It has honestly surprised me that a bunch of people I thought were smart really think NFTs are a good long term investment. It clearly has no value beyond speculation and the bubble will pop.
Nobody is universally brilliant. Newton spent as much time on alchemy as he did physics. Maybe NFTs are just the modern alchemy, as they do seem to turn random items into digital gold.
I don't think that was an act of unbrilliance. It just didn't happen to work out.
Nobody is privy to the full content of Newton's mind and his mental processes. One could also argue that his metaphysical preoccupations positively influenced his scientific accomplishments. Heck, at a meta level, is not Newtonian Physics intellectual 'Gold' end result of processing the 'Lead' in his head? That's alchemy.
https://www.businessinsider.com/isaac-newton-lost-a-fortune-...
They literally have no value other than what is attributed to them, so if you want to clean up some money you just have to buy an NFT with legit money for X, then sell it to yourself using less-than-legit money.
Now you own all legit money, and have only spent some minor transaction fees.
But thank you, that’s the most concise explanation I’ve seen for exactly how people could use NFTs to launder money.
If this is happening, would you expect to see a bunch of NFTs go from nothing, then sell for a large amount, then not move again?
Oh also I think you’d also have to declare capital gains tax to do it properly, but that’s better than laundering money via income.
it is supposedly something that happens often with physical art, and there have been a lot of attempts to prevent it via regulation, e.g. the AML Standards for Art Market Operators[0].
In crypto space as usual we're at the "frontier" state where lack of regulations allow shady behaviours, and they will until the authorities catch up and crypto becomes "normalized".
[0] "Once purchased, the art can disappear from view for years, even decades." https://www.moneylaunderingnews.com/2019/03/art-and-money-la...
One shows off your wealth in person, the other will let you show it off online.
Then what if someone mints new NFTs based on (say) the same images used for the cryptopunks cartoons?
You could get your extremely online bragging rights for an affordable price.
How do you handle someone minting multiple nfts of the same image on different chains?
Twitter seems to have too many engineers.
The watch example is apt, similar to a Richard Mille being a flex that 99% of people won’t ever notice or understand it conveys status.
We already have strong social taboos about flashing bank accounts. The whole point of status good is they convey wealth rather than tactlessly showing a total.
See if this feels familiar:
Paris Hilton buys NFT of Hello Kitty! creator's DNA, says "crypto is the future"
Besides, expensive watches look really pretty and shiny. NFT is not.
Exactly like NFTs. Not defending NTFt's just pointing out your argument isn't making much sense as presented.
I can create some trillions digital bits, then mint trillions NFTs for each of them.
> One shows off your wealth in person, the other will let you show it off online.
That's some pretty faulty logic, there. You're looking at it from the wrong end: it doesn't matter if you can imagine an object could be used as a wealth-status symbol, what actually matters is if it's actually recognized as one by a community with enough power for their recognition to matter.
Also, expensive status-bauble watches are stupid, too.
Huh? That doesn't make any sense.
1. "if they ever get stranded in a messy situation": I'm interpreting that as a situation where they need to barter the watch or use it as a bribe. However there's hard limits on how much they could realistically get for a watch due to the seller's desperation and the buyer's risk (I'm guessing a few thousand dollars), even if they paid tens of thousands or more for it. The cheapest gold Rolex you can find (or maybe even a knock off) makes far more sense for this use case than some elite status watch.
2. "if ... their wealth is confiscated": anyone confiscating their "wealth" to the point where they're in the "poverty zone" more than likely will confiscate valuables like $100k watches, jewelry, art, etc. Planning for that to be your "back up wealth" is about as dumb as planning on living in your garage if you ever lose your home.
Hint: it's not about status. It's about pumping the price of eth.
Using defi is how I would imagine typing in a chatroom or accessing a website felt back when the web was just in its infancy.
Welcome to HackerNews, a place that should think startup-like progressive, but really is technology conservative.
Or Ethereum2?
How is this relevant to a Bitcoin conversation?
Why does that surprise you? As the article from this discussion shows, there is strong evidence supporting the idea that crypto in general "it's just a big scheme".
Who's doing the scheming, I wonder?
As with all pump-and-dump schemes, obviously those who pump it.
Let's put it differently: what concrete, real-world, tangible value is there driving crypto speculation? Is there any at all?
It boggles the mind how crypto proponents try to frame crypto in general and their own investments in particular as something that has this sky-high intrinsic value based only on potential popularity and a belief that they can pump them up indefinitely.
For a possible answer, please read my other post in this thread.
You've posted an awful lot of messages, but the only one remotely related to crypto's intrinsic value was the following post which makes no relevant point at all.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28902307
In it, your main thesis is that you allege that crypto offers a way to "completely shield value", which is outright and patently false.
Even so, trying to portray crypto in general and BTC in particular as serving as a store of value is an absurd notion from the start, as it's renowned for being highly volatile and so prone to crashes that halve it's value that crypto's hardline proponents already invented the concept of periodic corrections.
Ah, but this time it's different?
Distributed technology eats everything.
Getting into a pyramid scheme early does not grant anyone any special insight onto how it is not a pyramid scheme. All they get is the benefits from getting in early, confirmation bias, and an irrational belief that not only past performance guarantees future results but also there is absolutely no growth ceiling.
But that is not the case with crypto is it.
Maybe take a look what pyramid schemes really look like. Here is the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme
> Matrix schemes use the same fraudulent, unsustainable system as a pyramid; here, the participants pay to join a waiting list for a desirable product, which only a fraction of them can ever receive.
You pay dollars expecting to get a lot of dollars in the future. This is why most pay for bitcoin, and since it is impossible for everyone to make money it is a pyramid scheme. The future payoff can only happen if a lot of other people pay more dollars, which will be used to pay you. And since the system constantly extracts money to pay for all the hashing it is impossible for everyone to even break even, people will lose a ton of money in the end.
This is different from normal currency trading. When you buy dollars you are betting on the US government and the US market to be strong so the dollar gains value. Bitcoin however doesn't have any backing like that, it is a negative sum game.
Edit: The core concept of pyramid schemes is this, basically it is a business model which requires infinite new entrants to be sustainable. Bitcoin is like that, it only works as long as bitcoin enthusiasts continue to recruit new people to invest in bitcoin. Hence bitcoin is a pyramid scheme, even if there isn't any tax on sub transactions.
> Pyramid schemes are based on network marketing, where each person in the pyramid is tasked with bringing in their own subordinates and in turn profiting from their sales or recruitments. This fails because it essentially requires an infinite number of people to join the company.
Second of all, I didn't buy crypto because it will give me an infinite supply of money given to me by subordinates.
I buy crypto when I think it's undervalued. I sell when I think it's overvalued. Doesn't everyone????
I'm also not recruiting any subordinates. So sorry, but your pyramid scheme theory falls short.
Many things have actually no intrinsic value (like art) yet don't lose value over time that much.
Although I’m hopeful maybe someone will find a decent use case for them.
That's IMO a very reductive view. While - true - art is used to launder money, that's not the only thing that lends it value.
If that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be any brick and mortar museums left in the world and you could buy the original Mona Lisa for a dime - since everyone else would have a 16k x 16k reproduction of it, essentially identical to the original.
Somehow, that does not happen.