021/03/deconstructing-that-69mil...
I'd like to reiterate that I think the value in a Warhol print is also stupid. It's less stupid than NFTs but the point I'm trying to make (apparently unsuccesfully) is that these differences are matters of degree rather than type.
We humans have a multitude of ways to invent value that is built on sand.
The point is that an NFT only shows a chain of custody for the NFT. It does not imply anything about the originality of the Warhol.
We have many fictions we indulge in about authenticity and value.
NFTs are a new fiction. They might even be dumber than other currently accepted fictions.
But the discussion is "which of these fictions is the most stupid?" rather than "NFTs are stupid". We are already a long way from genuine utility or intrinsic value and into the realms of social consensus and value-through-association.
I still suspect most people think they're getting an exclusive license for a piece of artwork, and not a bit of performance art.
They almost certainly believe that the goods pointed to by the token are non-fungible. Not that they have a non-fungible reference to a fungible good.
It's quite a shabby business in many ways.
But that just makes it even more akin to the mainstream fine art market.
Minting an NFT is trivial, you can do it with the press of a button, at scale. You could mint an NFT for every single item in the Library of Congress with a for-loop, if you could pay the transaction fees.
I get your point but I'm sure we could swap out another example that illustrates the point a little better.
If I own the copyright of an artwork, even one 'on the internet' I have exclusive rights to reproduce it commercially. For example I could sell prints, while it would be illegal for others to do so. The existence of the latest pop songs on Youtube doesn't stop the copyright holders commercialising it.
NFTs don't by themselves confer any of these rights or privileges with respect to the thing they purportedly represent.
1. A limited edition print doesn't confer copyright
2. A limited edition print isn't the original
3. A limited edition print may never have been in the presence of the artist.
Sure that may seem stupid to most people, but most people don't even get why regular art is significant or can be very expensive. Personally I would attribute it to my lack of understanding rather than dismiss it outright.
To all you pumped up to be the next Zuck, I would be coding a NFT site.
Oh yea, I heard these companies take your word that the bits are yours. People are ripping off online artists/originators.
I've briefly looked into a NFT markets and the cost was a few 10s of cents. Where were you looking?
Shit's on fire, yo.
Let them eat cake.
Can anyone else hear the guillotines being sharpened?
Seriously though this obscene inequality can only lead one place, and we were lucky that they were morons on January 6th and not organized properly.
Ironically the revolution will be stoked by those first up against the wall in the name of engagement.
It won’t be televised but it will be on Instagram.
But sure, I agree with the larger point. Culture wars are great for keeping the weak divided. The $GME fiasco - albeit a bit silly - was the first glimmer of hope I saw in a long time towards that unification. Hopefully there's more to come.
the top 10% globally is 30k... which is low income for Americans.
Americans bitching about the 1% is laughable.
That's what "reallocating resources" usually means.
All money does is decide how we allocate physical resources and labour. If it is just sitting in a bank, or being moved from one person to another, nothing is being taken away from the poor.
I have not looked closely into NFTs, but I have severe doubts that starving artists are, or are going to be the actual beneficiaries of money sloshing through that system.
Not to mention that Jack guy who NFT'd his first tweet. Pretty sure he isn't hurting for cash
Often more than people make in a lifetime.
New technology, same scam
The drawing, of course, is quite ridiculous. But what else would you expect from one of the masterminds behind the "Ministry of Silly Walks"?
That saying is a reference to the scams of George C. Parker who "sold" the Brooklyn Bridge a number of times to gullible people, and from the context of the video it is clear he is referring to that.
I see a dollar equivalent, but I don’t see how they translate from the 0.015 figure.
EDIT: Never mind. Apparently, the symbol Ξ refers to the Ether cryptocurrency.
With paintings, you're at least getting a physical artifact that the famous painter touched and painted, stroke by stroke, that can never be duplicated.
The value of an object is associated with who made it or who owned it or how unique it is. e.g. Hitler's car wouldn't have had its value if it was owned by someone else, despite it being no technically different from other Mercedes cars of the era.
Sure, except in the case of NFTs which is the subject of this discussion. Then there is one original (the NFT that the original creator created) and it has exactly one owner. Anything else is a copy.
Art has its worth because it is difficult to forge, mostly through its proof of provenance, but also through the certification of designated, well-paid experts.
Anyone could have made a Brooklyn Bridge NFT (I've seen many make this joke). But, the value of the NFT is based on who is selling it and how compelling the narrative around the NFT is.
The valuation of the NFT is going to be based entirely on expectations of growth of future attention to the minter of the NFT. The market for them is going to consist primarily of a person that is a speculator first, collector second.
With that said, I think that people are wildly overpricing expectations of future attention for most of these. So there will be a correction. But, I don't think they are a fad, as long as gamblers exist so will NFTs.
Social media looks to be on the verge of transitioning into something catastrophically superficial. The pendulum will fully swing to “capturing the moment” then selling it on the way pornographers do, and it will be equally smutty.
Everyone might as well soon be doing what CNN and Fox News are doing, and profiting from it on an individual level powered by NFTs.
We are staring down at the proliferation of digusting levels of objectification of social interactions powered by the financialization of everything.
The people responsible for pushing this for profit should be shamed and disgraced, but will instead likely by rewarded with billions in newly created — and unseizable — wealth.
Truly, humanity is a cancer.
What do you mean "on the verge"? That shift happened a long time ago. I'd say the shift happened when suddenly everyone started being OK with taking pictures of themselves and posting it online. That's when everything was confirmed to just be superficial.
Before this, we used to say only vain people took photos of themselves, but now either everyone is vain, or our measure of vain people moved.
"I won, I won, I finally came out ahead!"
Prunella Scales appears.
"Thank you, Basil!"
Yoink.
"Remember when John Cleese sold the Brooklyn Bridge? Look, I have that NFT that he sold!".
Heck, I would even pay money for that. First of all for the bragging rights, and second of all because I'm sure plenty of people would pay for it.
But $50k is a bit over my budget ;). But in no way am I surprised that there is somebody out there that wants to pay this amount.
If anyone is surprised by this, you probably also don't understand any other collectibles.
This is the key conceptual leap you have to make to understand NFTs, or cryptocurrency for that matter.
The blockchain is a consensus mechanism, with the emphasis on consensus.
A lot of people agreeing on something having value means that it has value to those people. They can then exchange that thing among themselves and thus transfer the value.
One person saying something has value means it has value to them. If no one else accepts it has value, it can't be used to transfer value.
The fed needs to raise interest rates and get the free dumb money out of the system as soon as possible so we can suck these schemes dry.
Frankly, I think John Cleese is trolling all of the NFT fans.
You judging those people says more about you than them.
All those things have intrisinc values. If tomorrow the market for movie props, stamps and signed book went straight to 0, the owners would keep those objects for themselves, they have sentimental values, not just financial.
If the market for NFTs goes to 0, you have a worthless GUID, cool.
Ouch, reading into it, much? I don't begrudge collectors their collections. I understand those because they own an object that holds value, either to them or to others.
The way you put it in the parent comment is "I'm spending money so that I have a story that I can use to flex on people later," which I just can't grok as a motive for spending tens of thousands of dollars.
... Meaning a logical next step arises: you should create and sell a "I, koonsolo, was there when this NFT was a thing" NFT, which will perpetually be associated to you whoever buys it.
https://opensea.io/assets/0x9201a886740d193e315f1f1b2b193321...
So this is not really a scam, but rather a legitimate satire of recent NFT sales.
This is not unlike how Weird Al would sell more copies of his satirical music than the music he satired.
I note that this whole NFT thing is bollocks but you are only buying an image of the Brooklyn Bridge not the bridge itself.
This is not the same as a bloke pretending to flog the real bridge to you. That is why John Cleese picked that bridge because it was famously "sold" several times to victims of fraud.
When I say bollocks, that is too trite as well. NFT means non fungible token and yet it clearly is "fungible" in some way. I generate one and sell it to you. The blockchain "proves" the transfer of ownership.
Fiat (let it be) money is on pretty shaky ground as well and yet we live with the fibs and outright lies and get on with trade. If you look at the recent GME trading stuff and break it down into the various components - start with "what on earth is a USD?", it all rapidly gets a bit mad. Work your way up through what a short is or even what a simple stock trade actually means and then perhaps look at how the trades are trued up every few days and other weirdness.
Calling out NFTs as bollocks is a bit off. Fiat money and stocks n that are basically a game with a lot of rules, a lot of rules. It is possible that some of those rules are made up on the fly by the banker and the banker may not be who you think they are.
That said, I don't see myself using crypto coins. I mined over one BT back in the day and lost the wallet on my Pentium II when I dumped err recycled it. At the time it was worth a few quid - the BT that is. I really won't buy a NFT unless I suddenly find my NW in the millions and I get bored.
Now Mr Cleese's piccy of the bridge does look quite tasty ... copy, paste .... delete. 8)
I wouldn't and can't think of anyone I know who would, the emotional response would probably just be of frustration at the absurd amount of money being spent, much like bragging about any large value novelty purchase.
It's entirely about the audience. Without even talking about NFTs in particular, you don't brag about something to people who don't care about that something.
I mean shit we have this page here that wouldn't exist if people didn't care, right?
https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
There clearly is an audience that cares about NFTs, just like there is for plenty of other types of goods/accomplishments/ownership...
Don't get me wrong I'm not advocating for, or against, this stuff, just pointing out that there's nothing new about the motivations or desires of people getting into the NFT game.
For what it's worth, I agree with you in general. It's a ridiculous waste of money. But at the same time it's very clear that some people are impressed by this kind of thing.
The problem comes when the auctions start failing i.e. people who bought NFTs with leverage can't sell for enough where they won't be wiped out.
The art market runs on the self-image of wealthy people as superior people, which requires constant critical appraisal and reappraisal by designated experts. There's no chance that the ability to piss money away on an acknowledgement in a distributed ledger can compete indefinitely with the ability to piss money away on a canvas by a dead abstract expressionist painted in their own piss and shit. Academics and famous aesthetes will call you a genius for owning the second. How long are you going to be able to brag about one of these, and who to?
Every initial transaction with these is giving some real person real money for absolutely nothing in return. Who are going to be the designated issuers, and why? Who is going to pay for Scott Baio's Designated Cool Dude NFT, and how much?
It's like Cleese is personally making fun of the buyer!
I'm pretty sure this will go down as the Pet Rocks of this era. But... I'm not entirely sure.
> Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are digital assets that are indivisible and provably unique. They can be used to represent both tangible and intangible items.
https://decrypt.co/resources/non-fungible-tokens-nfts-explai...
NFTs are just giving life to 'contemporary art' again which can be shortened to 'con-art'. Allowing celebrities a get rich quick route with their signatures. Heck, even an AI can paint something and auction it at Christie's and then re-auction it as an NFT.
As for this NFT and the rest of them, No thanks and no deal.
The art collector market is where things tend to go sideways. Collectors do often seem to value the name on the signature over everything else. But in most cases when you see those crazy high sale prices at auction, the money is not going to the artist but rather to some other collector. So I don’t think it’s fair to call an entire genre of art a “con” just because of how rich art collectors behave.
Barring any international treaties that would probably prevent any such claims, the general rule is that you or a physical representative have to set foot and survey before you can make a claim. And stepping onto Mars in one spot would not be sufficient to claim the whole planet.
It’s more likely that Musk will have to settle for his Earthen technokingdom.
If someone with sufficient odds of establishing a transport stranglehold started selling promises of land even with the giant caveat of it being subject to substantial changes in relevant treaties and laws, I'd suspect they'd find lots of people willing to take the risk, simply because even if it'd be extremely high risk, the potential payoff could be immense.
The current legal regime of the space is based on the notion of Earth sovereign states - kind of oxymoronic if you think about it. Basically the modern space treaties is an attempt to repeat that division of the world like Portugal and Spain did back then - which worked for some time only because of the strength of their Navies at the time. I dont think it would work this time as even at such early stage as today the private corporation space development beats any state one, and once we are more and more into space the governments will be falling behind in the technical development and more importantly - in the thinking, not being able to digest and adapt to the fast coming paradigm shifts and different mentality of the space farers and long time dwellers. The primary government advantage has historically been armed force, and any space faring private corporation will possess what is de-facto equivalent of state-level strike capabilities - ie. interplanetary rockets and nuclear/fusion reactors. Thus the future laws in space is just whatever force-based relationships will be established between corporations - i.e. what we call international law on Earth just substituting corps for states.
https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/1372944852325789704
It's brilliant parody, as usual, from Cleese. Regardless of what you think of NFTs, you will get a good laugh.
You can run a piece of mathematics that not one person in a thousand would understand, but there is no way to show it off, like in a book case or hang it on a wall.
But given that most valuable art is sitting in deep storage in free ports, I am not sure it is a problem.
Does John Cleese post this address in a tweet, or how is it associated with him?
Yes, he has done so.
All the comments about supposedly "owning" a copy of an item that is trivial to make perfect digital copies... exactly.
If, somehow, the NFTs could be made actually non-fungible, and backed by the legal system, the one killer feature would be repeating revenue for the artist with every subsequent sale. That could truly change the economics for the perpetually starving artists in the world. If that came to pass, it might be worth all the electricity and carbon footprint.
Laden or unladen? In a vacuum?
That's no longer a concern for an increasing number of NFTs minted today[0].
All you literally have is a few bits on a blockchain that say you paid so and so money to say you own the work on the blockchain. That's it.
And not every blockchain mind you. Just that specific blockchain. On another blockchain someone else can own the work.
NFTs are ridiculous if they don't act as a registry of actual ownership. I don't know why people think otherwise.
I suppose everyone knows the emperors are naked, but hey, it seems like that's not stopping megabucks being made, and why should you miss out?
Buying an NFT gets you a digital token. That token can say anything it likes but that is all you get.
Until NFTs are somehow anchored to ownership of the thing they mention... I don't see the point.
Do we need governments to provide a NFT Enforcement Registrar or something? Kinda defeats the purpose of "no central authority" then...
I mean I guess if you look at show of brands like Luis Vuiton (sp?) There are plenty of people willing to pay for said bragging rights.
As someone who's always mocked those brands and the people who buy them, it seems so strange to me though.
They absolutely don't. There's no art collectors or amateurs in this game, only speculators.
There is more to it than speculation. There is a con where something went on. Maybe the auction house commissioned the money to pay for it and had a 69.3 million fee.
It saddens me that journalists have chosen not to follow the money and ask the questions.
Did they? I thought it was his investor "Metakovan" who commissioned it. Following the money is rather hard in an all-pseudonym system.
NFTs and crypto are obviously realms for this to play out, but this same force is at work for speculative investing in startups as well. For every startup with a value prop, a market, and a revenue model, there are a dozen who are flush with cash solely for the purpose of attracting Greater Suckers, fueled by the same motive to park and/or gamble an asset portfolio.
[0] https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/karen-petrou-wealth-inequal...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Rome_(podcast)
People compare NFTs to trading cards. But if you already think those things are basically useless zero-sum speculative Greater Fool insert-other-overused-but-apt-buzzwords bullshit, your opinion of NFTs won't be improved much.
NFTs, in their current state and hype wave, are probably a little like the dotcom bubble. It definitely doesn't imply the internet and the world wide web are bubbles, but it implies a major disconnect of some kind. I'm more interested in the future of semi-fungible tokens and novel, creative uses of NFT/SFT smart contracts. Plus just smart contracts in general.
I'm not so sure. Owning $10-$50M homes in major world cities, flying in a private jet, summer homes, winter homes, no car cheaper than $200k, no car older then 5 years, private school for your kids, private tutors, etc. adds up fast. Not to mention the effort that goes into make sure you never have to fly business class again.
The obscenely wealthy seem to either be content (Buffet), focused on charity (Gates), or all over the place (Musk). Anything less than $100M is less interesting thank you'd think.
Given every post on crypto / blockchain / NFT on HN is full of these exact same comments showing utter disbelief and bewilderment, for the past 10 years, the answer is “No, everyone here thinks like you.”
But, NFT's are selling "participation". You are not John Cleese, and you're not even all that funny. But you're an enormous fan, and happen to control an adequately-large amount of cash.
In the same way that you can hire Elton John to pretend to be your friend for a few hours, and play at your wedding, etc, you can also "buy in" to a very public partcipation in some art, or joke, or both ... at no meaningful cost to you.
Surely the market is limited. But people have paid a lot of money for a piece of toast, too.
In this case, it's no weirder than Cleese selling his socks for charity. Or profit! Who cares? Eat the rich, it's all good.
> ownership of digital goods which can't be owned?
One interesting fact it is what the ownership means legally. If there was a successful image that an expensive NFT owner had, it wouldn't surprise me to see some legal shenanigans. This has not been tested yet. Capability does not give you the rights to make copies of digital art. "Can't be owed" is a rather brave claim I think.
> You can make unlimited indistinguishable copies
Interestingly it is not dissimilar to a lot of physical art. To the extent that some 'restorations' of damaged art contain a lot of paint of the restorer rather than the original artist. I believe there are many professionals who are capable of creating something visually indistinguishable from the Mona Lisa, say.
Without specialised equipment you would have a very hard time telling reality from a good copy. So I am forced to conclude (what dealers will say quite explicitly) that most of the value is in the provenance not the physicality. "NFT is rubbish" becomes less obvious, to me.
Digital items have no original. The bytes are constantly copied, even in the creation itself. And every viewing creates another copy. And these copies have perfect fidelity. That's the difference.
In my understanding the NFT doesn't even cover the ownership of anything except the NFT itself. It's like owning a sheet of paper you write "certificate of authenticity" at the top on in sharpie, then sign yourself. You should probably write the bits in the middle in crayon.
> I mean I guess if you look at show of brands like Luis Vuiton (sp?) There are plenty of people willing to pay for said bragging rights.
Merch is at least an actual thing you can own and use, or get pleasure from by looking at (for works of arts e.g. prints & posters, limited run or not), sometimes tied to life events or memories (e.g. band, museum, or tourism spot merch).
You can buy a replica of a piece of art to look at it. You buy the original to store value. You hope it may appreciate as well. It could end up worthless. But until someone says otherwise, it has the value stored in it.
It's just like baseball cards. You can make unlimited indistinguishable copies, but you don't. The date they are printed matters for some reason. Who owned it previously, its last sale price at auction is part of its history and thus its value.
Sorare/ubisoft also has a much better value proposition. Theyve combined draftkings and pokemon into a live betting market with collectable cards that you can use to play a game, to win more. The early generation may be simple digital art, mostly worthless, but there will be more innovation to come. Part of the reason I think NFTs are the real deal is because I think the value of art is often stupid, and yet it still has value. Even if 99% of NFTs turn into nothing, there will be some early art from people that arent famous yet, that is someday found. I have no doubt there is an immense amount of mystery being planted, waiting to be uncovered. Whatever stupidity and hype and storytelling and history around artwork, that I dont understand, will translate to this realm as well. The lack of decay, fire damage, traditional theft, and loss will be an interesting wrinkle.
If anything this is a democratization of the wealthy auction scene. A new tier of field to play.
Alternative assets come in all shapes in sizes. I can store wealth in gold, comics, wine. Why not my name on a ledger listed as owner of nothing in particular other than the price I paid for it? The amount of hate they get on HN should be a clue that everyone is being over analytical and logical, and missing out on analyzing them through human behavior. They arent a robotic math problem, they are behavioral economics.
I can't wait to see an investable etf of sorts that lets people invest in a collection of NFTs like they would bonds. Youll have "curators"/"fund managers" assembling and storing a vast array of art, allowing people to diversify and own fractional shares of a bunch of art.
Does it sound stupid? Absolutely? Which is why it's just crazy enough to work.
"Investing" in a Picasso is an investment in a long-term store of cultural value that you speculate will appreciate more quickly than the S&P. Probably because you bet that the 1% will see outsized gains compared to the 99%. Maybe you also like the art and want to be the only person in the world who can display it. Also it can be very useful as a tax dodge.
"Investing" in a new and unknown artist is several things: a) speculation that they will become more famous and that you are tasteful enough to know it early (see: angel investing), b) patronage and participation (see: friends & family rounds), c) conspicuous consumption (see: conspicuous consumption), and finally d) purchase of an expression of art that you enjoy, which may or may not have resale value in the future if your priorities change.
NFTs are confusing because any persistent value is completely dependent on the continued agreement that exclusivity of relationship is valuable and transferable. What's it like to be the eleventh owner of an NFT? Presumably, it'd be pretty meh.
But to your point -- it's psychology not logic. Today's buyers are not looking for a store of value. It's just an exercise in one of two things: vanity or speculation. These are powerful things!
No, it is not. Picasso died dirt poor, he never beneficiated in large sums from his paintings. It just happen he was crazy enough to make a name and now people brag about him.
I meant it in the simplest way, which simply means "support".
Yes, physical art, baseball cards, gold and whatnot all have a long history and vast amount of people who participate in the trade.
NFTs in comparison are super new, and the only people who seem to chip in are those who either have some stake in there or bored.
NFTs might be a good store of value eventually. But right now dumping millions in there seems like a huge gamble.
I get that all “store of value” are arbitrary and that gold could be other things. But it seems funny to just pick random things and then try to convince others that it’s worthwhile. There are at least certain characteristics needed for a store of value and something completely arbitrary has a bootstrap problem.
I can at least look at art or play with a Black Lotus. Holding an NFT of a piece of art is stupid as a store of value because there are so many better stores (eg, an NFT that conveys ownership rights to a piece of art for example).
Everyone understands that baseball cards are just like savings accounts!
Perhaps with people focusing on that, we can get more quality products IRL. I went to an eye exam where the optometrist was wearing arcteryx gear during my exam. Perhaps she was going to jet off to some location where that stuff was needed, or perhaps she just liked it for fashion. But nonetheless, when people start wearing things that need real quality for non-quality reasons eventually brands start wising up and selling at the same price but with worse quality.
Arcteryx pieces feel great on, the same way avocados taste great in your mouth. And just like you'd likely be misleading people by using an avocado as an example of the average fruit, you are misleading people by using Arcteryx to stand in for technical outdoorwear.
Hell, that holds even if your optometrist was wearing a fucking rain shell in the office. Compare:
1. jacket made of mostly straight, rectangular pieces of material sewn together, then taped at the seams (which can rub against your skin) in order to make it waterproof, probably with long arms so it doesn't ride up when you raise yours (e.g., you end up with wrinkly, noisy sleeves)
2. jacket with fused seams, made of pieces that are fabricated to fit together and follow the contour of the human body, with thicker material fused only in those areas that were measured to be high abrasion
Number 2 is obviously the wrong garment to wear inside a climate controlled building. But it feels so much better than your run-of-the-mill slicker that I could see someone in and out of a building deciding to simply leave it on for a bit.
In other words, the technical specs responsible for those differences match "real quality reasons" for someone to decide to wear it for longer periods, even in conditions for which the garment wasn't designed.
And if it wasn't a rain shell, it's likely the piece was comfortable, breathable, didn't look like the average piece of outdoorwear, and was perfectly fitting for the conditions of an optometry office. (I own probably four of their Delta LT fullzips which are so light I sometimes forget to stop wearing them in the early summer.)
The more optometrists who wear it because it feels good, the sooner it sucks being technical because optometrists don’t care if it fails because they aren’t 200 miles from another version.
Also, that is a model followed by every similar company-- a model started by Patagonia back in the day when a technical piece of clothing was literally a rugby shirt.
In short, if you woke up in a nightmare universe where all optometrists wear Arcteryx you'd probably end up with a few more pieces in their technical line.
For example if I sell you a song as an nft you could then license the song to Budweiser to use in a commercial and we both get paid. Think about how difficult this would be to arrange without the nft to handle the contract.
I've not seen a single NFT that comes with an associated copyright license to the underlying work.
Additionally, the artist only receives a royalty if the token is sold on these marketplaces that enforce the royalty. There's no such thing preventing a private sale that doesn't pay it.
This doesn't mean they couldn't exist, just that (in my current understanding) it's not part of the ERC-721 spec.
It’s literally that. Someone giving you a slip of paper ”You own Mona Lisa” and nothing more. The actual piece of art is elsewhere. Copyrights are not affected etc.
Something like cards in Gods Unchained is a better NFT example than a picture.
It has emotional value.
https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c2484200...
I'd posit the NFT craze is an unintended consequence of cryptocurrency tax policy. The reason people are burning bubble money in NFTs is because it's more fun setting it on fire than taking on the massive accounting risk of reporting their gains.
While I don't hold cryptocurrencies for related reasons, if you're guaranteed to lose 35%+ of your chips when you cash them in, it makes no difference if you do something stupid and fun with it. If you have undeclared crypto gains, making it disappear into a hard to value joke NFT is even lower risk.
Just like real art.
(But you have to say it in Forrest Gump's voice.)
Maybe a better word is to use "hyped" or "mania" or something, because it's not really a "scam" as no one really own NFTs as a whole and are fooling others.
Disclaimer: I'm myself not into NFTs because it mostly seems like hype at this point, I own zero NFTs myself and have no interest in buying. But I also care about accuracy.
People being scammed, by definition, don't know they're being scammed. Otherwise they wouldn't be scammed. They also willingly buy something they believe is real.
Yes, people are stupid. Does that mean they are being scammed? No, they're just idiots.
Lack of liquidity is implicit in non-fungible tokens. You have to find a buyer who wants the exact item you have. That may be hard. It may require paying for advertising, which means the return can go negative.
With a uniform commodity, there's a market with prices. Non-fungible markets don't crash, they stall. You can't sell, but that's not visible on marketplaces, especially if they're designed to hide listings that are not moving. (This is common in real estate; un-saleable property is taken off the market, then re-listed, so it doesn't show as "for sale for 72 weeks".) What we're probably going to see are markets with huge numbers of items that are not selling, but have high asking prices. This will create the illusion of value, because someone will add up the asking prices and claim that's a "market cap". The illusion of volume and liquidity can be created with wash trades.
There are getting to be a quite a number of blockchain based virtual worlds, where you can pay way too much for virtual land. Few people actually log into those virtual worlds and spend time there; they just trade land. "The metagame is the game", some analyst wrote of Decentraland. (Which, despite its name, is totally centralized. You can't run a Decentraland server yourself.)
I used to go to art openings in SF, and sometimes we'd look at some bad piece and ask "will this be around in 10 years or will it have been tossed out?" Years later, I suspect most of it went to a Dumpster long ago.
[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/Franklin-Mint-The-Three-Stooges-Dec...
Of course, this is no reason to try to buy any for that purpose. It will probably be something silly like the first in game item that works across games and platforms or something. Having a red hat that will work across all games and be unique forever, now that’s worth something.