Comment by 015a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 015a | Hacker News Reader

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Yet, are you rich after torrenting that? Of course not.

There's the disconnect. The phantom in the system that some people aren't groking; the leap of faith. Why do (a vast minority of) the NFTs in that torrent still have value, despite the torrent existing?

Why is Disney worth $275B despite all of their movies hitting The Pirate Bay immediately upon their release?

I can Google Image search pictures of the Mona Lisa with zero effort. Thus, the original is worthless?

I'd ask detractors of the crypto/NFT movement really think critically about those questions. Not just for minutes and hours; not just for the time it takes to bash Reply and say "lol right click save as". Read up about the history of money; integrate ideas about megacorporation control over our government and economic systems, human behavior and nature, and what the concept of ownership really means.

I can't refute all the arguments against in one comment, and some are legitimate. But I'll leave you with one thought which fundamentally changed my viewpoint on NFTs: isn't it beautiful that you can right click save as on an NFT? That this system exists which, theoretically, enables creators to see compensation for their work, one consumer of that work to feel ownership/responsibility, and the population at large to enjoy it for free?

> Why is Disney worth $275B despite all of their movies hitting The Pirate Bay immediately upon their release?

Merchandise, theme parks, movie tickets, cruises, live shows (eg "Disney on Ice"), and so on. You're typically not going to find an HD quality pirated movie the second it hits theaters, only once it's released to the home or sent out as a screener. That's only a tiny slice of their diversified pie. For the record, I'm not usually one to defend Disney as a corporation.

> I can Google Image search pictures of the Mona Lisa with zero effort. Thus, the original is worthless?

It's not worthless. :) The original is the original physical painting that you can touch and feel, and your Google Image results are a bunch of pixels of photos/scans of the painting. On the other hand, if you create an original .jpg and sell it as an NFT, every other .jpg of that NFT is literally identical to the original, something you cannot achieve with your Mona Lisa comparison.

"NFT is literally identical to the original" Youre so close here! Literally identical except for the fact that people are willing to pay millions of dollars for one, and not the other! Perhaps there is something else that makes them different too.....

So, would you agree with the following statement: The value of the real Mona Lisa is dominated by its physicality; the ability for its owner to touch and feel it.

A few further thoughts to ponder over:

1) No one touches and feels the Mona Lisa. Now, that's something wholly unique to High Art, but it is worth bearing: the Mona Lisa sits in a vault, or behind panes of glass, only touched by caretakers, who don't even own it. Yet, it has value.

2) Actually, I pulled the Mona Lisa as an example, but consider: is the Mona Lisa actually valuable? By what measure? USD in a Private Sale? Is there a market (really want to stress that word, because its critical: Market) for the Mona Lisa? Is there demand for the Mona Lisa, or is the risk of owning a stolen original of the most well-recognized art in history too great? Consider how this flips the conversation: I just presented a compelling argument for why the Mona Lisa, this Thing we've been using as a stand-in to represent a "highly valuable original good", may actually be worthless! Supply, Demand, and Market Liquidity vastly dominate the Pricing of most goods/services; not Value. Art Caretakers oftentimes describe pieces of art as "priceless"; its easy to interpret that as "REALLY EXPENSIVE", but they actually mean it at face value: No one knows what the price would be, because it has no price, because it has no market.

3) Are nonphysical goods destined to be valueless? For digital goods: Isn't this already sustainably demonstrated to be false, independent of any conversation on crypto? Fortnite turns billions a year in revenue, selling digital costumes and experiences to wear them in. Those costumes hold value to people; not marketable value, but value none-the-less.

4) Does Slack have value? Woah. Think about that for a second. What is the value of Slack? Forget the stock market; think intrinsic. Its a Digital Service. So, per the argument; its nonphysical, cannot be touched and felt, and isn't even a discrete good! This should be the apex of Worthlessness in many peoples' naive model of value, which is endlessly applied in-kind to NFTs; yet Slack demonstrably and undeniably has Value. Where does it come from? What components comprise the value of Slack Inc?

I'll pay $1000 for the Mona Lisa. Just like that, theres a market for it now.

A market requires both a buyer and a seller. There are no sellers; and thus, no market.

Disney creates works billions of people want to see, and they have governments around the world enforce the ownership rights.

Nobody wants the piece of art associated with your NFT’s. And is there even any legally framework for the ownership of NFT’s or is it just something a weird club of people says is so?

> Disney creates works billions of people want to see.

Yup!

> and they have governments around the world enforce the ownership rights.

This is one of the strongest selling points of crypto for its supporters; that, when it makes sense, floaty, legal ownership rights can be replaced with hard cryptography. It doesn't make sense for every good, or even every digital good.

> Nobody wants the piece of art associated with your NFT’s

Speaking wholesale for seven billion human beings, I see.

> And is there even any legally framework for the ownership of NFT’s or is it just something a weird club of people says is so?

Ideally, theoretically; its not a legal framework, its a cryptographic framework. The minting address of the original artist would be publicly known, and is encoded into the chain of custody for every NFT.

This is the jump that many detractors don't make. Its not the blockchain that prescribes authenticity to the NFT; the chain VALIDATES authenticity, it doesn't prescribe it. Its not OpenSea (though they can definitely make it all more user friendly). Its the chain of custody and the address of the original minter.

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