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Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

> I’m going to try minting my more popular tweets as NFTs

I totally don't get this. They're tweets meaning that they're already out there. There's no scarcity here. Am I missing something?

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You're missing the fact that enough people see value there to be willing to pay for it, therefore it might be worth selling it. That's all "value" is.

I do agree that it's stupid. But it's the buyers who are stupid, not the sellers.

This is probably one thing the Chinese get right in terms of economics. Banning speculative and worthless commodities. It does nobody any good because we all know it's just a speculative market. The few who get out in time make a profit while the many that don't almost become destitute because of it. It doesn't promote tangible benefits to anyone. Nobody has a skill, nothing of value is transferred, simply money changing hands because someone else deems a worthless commodity is more valuable than it is.

Reminds me of beenie babies. Some are still valuable to the right buyers but that can be said of any collectable over the last century. However that doesn't mean beenie babies were a good investment or that selling beenie babies led to any lasting success.

It exactly reminds me of beanie babies (and Cabbage Patch Kids before them). Most of them aren't worth anything now. It seems like every generation just feels like they need repeat this mistake.

There are plenty of images of the "Mona Lisa" painting, and you can print one yourself if you wish something to hang on your wall, but there's a 'real' one. Similarly the original creator of the digital item (tweet?) makes a public statement that they're assigning it to you. Think of it as a certificate of authenticity:

* https://www.agora-gallery.com/advice/blog/2017/12/02/prepare...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_authenticity

A chain of custody from the original creator, to you, to whomever you may sell it to.

The Plain Bagel channel had a good video on the subject, 'WTF Is an NFT? (And Should You "Invest" in One?)':

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItG-W3_EvOY

Most of the stuff I'm seeing aren't anywhere near the Mona Lisa in quality.

> Similarly the original creator of the digital item (tweet?) makes a public statement that they're assigning it to you.

Ok, and what does this actually get me? How meaningful is "ownership" in this context?

> Most of the stuff I'm seeing aren't anywhere near the Mona Lisa in quality.

Most of what I see in modern art, which goes for tens of millions of dollars, doesn't look like much to me:

* https://luxurylaunches.com/auctions/9-pieces-of-art-ridiculo...

And yet it seems to be "worth" that much to someone. Heck, I don't think much of the "Mona Lisa" as a painting personally—give me a Rembrandt or Monet for my wall—but I wouldn't mind owning it, just so I could turn around and sell it, as the money would be more useful to me.

What makes someone pay tens of millions for a watch?

* https://www.forbes.com/sites/hylabauer/2017/10/26/paul-newma...

> Ok, and what does this actually get me? How meaningful is "ownership" in this context?

You get to say that you own it, and there is a seemingly legally-approved chain of custody that says you do. You can continue to keep it, or you can pass ownership to someone else.

More generally: how meaningful is the ownership of anything? I'm planning to buy a new pair of shoes for about $100 this weekend because my current pair is old. Yet people are willing to layout thousands of dollars for sneakers:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneaker_collecting

What makes them "worth" that much? Why would anyone spend that kind of money to own something like that?

This is similar to Bitcoin: it's just a bunch of bits, so how meaningful is ownership of bits in the ledger? Why do people follow a certain process to exchange money so that some bits (transactions/ledger) say that I own certain other bits (wallet contents)?

There's no scarcity for any NFTs because they are all trivially replicated. The only thing you ever have is entry on the blockchain that you own the NFT. That's as true for a NFT of a tweet or an NFT of a bored ape.

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