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Comment by miracle2k | Hacker News Reader

The creator of this site seems to have a fairly nuanced take, but there some critics who earnestly seem to think that right-click saving an NFT is owning the crypto-bros, where the latter simply couldn't care less.

There is also something off about about the "it's a url" obsession, as if the storage location of the bytes makes a conceptual difference. As if storing bytes on the blockchain (as some NFTs do) would suddenly make critics go "oh, one of copies of the JPEG is stored on the blockchain, now owning arbitrary ledger entries makes total sense".

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As someone who likes NFTs in theory, the "it's just a url" problem is a real stumbling block for me, because it's a point of fragility for the asset.

If the NFT is just a URL, and there's nothing within the NFT itself that provably links it to a specific work of media, and ideally a signature from the original artist, then there's no way to be absolutely certain that the piece of media currently vended by the URL is in fact the same piece of media vended 10 years ago when it was minted. You could have a situation where people mint NFTs as "shell art" that they trade back and forth to create some kind of established history of value, and then stick in some new piece of art at a later date with a false history of value. Or the URL host could go under or get corrupted by bad actors and start vending the wrong data, and still, you'd have no way to prove what the original digital media was.

That's honestly a blocker for me.

Now, if the NFT actually included a hash of the media AND a digital signature of the artist that could be externally verified, then I might be interested.

The thing is, the whole thing depends on people actually giving a shit about verifying any of it.

If you see someone with a monkey profile picture, you aren't going to download some specialized software and finding it in the blockchain, verifying that the twitter user is in control of the wallet holding the token and finding the artists keys to check the signature is valid and then auditing other chains and other tokens to check that the same picture was not sold multiple times which would involve scraping the URLs and doing image comparisons.

All to verify that this twitter user actually did spend this money for a monkey picture.

The value of an original Picasso depends on people actually giving a shit about verifying it.

Most arguments against NFTs could be levied just as effectively against the premium value of original physical art.

Or do you hold the view that art as an asset in general is a scam?

There are only a very limited number of paintings that people actually care about being genuine. And mostly they have long histories. The vast vast majority of paintings are only worth their effort for someone to create again today. NFTs will almost all be entirely worthless in a years time. Almost anything sold as a collectors item becomes worthless after the first sale.

Yes, and the exact same will be true of NFTs.

Just like physical art, the vast majority that ever gets produced is garbage that won't be preserved.

It takes decades and centuries to really weed out the truly valuable gems from the chaff. That's why "investing" in NFTs (or any art for that matter) is a sucker's game or a game for rich people who have the time and resources to promote their favorite patronized artist and keep their work elevated in our collective consciousness.

yes, and the art market is also equally known for money laundering

No, but these people will participate on social sites which run software to do all that for you, so they get to see a little 'Authentic!' badge on their monkey picture, and everyone else sees it too. They will also try desperately to get everyone else to use these sites, so they will have people around to be impressed by their Authentic! monkey picture. I suppose in the worst-of-all-possible-futures, Twitter and Facebook adopt this scheme and verify your monkey pictures for your adoring fans too.

What I can't understand is why anyone with a soul thinks this is a world we should move toward.

And what stops the social site from sell Authentic badges for a fee smaller that the NFT price? Or letting people upload an avatar that is visually indistinguishable from the authenticated one?

> As if storing bytes on the blockchain (as some NFTs do) would suddenly make critics go

Disappearing URLs is a real problem with NFTs today, regardless of how much of the concept makes sense. https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/25/22349242/nft-metadata-exp...

If NFT is stupid, it's way stupider in its current state.

To be fair there is a non-small portion of the crypto-bros I've seen on Twitter who can get quite mad at people right-clicking. It's pretty great trolling to watch when it happens.

And has produced some lovely art, too!

https://twitter.com/nicodotgay/status/1458891554026930181

The general sentiment of crypto-twitter that I do follow seems to have the opinion that right-click-savers actually help drive up value of the NFTs that they do own, since it's essentially free advertisement. I haven't seen many or even anyone at all who's actually upset, but maybe that's just the group I do follow.

I mean, it IS absolutely a valid concern anyone should have if they are buying something dependent on the hosting of a URL.

It would be silly to say otherwise.

The thing you're buying with an NFT is not the thing to which the URL points. Buying an NFT is not a proxy for buying the data at the target of the URL. Buying an NFT is just buying the NFT. It does not confer any rights or ownership over anything other than the NFT.

NFTs are about status and belonging. I doubt many NFT owners ever follow the URL to check that their Ape is still there, it doesn't matter. As long as they can claim to be the sole owner.

It's free advertising at this point, people are memeing them into relevance.

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