‘Disaster Girl’ has sold her popular meme as an NFT for $500k | Hacker News Reader

‘Disaster Girl’ has sold her popular meme as an NFT for $500k

theverge.com

43 pointsneom93 comments

I volunteer with a local arts organization. We have lots of artists (over 200) with in various stages in their careers.

Fewer and fewer make a living at it full time. They struggle to make a business out of this. I feel like the art world has a very weird “winner take all” mentality. I kind of wish it was more distributed. I appreciate new revenue models, but I have mixed feeling about this.

Shameless plug: We’re Sommerville open studios and we’re having our (outdoor and virtual) open studios this weekend.

https://www.somervilleopenstudios.org/visit/

Are they supposed to live off of their art? Who says that ever happened in history, or that should it be the norm? Are we supposed to distribute all earnings in the arts by force? How do we measure who gets how much?

You need to realise that most artists never made a living with their art. If they did, they had a rich sponsor who simply liked their art.

If rich people don't do that anymore: Tough luck. Maybe the rich people are at fault, but maybe the artists are crap?

Don't even get me started with the state and 'Somebody ought to do something!'isms.

> I feel like the art world has a very weird “winner take all” mentality.

I agree strongly with this. I'm lucky enough to have a good job in software and I enjoy it enough to keep me happy, but I've also had serious art hobbies in the past.

I spent many years studying photography but never felt like I got to the point where I could impact somebody's life with it. I occasionally took portraits that people liked, but most of my time was spent doing landscapes. Everyone is so oversaturated with photographs and because of the internet it's basically impossible as a hobbyist to make your work stand out.

I started studying music in Dec 2019, which happened to be kind serendipitous because I had something to work on at home in the pandemic (there are only so many ways you can arrange eggs or glasses on your window sill to practice still life photography).

It struck me that with music, the barrier to have an impact on someone is much lower than with photography. With photography the cost of reproduction is essentially so low that people who are interested in it can see hundreds or thousands of photos through instagram in a day, and there's not a strong concept of the "original" piece. With music, the live performance aspect of music is impossible to reproduce, so it's much more valuable to people, and even simple songs with simple melodies can have a strong effect (I made my grandmother cry by singing "Georgian Song" by Bulat Okudzhava over Zoom, I had never made anyone cry through art before).

Kind of off topic but this is something I've been thinking about a lot.

> Fewer and fewer make a living at it full time. They struggle to make a business out of this. I feel like the art world has a very weird “winner take all” mentality. I kind of wish it was more distributed. I appreciate new revenue models, but I have mixed feeling about this.

I think that's because most people get into art for themselves and not because there's a demand. That means that they have to both create their art and the demand, in a domain that is really competitive because lots of people want to live from their art.

I have a cousin who is a theatre actor (here in Mexico). He loved acting all his life and I remember fondly going to see him at some of his presentations. However, in the last 10 years, the demand for actors has dried up crazily. He has been trying to get into programming (10 years ago was Java, nowadays is webdev) and asks me about it every now and then.

I'm always happy to help him in any way I can regarding technology, but man I am always feel very bad that he is pushed out of his passion due to a lack of demand in that sort of things.

"Winner take all" is of course not limited to the arts.

I see it everywhere, unfortunately.

At the same time, I see people "getting by" by finding a niche. In the arts it might be the guy that does intricate stipple art with his Rapidograph of dragons and makes bank going around to Renaissance Faires in the Fall....

(Okay, well, makes a little cash anyway.)

Sort of non-sequitur: watching David Bull on YouTube — you know, the Canadian ukiyo-e artist living in Tokyo? His "big break" came when he decided to pursue a 10 year project to (re)create 100 masterpieces of Japanese wood-block carving.

Imagine deciding what you are going to do, artistically, for the next 10 years of your life/career? And then to have to turn out a new piece almost every month for that decade.

And yet.

He finally started to see a return from repeat buyers ... collectors. And the collectors only grew over the years (and the collectors would want his back-catalog as well).

I know it's, again, not something everyone can emulate, but beautiful David found a way to navigate the path out of starving-artistry. Subscriptions and collections were the key.

Maybe you can help answer this question for me because I come at it from a very different place: why is it expected that you can make a living from art? I am not trying to disparage it, but it seems to me that most art, while having artistic value, carries little monetary value. When art was relatively rare, you might want to decorate your home or business with a specific piece. But today nothing is stopping most people from printing out photos they took or buying mass produced decorations in the form of paintings or photos from places like Target or IKEA. Moreover, most artists I’ve seen usually push the envelope in terms of form and factor. Some of the coolest art I’ve seen has been non-traditional: a 30’ birds nest made of 10,000 old T-shirts. A kettle made of soldered metal buttons. A huge outdoor concrete ring. These things are amazing, but as a consumer I would pay a small sum to see them once and never a large sum to take them home.

I also struggle a bit to understand the percentage of artists who make a living off art vs total numbers. I am a hobbyist photographer and have been hanging around photo subreddits a bunch. One thing I see is that every year more and more people pick up a camera and try to make art (street photography are landscapes are big it seems). But not many can make a living off it and those that do mostly do things like event, corporate, real estate, or wedding photography (so more service than creative). In other words when everyone is a photographer/artist, only a few will be able to make money, but in absolute numbers there still seems to be a steady demand for high quality art. I guess this is a bit like everyone can cook but only a few Michelin Star chefs exist and not every cook can expect to be a high profile chef.

Curious about your thoughts on this.

Art requires an investment by the artist of time and space and supplies. Many artist here rent art space, and it’s nice if they’re able to sell enough to keep it going, even if they’re not making a living at it.

And I think having “local” is also a useful perspective.

I stumbled upon the “gates” by Cristo in Central Park. I don’t know if it people I was with but all those gates around the park were inspiring. I’m not sure someone would be able to put that together as a part time hobby venture.

It’s kinda like philosophers, as a society I feel it useful to have people thinking about big picture things, but these people still need to eat. Its useful to have art. (All the electric boxes in this city are painted. Its a little thing but it make it nicer)[1] We don’t want only independently wealthy people with spare time participating.

That being said not everyone is going to be able to make a living at this (philosophy or art). In this area at least because of gentrification the days of people painting and selling and making enough are over. We also had the museum of bad art here, and I’ll agree not all art is fantastic and inspiring.

Everyone who wants to should make art. It’s fun and very satisfying. highly recommend.

I will say, I have bought a few pieces of original art (fairly affordable) and they bring me joy.

I can create my own art (and do) which I enjoy (Photography). I have no expectations of making money from this. I had the chance to buy an art/service and turned it down:

I was a wedding photography assistant last century (often I did a flash on a stick for double lighting). When my boss retired I was offered to buy the business from her. With a newly paid for engineering degree, and her always complaining about client demands, I decided against it.

[1]https://somervilleartscouncil.org/switchbox

Plenty of people are making some amount of money with NFTs that's more grounded in reality. I'm one of them. My NFTs sell for a couple hundred bucks and it's wonderful. There are probably hundreds or thousands of artists like me. We are not "art world" artists or big name "NFT" artists, but just folks that found a sales channel for our creative output.

Good for her. This could be a way for "meme stars" - who mostly got nothing out of their popularity besides anxiety, some weird talk show invites or webshop mug sales - to properly cash in on their immense cultural impact. Regardless of the value the buyer gets.

Good for her, but, she's just being used here to trick people into pumping money into a huge scam.

Anyone interested would just buy some other NFT instead. I'd say this is still a more valid """art piece""" to own compared to a random generated pixel dude.

As Winston Zeddemore said during his interview to be a Ghostbuster, "If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFX4fmldZFs

Of course a one-time six-digit check is also enough...

She's the one who just made $500K, I agree it's a huge scam, but she doesn't seem to be the one getting exploited.

Why is this a huge scam but paying 500k for a baseball card isn’t? To me, a baseball card is equally useless.

perhaps because NFT's offer no meaningful version of ownership -- you don't control it according to the government (no copyright/ip transfer), you don't control it according to the physical universe (you don't actually have anything -- not even bits), you don't control it according to the internet (others have just as much access and distribution as they did before), you don't control it according to blockchains in general (you can trivially establish a second NFT chain and claim ownership there).

The thing that's being traded is a certificate of ownership that is enforced and considered by almost no one. It's equivalent to trading on emails that say "I own the Eiffel Tower".

The fundamental question is why the hell does anyone want an NFT in the first place? "it's art" doesn't cut it, and "it's like baseball cards" doesn't really cut it either, because you aren't buying the card in a way that you can claim ownership over -- you're buying a certificate that contains a link to the card, and trading on that. Entirely independent of the object under question.

In fact, you don't need the digital asset in the first place. You might as well trade tokens directly, and let go of the farce. But I suppose you just have a normal coin then.

NFTs are probably more similar to baseball cards and other collectables than you give credit.

I can easily find an image on any card and print it. Still we value the original. NFTs are a proof the you own an original and not a copy.

A piece of cardboard is all you own with a baseball card. Value comes from artificial scarcity that owner has no control over. Baseball card companies can easily print more cards and destroy value. They don’t. There’s a social contract between collector and producer. Similar to NFTs.

I think it's more like if the player portrayed on the baseball card sold a certificate saying it's actually him on the baseball card with his signature on the certificate. The actual original of the card isn't traded. As the buyer, you don't end up owning anything new, you get just a signature from some guy.

The weird part to me is the issue of ownership.

Why would she own the photo or the meme just because she appears in it? Usually the photographer owns photos they take, unless they give it away or are paid for the rights to it?

And once something is uploaded online, it becomes more murky. Don't a lot of services will claim ownership of any photo uploaded to them, in their TOS?

Like others in this discussion I think NFTs are just a scam

That leads to the question what is IP.

NFTs may not answer that, but they put a price to it

Not really. It's not clear to me that any IP in the photo was sold. The OP says "And as is the case with many NFT sales, the Roths also retain the copyright to the image and will make 10 percent off any future sales of the NFT."

If you want to buy the copyright to something (or a license to it), you don't need an NFT. There was already a market price put on IP, you don't need NFTs for that.

I have no idea what NFTs are for.

Nothing, no legal base. This is an unregulateable market, nothing is enforced, but they all participate voluntarily. If a concept of ownership emerges it will be out of consensus not enforcement

>Why would she own the photo or the meme just because she appears in it?

It's somewhat complicated IANAL. She has certain publicity rights to her own image. So while the photographer probably holds the copyright, if a company wanted to use the image in an ad after obtaining rights from the photographer, she would likely have a claim. That's why stock photography typically requires model releases for recognizable people in the photo.

In this case, the article said her father took the photo, so I don't think there's going to be a dispute over that.

But also, it's not entirely clear to me you "need" to own the copyright to something to sell an NFT based on it. All you "need" is whatever the buyers think you need, and since the whole thing makes no sense to me either, I don't especially expect that to make any sense either.

Note that selling the NFT is not the same as selling a license or a copyright. The article also notes "And as is the case with many NFT sales, the Roths also retain the copyright to the image and will make 10 percent off any future sales of the NFT."

This has come up a couple of times, and I always wonder about it.

I'm sure Disney would sue regardless of whether or not they had any right to, but as far as I can figure out, anyone could make NFTs of Disney's entire online movie catalogue and there'd be no copyright issues at all. Someone like Banksy or even just some random person off the street could make another NFT of "Disaster Girl" and sell it for the same price, and it's not clear to me that the original author could do anything about it.

It's worth hammering home over and over that the vast majority of NFTs are just a link. They don't carry any ownership rights at all, or any exclusivity rights. It's no different than pasting a link into a Facebook post.

It’s hard to say that this a way for meme stars to cash in when it’s not exactly clear why in the hell someone would pay $500K for the meme. Not “I hate it personally, but I understand someone would like it”, but more “oh, it’s tulips again”.

It’s art. More so than a lot of the pieces at The Whitney who haven’t had an ounce of the cultural impact that this image has.

I don’t fault you though, the one constant in the art world throughout time is contemporary work being thought of as unworthy.

The issue here isn’t whether or not the meme is art, I genuinely don’t care about that, it’s whether or not the NFT represents ownership in a way that should convert to a currency value. Given that NFTs give you literally no ownership over the thing, it strikes me less as a tulip and more of a paper tulip being bid up to stratospheric prices.

> I don’t fault you though

Spare me the patronizing attitude, thanks.

I dont get it at all, but thats because it has always been claimed that a digital copy is not the same as stealing, say an originally hand painted - not exactly reproducable oil painting...

So exactly, aside from may bragging rights, does a tokenized digital "original" mean. Are they checking the file creation date?

Must the original be in the original file-format it was created in (meaning a .psd, .ai, .dwg etc) file?

I just dont understand the value.

Yeah, when I first stumbled upon NFTs, it looked like it was going to be a great way for small time creators/artists to cash in on their work. Some people might not want to donate to them, but if they're technically buying something for their donation, even something as ethereal as an NFT, they'll gladly fork over some money.

I considered buying some, not because I wanted to own an NFT, but because I wanted to put cash in the pocket of some illustrators/artists I like, especially in a time where they couldn't perform or have shows, etc. I wound up not buying any because the ones I was interested in were limited and sold out too quickly.

Then that Christie's auction happened and prices got kinda out of hand...

This doesn't even work as a status symbol, because I think there would be mass confusion at a dinner party about what, exactly, has just been bought. This doesn't seem to be a good, service, right to do something and it is difficult to see why this particular non-fungible-token is distinct from a different NFT claiming to represent the same thing.

It doesn't work as a status symbol at a dinner party, but I'm not sure that's necessarily the target market someone buying an NFT is trying to impress.

I doubt anyone is trying to impress someone, it’s more likely they’re hoping to resell it to a greater fool.

Why not create a new NFT and sell it instead? The NFT doesn't seem to convey any exclusive right here.

This is pathetic more than crazy. They're going to struggle to even prove they have the NFT. Only a tiny circle of people even know how to verify this stuff. They'd get just as much practical leverage out of lying to say they'd bought the NFT and donating all the money to a charity on the sly.

You know, maybe I bought it? Can we prove I didn't in a way I'd understand?

Not only could they be lying, it is completely irrelevant to anyone even if they are. Unless I've really misunderstood something and am on the fast track to looking stupid - there is nothing here to care about even if I wanted to.

Its disappointing that Hacker News can't seem to see past the fad. NFTs have some really interesting use cases. They're basically a digital deed or certificate of authenticity you can't just copy (at the very least it would be very difficult to do so). The patronage of art is just one use case.

An interesting use for NFTs is having objects "know" who owns them by seeing which address holds its NFT. The object can then perform tasks or give access only if you can provide a signature. Here's a pretty good video on NFTs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-i9Jsm95ro

Would someone explain an NFT to me, as an adult (not ELI5)? I keep reading stories like this and don’t understand why it would be valued at 500k

Digital data (IE an image) is fungible; it can be copied at near zero cost.

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) use the blockchain to “claim” ownership by being a single non-replicatable representation of that digital data.

In reality, it’s value is entirely dependent on people believing NFTs have value & that there’s only one blockchain in which they should exist.

I’ll add that whilst I’ve provided a somewhat technical definition, as to the logical reason someone would pay that amount of money: no idea whatsoever.

I guess they’re hoping that these things retain and even increase in value. At some point in history we decided that ink on canvas could be immensely valuable based on scarcity (arguable also they’re nice to look at, unlike an NFT), and I’m guessing they hope the same for NFTs. I guess memes are highly recognizable works of art to some?

The logical reason is: To pump prices because you are running a scam.

https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman/status/1387956657171271681

By this logic, pretty much every asset you can buy with money is a scam. I'd rather say NFTs and money are social constructs.

By what logic is that? I do not see any logic anywhere here that would imply any such thing.

“as to the logical reason someone would pay that amount of money: no idea whatsoever.“

One possible motivation: they see themselves in a position to benefit from NFT trading "becoming a thing". Either because they already own stock, or they expect themselves to become extraordinarily successful in speculation, or they consider themselves future creators, or they own/run a market where they will be traded. No matter which it was, they'd have a very real interest in bootstrapping the market into existence.

Pass around ownership in an effectively zero sum series of transactions with exponentially growing price, get media attention, stop being zero sum as soon as the first outsider steps in.

That sounds like people burning money. I have this vision of a large bonfire on a tranquil beach with people having soft casual conversations where that fire is burning large stacks of large denomination cash purely for aesthetics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qu...

Just to be clear: “ownership” in this context means a pinky promise from the creator to not create more NFTs of the same work.

It does not include any copyright assignment, or other aspects of ownership one might think of with physical items.

I wonder how this compares to "limited edition" prints of classic artworks, which are also far more expensive than a "normal" print in exchange for being uniquely identifiable.

Wouldn't that be fairly trivial to verify on the blockchain? I'd expect someone willing to spend millions would - or have someone - do some due diligence to confirm that the NFT they are buying is the first, unique NFT for this particular item.

Yes. The issue is that the NFT isn’t actual ownership, and in the case of memes there is no actual owner who can sell it.

You can verify that the NFT is unique, probably. But it doesn’t get you anything else.

I'm still a bit hazy on all this as well but I think that's the idea?

The NFT itself is basically some payload (any collection of bytes), a checksum of that payload, and some metadata. What's to stop someone from perturbing the payload by one byte and minting a second NFT? Nothing, really, other than "it's not the first". So yeah it's down to performing due diligence on the vendor and payload to make sure you aren't being snookered.

I think. I get the whole crypto aspect. I don't get the social/contract aspects.

So, if I understand correctly, it's just an evolution of the cryptocurrency itself? In the sense that instead of having a token you have an unique token? And going back to the currency analogy it just means you have a banknote with an autograph?

Worse than that: you have an autographed photo of a banknote.

When you phrase it like that, it reminds me of the explanation of CDOs from The Big Short:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUM59Eh6vTw

And it's equally disturbing...

"fungible; it can be copied at near zero cost."

That's not what "fungible" means. The "non-fungibility" of NFTs means that each one is a unique token, it doesn't have an "exchange rate".

Fungible means "able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable," it doesn't have any meaning about the price of making a copy/reproduction/another instance.

An ordinary quarter is "fungible", if you're paying me a quarter for a piece of candy, it doesn't matter to each of us which quarter you use, they are all interchangeable. (and that doesn't mean either of us can make a copy of a quarter for free!) An ounce of gold is fungible. A bushel of the same kind of and age of wheat is fungible if you're a commodities trader.

Every bitcoin is worth the same as every other bitcoin, at any given time they have an exchange rate with other currency. That's what "fungible" means. An NFT is just a unique token on it's own, and is not worth the same as any another NFT.

(I don't actually think the market in NFT's makes any sense, not trying to explain it as something sane, just the word "fungible").

Bitcoin is technically non-fungible because the transaction history of a coin is public information (I imagine if someone got ahold of Satoshi's coins they would be worth more than regular Bitcoins -- even just in terms of sentimental value). But for most practical purposes it is basically fungible.

Sure, good clarification. And fungibility can definitely be contextual, depending on context and requirements. Fungibility is really always about "enough people think it's fungible for their purposes and have agreed to treat it as fungible, so it is."

You’re right, I got my wires somewhat crossed there; I was trying to describe fungible as a lack of inherent uniqueness. That was a poor example.

It's basically the bastard child of cryptocurrency and modern art.

Technical hype + cultural hype + FOMO = $$$$$

Just go find an original meme image, claim it to be yours and sell it as an NFT. Profit!

It's like a trendy type of signature.

This explanation making rounds on Twitter is actually pretty good: https://twitter.com/yogthos/status/1387570034139140102

As for being an adult and not getting ELI5, see the last paragraph in that explanation. Yes, I am serious.

Source: https://queersamus.tumblr.com/post/649552477605249025

It's journal.

  Alice pays Bob 500 000 USD. Alice owns Bob soul. Record checksum: 0x3345dfe3. Journal checksum: 0x3345dfe3
  Charlie pays Bob 500 USD. Charlie owns Bob meme. Record checksum: 0x1305eee5. Journal checksum: 0x995faac2

And so on.

The description here https://twitter.com/charlottejee/status/1387722711766650884?... , whilst snarky, seems like a reasonable summary.

I also don't get it. An NFT is basically a small piece of text on the blockchain saying that you own the thing at a given URL. It doesn't mean you have copyright over the relevant intelectual property. There's nothing stopping the URL from returning a 404 at some point. And anyone can create an nft of anything, even if they don't actually own the intelectual property.

It really is as crazy as it sounds. The closest real world analogy I've seen is that it's like the people who sell deeds for plots of land on the Moon.

What's the URL for this particular NFT?

The info is linked to from here:

https://foundation.app/DisasterGirl/disaster-girl-25046

Here's the token:

https://etherscan.io/token/0x3b3ee1931dc30c1957379fac9aba94d...

What's burned into the blockchain is the URL of a JSON file which is hosted on IPFS:

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmYBvcJMaYFrUwhTRcbiHqFBoYPP54t4aBCnk1K...

That in turn points to the image, also hosted on IPFS:

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmeQ6c5HdnEDcheHmWuKWdwMHBBZg1eGpgV5h3H...

Here's the transaction which minted the token with the IPFS URL of the metadata as input:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xccc3f7ee08307dd469af7c65c55e087edc...

More about hosting NFT content on IPFS here:

https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/mint-nfts-with-ipfs/#a-short-int...

As to NFTs themselves, you’ll have to understand Etherium smart contracts. This particular NFT is a Foundation NFT which implements the ERC-721 interface:

http://erc721.org/

(Except the underlying contract actually appears to be https://docs.zeppelinos.org/docs/1.0.0/upgradeability_adminu... which I understand to be a contract that proxies its implantation. I’m not entirely clear how that works.)

There is an art market, people (dont ask me why) pay a lot of money for art and 'invest' in it, hoping things will go up. Originals have value - e.g. the original Mona Lisa will always be worth more than any copy, even if that copy was accurate down to the atomic level. Or an original banksy spray painted on a wall is worth lots of money ... if you took the exact same stencil he used, and sprayed your own version, it would be worth much less.

NFTs are an attempt to translate that into digital form. An artist will 'mint' an NFT (I think its based on a hash of the actual digital image/video whatever?) and then that 'minted' NFT is embedded in a blockchain and can be bought and sold. It is perceived to have value because its endorsed by the original artist.

Yes NFTs are weird but so is a lot of the real world art market, decades ago Yves Klein could paint a canvas pure uniform blue and people paid crazy money for that stuff.

I quite like the IKB canvases because they're outside the normal colour gamut; if you have an opportunity to see one in person you'll understand, because the colour cannot be accurately represented on screen or in a photograph. A neat trick. But I still can't see how it's worth millions.

It's a url of an image written on an array inside a smart contract. Something like

nft_owner["http://cloud.com/meme.jpg"] = address

The owner of that address has the permission to interact with that smart contract, only he can transfer it. Basically a type of ownership written on the blockchain that is all.

Are you allowed to profit off the ownership? Like put the NFT on physical media (shirts, stickers, etc) or license it to others?

No, the copyright doesn't (automatically) go with it, and there's basically zero legal-system recognition of NFTs.

The buyer likely has lots of the cryptocurrency used in the purchase and is likely either trying to promote use of it or launder money.

You can purchase a signed link that proves you “own” the link. It confers no other rights or capabilities typically part of ownership.

It’s expensive because anything crypto currency related is filled to the brim with fraud, money laundering, and “number go up” groupthink.

Imagine I have a bit of paper and I tell you in 3 years time, someone will want to buy this piece of paper for 10 million. I will sell it to you for 1 million now. If you believe me, it would be stupid to decline this offer.

Here it's explained in comedy form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiJa9diJOMk

You can also watch the film The Big Short for another view into finance.

The most important thing to grasp is, don't think this can't be true because it's so stupid. It's exactly as stupid as it sounds.

For a more serious look, listen to John Kay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX3E-CbY1uE Or read the corresponding book Other People's Money.

Why are people buying this ? Some money laundering thing going on ?

Either that, or these are (bitcoin?) millionaires to whom this is pocket change and might as be a good investment as any crypto nowadays.

If you have a heavy financial interest in meme NFTs or even just NFTs generally then all this publicity could easily be worth $500k. It’s not quite pump and dump, but it’s at least a cousin.

It's just one guy trying to pump prices:

https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman/status/1387956657171271681

As always, if it's related to cryptocurrency, the answer to the question "why" is "because it's a scam". Always.

this is just a scam, right? if you actually want to buy something valuable, why not buy the copyright?

Because copyrights are boring and don't bring free publicity.

No, he got it right the first time, it's a scam.

If it's a scam, how does it work? Who's getting scammed?

the last buyer.

And copyright generally belongs to whoever took the photo, at least in the US. Simply being in the photo doesn't grant copyright

The best way I’ve seen it described as it is in a way a digital “baseball card”. Baseball cards in and of themselves have no value, just text on a piece of cardboard, and if it is of the same player, they are mostly fungible. But, if the baseball card is of Babe Ruth, and you bought the card before he got famous, and you took good care of the card, now it is a valuable antique worth money. NFTs seem to be a digital form of that, complete with a JSON of its “stats”, with the added benefit that each one is completely unique.

As generous of a description as that is, I think your assessment of their current form is correct, as it really does feel like a scam. NFTs can’t be really “appreciated” the way that a collectible card can be appreciated, and heck I don’t think they have an actual viewer yet. I know that this criticism is a subjective thing, but I think it is significant.

Then again, rich people buy valuable artworks that they don’t appreciate either, except for the price that the artwork is worth. It could be digital wealth signaling.

I can see some of these "NFT sells for huge amount" cases being scams where the fake buyer is in fact the creator, and they're just after publicity or hoping to boost their future ability to sell to actual buyers.

Thinking about this, all i can come up with is: some people have WAY too much money on their hands.

To quote a famous circus master†: "There's a sucker born every minute." And these NFT sales prove it.

† No, the attribution can't be proven, but it's good enough for government work.

We're all aware that this is just for money laundry, yes? Nobody really thinks "owning" an NFT of a meme is really worth $500k to anyone, right?

As much as I think NFT is a bit of a crackpot idea, i’m extremely happy that she was able to do this. Now let’s get Bad News Brian an NFT!

He was involved in selling it (see TFA)

rational me thinks NFTs are just an expensive fad - something that is arbitrarily "non fungible" really isn't non-fungible. You're not even getting the copyright IP.

But maybe there's something to this? Is this real or is it a big scam?

It's hype/tulip mania mixed with a scam. Even people who are generally skeptical of normal crypto recognize that at the very least it's a good way to buy drugs on the darkweb. NFTs, on the other hand, offer zero utility.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com