The company behind the NBA’s NFTs is valued at $2.6b | Hacker News Reader

The company behind the NBA’s NFTs is valued at $2.6b

fastcompany.com

14 pointsjbegley35 comments

I really don’t understand NFTs. You’re not buying a thing. You’re buying a hex code. Take for instance these NBA clips. Are you getting an exclusive license to the clip? No. Are you getting an exclusive login to view the clip? Also no.

A few weeks ago some artist said he was selling a “limited edition of one” image as NFT. I downloaded the image off the web, and tweeted, “And now there are two.”

At least the MP3 Warz was about copyright and licenses. NFTs feel like their nothing but bragging rights among a small clique of the ultra rich.

>NFTs feel like their nothing but bragging rights among a small clique of the ultra rich.

Best way to describe it right there

Best way to describe the art market too

NBA Topshot is a centralized as it gets.

The only reason they use NFTs to track clip ownership rather than a normal DB is to ride the hype wave to pump their initial value.

I disagree. By putting it on the blockchain it becomes a crypto asset. That’s a new primitive.

Come back when it’s portable off of Top Shot. Seriously. If Top Shot disappeared, what do you have? A copy of a URL that 404s?

The token is already portable. The video is secondary. Also it’ll be available as long as there’s money in the banana stand. Incentives matter.

Why exactly is the video secondary?

You cannot own it. What matters is the part that can accrue economic value. That’s the token.

In other words the DeFi crowd just recreated fiat currency, and an NFT is literally nothing more than any other crypto hash. The ultimate fungible token!

Seriously you proven the point. You bid on token that is supposed to represent something that it actually isn’t tied to at all. So each token is really just a commodity, that suckers think is rare, but since the tokens aren’t actually tied to any object (virtual or physical) through any meaningful access control to enforce exclusivity, the tokens are actually indistinguishable hexcodes. At most it’s license plates rather than cars, but more like trading cards of license plates, since the NFT doesn’t enforce access controls, but the state DMVs — that have nothing to do with the NFTs — do.

Recreating fiat in a fully decentralized system is huge. It’s indeed the driver behind DeFi. There’s no limit to what you can build with this.

Re NFT: what we’re seeing now is only the beginning. Is there hype? Sure. Is there a deeper underlying point though? You bet. NFT access control will come. But it’s not that crucial of a point as you seem to believe.

No I’m fact there are a as lol sorts of limits of how often and when you can trade

THESE ARE JUST BUZZWORDS. That doesn't add any value at all.

I’m in this space since 10y. How long until it stops being a buzzword?

When it starts to add some real world value. Owning a URL doesn't add any value.

they're in a decentralized cult

yep. decentralization is a mirage. power (as leverage, wealth, or influence) that is evenly distributed such that there is no center of mass in the group which shares it, ceases to be power at all.

Yeah it’s crypto for no reason it should be just a regular database

NFT's generally don't make sense to me, but targeting a specific real-world market is a rare use case that seemingly makes sense. The patterns already exist in terms of Fantasy Sports, betting on sports, collectors sports cards, etc.

NFT's representing a tweet or image are pointless and all about bragging rights for the ultra wealthy, but attacking an existing billion dollar+ market in the sports and gambling space with a new twist does appear to have merit.

Anything digital being scarce is typically artificial for sake of, but in this case it's for the meta of the 'game' that they're playing and is ironically a centralized version of crypto that so many crypto people tend to rail against. Yet it's insanely popular.

Almost all art is bragging rights and tax evasion for the ultra wealthy. NFTs can easily satisfy both of these as long as a 501c3 “museum” is created to accept NFT “donations” to enable the tax evasion side.

Honestly, surprising this didn't exist before. A database of who owns what. Due to modern technology, this problem is now ready for disruption. Fascinating, and it's blowing peoples mind. "I don't get what NFTs are.." -- it's no different then submitting a document with the city that you own the property at some address. Everything else is details.

Like, if I make waynesonfire collectable cards, and I produce 10 of them, I'd make a paper certificate or something and maybe announce that I've made 10. I wouldn't know who owns them. However, computers can keep track of that now. That's great.

The question is, does this require a distributed ledger to operate? Maybe.. but, if I was waynesonfire card maker and was popular, I'd be very interested in creating and operating a ledger. This ecosystem seems VERY similar to social media, the ledger with the strongest network will win and there will probably be just a handful of them.

But the ledger is meaningless. You make 10 copies of a PNG and put them on a blockchain to sell them, nothing prevents me from making a million identical copies of that PNG and give them for free. It’s not even counterfeit. They’re the exact same item. NFTs aren’t even DRM.

Even if you wanted to keep track of who “owned” something, what does blockchain provide that a relational database doesn’t? Commit privileges on a GitHub repo have more real world impacts than who “owns” a no exclusive link to a URL (not even the domain or content hosted on the domain!), but that’s managed through an database.

I could careless that it's on a blockchain. In fact, I suspect the ledger that wins won't be. The claim I was making is that it doesn't matter whether it's a crypto-ledger or a central DB. The winner is the solution with the strongest network. I wouldn't be surprised if FB got into this space.

My point is even more meta. A ledger — of any type — is completely meaningless without access controls on reads. It’s the ACL that ensures rarity and “ownership.

I don't follow. Why?

Because who gives a shit if I own a rare waynesonfire PNG if literally anyone in the world can access it?

Anyone can print out a picture of the Mona Lisa. Yet, millions go and visit it.

Notice how you used the term ‘access’ instead of ‘own’ at the end of your question? Sure, anyone can access it, only you can own it. That’s why people give a shit.

So wait we could potentially disrupt the NFT by adding a primitive form of DRM?

it did exist before. rarepepewallet, though amateurish in its UI and full of unserious and borderline offensive memery, was (maybe still is?) an NFT platform years before the term existed. In some ways is more fully realized for the purpose of trading unique token indexes than most of what goes by the name NFT presently.

NFTs are the new copyright. Gear up now.

Until you own the rights to the underlying object, it's not. Blockchains don't have anyway to enforce contracts. That's the rub.

You can easily confer copyright through an NFT. It’s just that so far nobody does it bc nobody gives a shit.

Yeah, the idea is it'll someday be illegal to have a copy of something that isn't on an NFT chain somewhere.

“Valued” by whom?

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