Sotheby’s Metaverse curated NFT marketplace | Hacker News Reader

Sotheby’s Metaverse curated NFT marketplace

metaverse.sothebys.com

Ahh, thanks Sotheby's for telling me the tastemakers in the NFT sphere are Steve Aoki and NFTGirl.

BTW:

>many of whom have been collecting long before NFTs became a common term and have helped build the ecosystem from the ground up

"My run up to the NFT space was summer 2020." - Steve Aoki[0]

Truly an early innovator, getting in 3 years after the crypto kitties was basically a top headline for crypto news

[0]https://www.morningbrew.com/emerging-tech/stories/2021/08/16...

I’m struggling mightily to see how most NFT hasn’t just become beanie babies part deux. There are absolutely some digital works I can see containing long term value having the original. Nothing on that page is it.

This page contains a wide mix of artworks and artists, including some who have had significant success in the traditional art world. If you can't find anything there that is worth your attention, maybe you didn't look closely enough?

There no NFTs are worth my attention.

> I’m struggling mightily to see how most NFT...

There is intrinsic and then there is extrinsic valuation; it's no different than startup valuations. But since this is HN I don't want to dive into market psychology, I'll leave you with a 1-million-dollar example, with source code[0] to (one of) the OpenSea smart contracst[1] to determine the value for yourself.

[0] https://etherscan.io/address/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118... [1] https://opensea.io/assets/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18...

A bunch of these are Pepe The Frog[1] derivations. It’s not clear that they have anything to do with the original artist, Matt Furie. I know that art remixes culture and modern art sometimes pushes the bounds of IP law, but this just feels like appropriating another artist’s work.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepe_the_Frog

Any company that has or had anything to do with Decentraland, specifically, is not to be taken seriously.

Good time as ever to plug Wendover's recent video about how the art world works.

https://youtu.be/ZZ3F3zWiEmc

Seeing Sotheby's attach its name to NFTs confirms every suspicion i ever had about NFTs.

There is one particular claim in the video that seems strange to me: That buying a painting for 4 million, and donating it at 10 million will net me a profit; how does that work? I 6 million dollar or 10 million dollar tax write-off does not mean you earn this amount; the actual amount you can consider a profit will depend on your tax rate; in the US, it seems to top out t 37%?

What am I missing?

you have a charitable donation of 10M so you can deduct 10M in tax, at a cost of 4M. Tax rate is not relevant, you are subtracting 10M of your tax liabilities

In which country is this? For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_contribution_deduct... says "The taxable income of the donor is reduced". To be specific, this would mean that instead of paying the tax rate on 100 million, you now pay it on 90 million.

yeah that's not correct sorry

Federal income taxes top out at 37% but state taxes add on to that. Most states have a top bracket over 3% to get it over the 40% threshold to break even. California has a top bracket of 13.3% for a total of 50.3%, so that example would be a net profit of a million dollars.

[off topic]

wow that scrolling performance is horrible. you'd think sothebys can afford more than just good designers.

who came up with the "metaverse" word?

is this a marketing trick to sell me something?

or is this an attempt for the media/companies to regain influence on the internet?

"metaverse", i never heard of that word in casual conversations

i'm curious to know about its origin, and why it is linked to NFT scams

It's a term from Snow Crash, for the 3D virtual worlds there. And well, a world which requires selling virtual stuff and virtual space to people is kind of the thing of the web3/crypto folks right now.

Thanks, i'll look into Snow Crash, that looks interesting

Neal Stephenson’s, but I think it caught on due to Zuckerberg calling Facebook VR platform “the metaverse”, and it got immediately coopted by the cryptosphere (I remember seeing Decentraland first use the term, and they’re affiliated to some other big NFT players, like BAYC, so they’re definitely very good at generating hype). Roblox, Fortnite and others were already using the term for a little while, but it seems it became a larger meme after FB’s keynote

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

Crypto is really good at co-opting terms.

Crypto, Metaverse, Web 3.0, Decentralization.

VRland is better. It's a social metaverse platform powered by WebGL, WASM, and WebXR. You can create your own galleries using the gallery template in the main lobby. Works on every device with a screen and browser.

https://vrland.io/035TBg/cocoNFT-Contest

Maybe you should disclose your affiliation when you shamelessly plug yourself.

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