How is spending $1 000 000 on a "virtual image" (NFT) any different than spending it on a Picasso? There are equivalent/superior copies of both readily available, but some people value provenance...
The NFT is also not the work in question. While there are some proof of concept works that have their binary data stored directly in the blockchain, the vast majority are just URLs to some other site, URLs that could die or change at any time. And there is no recourse within the blockchain itself to adjudicate the breach of trust that would represent. Which means, again, we have to fall back on the traditional system of legal contracts and courts to resolve disputes.
In other words, the decentralized, "zero-trust" nature of NFTs completely undermines any concept of ownership that isn't a post-hoc rationalization designed to part fools from dollars.
There are a lot of fools in this market that don't understand the tech or its specific guarantees and non-guarantees, sure, but that doesn't mean NFTs aren't bringing anything new at all to the table.
You can't say that NFTs are a trustless system when the origin of the NFT requires trust. You might as well assume the "+ C" term in all integrals equals zero. It's just factually incorrect.
No, as long as it's known that the address that created the NFT is owned by whichever public figure created the artwork, you're good to go.
> You can't say that NFTs are a trustless system when the origin of the NFT requires trust.
That's like saying PGP is not a trustless encryption scheme because you still have to trust that the person you're exchanging encrypted information with is who they say they are. Nobody (who is informed anyway) has made any sort of claim about PGP fixing that problem. It is entirely irrelevant to the value-add.
Now, whether you believe the value-add actually matters given the caveats is another topic of discussion, of course.
Nobody--who is informed--has given me any coherent description of what value add NFTs provide, period. These ever shifting sands of never-enumerated benefits.
What, exactly, did you mean when you said "the value-add of NFTs... is namely that there's a trustless, verifiable record of transfer"? You responded to my assertion that NFT ownership is not trustless by saying that wasn't the value-add, the value-add was that they were trustless.
It means you're criticizing something for the wrong reason. Criticizing PGP for not doing something it ever claimed to do is akin to criticizing NFTs for not doing something it ever claimed to do.
> Nobody--who is informed--has given me any coherent description of what value add NFTs provide, period.
Since I assume you're intelligent enough to understand, I can only assume that means you don't want to understand.
> What, exactly, did you mean when you said "the value-add of NFTs... is namely that there's a trustless, verifiable record of transfer"?
Meaning that so long as you can verify that the NFT was minted by who you think it was minted by, you don't have to trust any of the intermediaries that it passed through. It's like buying something that comes with a physical certificate of authenticity. In real life, you have to trust that the certificate itself was not forged by any of the people in the supply chain before it got to you. That's the part that an NFT solves.
The trust issues that an NFT does not solve (that also exists in real life):
1. Some rando Bob prints out their own certificate of authenticity and calls it "Bob's Certificate of Authenticity that This Painting is a Picasso." It's up to you to verify that Bob is someone whose opinion is worth respecting and trusting.
2. The physical product (if there is one) that the certificate of authenticity comes with is in fact the same physical product it originally came with. Not so much a problem with digital goods.
> You responded to my assertion that NFT ownership is not trustless by saying that wasn't the value-add, the value-add was that they were trustless.
Yes, because there are obviously multiple dimensions to the concept of trust, and for some reason you're conflating all of them.
I mean, it's really not a hard concept to wrap your mind around. Unless, of course, you'd prefer to keep looking down on NFTs as a form of status signaling, in which case do keep on pretending not to understand.
Those people should stay away from NFTs, because theft is rampant[1].
> How is spending $1 000 000 on a "virtual image" (NFT) any different than spending it on a Picasso?
You own the Picasso but you don’t own the NFT image. Not in any way that matters. Your “ownership” of the virtual image via an NFT isn’t legally recognised and you have no rights to it. Especially not when the minter stole the image[1].
An NFT isn’t a virtual image, but a reference to it. Anyone else can download the same file for free and your purchase can be gone without recourse[2].
A more apt comparison would be spending $1,000,000 on a Picasso or a document that says you own the Moon.
[1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7vxe7/people-are-stealing-a...
[2]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdj79/peoples-expensive-nft...
There are only so many "original" Picassos because Picasso is dead, but if we consider artwork that looks just as good as Picasso's, then the scarcity is entirely artificial and caused by provenance.
NFTs from a particular source will similarly become "truly" scarce once that source is dead.
There may be a difference in degree, in how hard it is to recreate a physical work versus a digital one. But it is not a difference in kind.
Look - MBS bought that fake Da Vinci for $450M or whatever. I don't think the majority of people buying $50M+ paintings are complete morons. Maybe they are.
> Look - MBS bought that fake Da Vinci for $450M or whatever.
Case in point. That's why you hire an expert (or perhaps even a team of experts) to help you out.
I will 100% grant that it's mostly about signaling and bragging rights. But NFTs are artificially scarce. Original work from Picasso is truly scarce.
> But NFTs are artificially scarce.
We're just going in circles now. Reread my previous response to why they're no more artificially scarce than Picassos.
Except that those are also scarce because they take the labor of expert hands to make too. People actually would pay money for known forgeries because of it. Absent copyright law and a desire to fund the artist, no one would pay for digital art because copies are as close to free as makes no difference.
The NFT took work to produce, sure, but it's just a number with some mathematical relationship to other numbers and means absolutely nothing without other systems agreeing that it means something. It creates work to be done where none needs to be done solely for the purpose of trying to fit a square peg (post-scarcity information) into a round hole (scarcity-based markets).
That's where you're mistaken. An NFT is distinct from the work that the NFT is tied to, which might not necessarily be digital.
You can copy a Picasso, but no matter how good your copy is, you can't copy the "original" quality of a Picasso. That's all an NFT is, representing the "originaL" quality of something.
The worth (or lack thereof) of copies is completely irrelevant.
Yep. Which raises the question: what exactly does the NFT provide? Is the work it points to in any way lesser through its absence? If no, then why does the NFT exist?
> You can copy a Picasso, but no matter how good your copy is, you can't copy the "original" quality of a Picasso.
There's a long philosophical argument to be made here involving the ship of Theseus, the teletransportation paradox, and frankly thousands of years of philosophy of identity. Let me attempt a short version: if you have two identical paintings, and lack external information as to their origin, can not either one (or both) be said to be the 'true' painting? If so, then what value is there in the information that 'proves' one is the 'original'? The origin-information, an NFT in this case, is a construction, an arbitrary assurance. What value has an NFT that points at nothing?
> The worth (or lack thereof) of copies is completely irrelevant.
I think we agree about what NFT's are, so the only real disagreement is about their value. Precisely because of the point above, I think we would both agree that their value is completely divorced from the value of what they point to, right? So the NFT's value must stand on its own without regard to the work it points to, right? Therefore, saying it represents the 'originalness' of a work cannot be where its value comes from because that is a derivation of value from the value of the work.
I assert that the value of an NFT is effectively 0. Anyone can make any NFT they want, and it might be unique, but uniqueness is not inherently valuable. Here's a UUID v4: 6dee29bc-8798-4560-ba13-de94bac69333. I generated it just now and it is the first and theoretically only time that UUID will ever be generated. Since I have generated this UUID, I have gone ahead and signed it with a private key and thus claim ownership of it. Here's a pastebin to the public key: https://pastebin.com/ddVJxvck and the signed UUID: https://pastebin.com/0MweD9qN. This is effectively an NFT. How much would you like to pay me to sign a certificate of ownership transfer to you?
Summing all up: The work that went into the creation of a thing is all that has value. NFTs can be created for basically free by literally anyone who wants to and therefore they have no value. Claims that an NFTs value comes from it pointing to something are bunk as we both agree the value of what it points to is irrelevant.
This is the crux of it, really. Why do art buyers care so much about what the “original” is? If the reproduction is so good that you need an external expert to tell you which is the original and which is the reproduction, then that basically means it’s not the aesthetic qualities that you’re paying millions for, but the “original” quality that you’re paying for.
This original quality, as I’ve noted, allows you to signal your wealth/cultural tastes and whatnot. Now, I agree with you in that I hardly find any value myself in that, but it’s apparently worth millions to other people who are not us.
In short, I only claim that NFTs are as ridiculous/non-ridiculous as the traditional art market. If you think the traditional art markets are also bunk, fair enough. What I take issue with is thinking that NFTs are a uniquely stupid phenomenon but expensive traditional art is a respectable one.
He even made two versions with the same title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Musicians
I can't, but will happily pay anyone that can considerably more than the Ethereum gas fees involved in minting an NFT copy of something.
https://www.marcalexanderart.com/reproductions/
"own a museum quality reproduction of a great master’s painting that is indistinguishable from the original"
It'll look better on my wall though, which is why I'd consider commissioning it.
For related reasons, I suspect that whilst more people would flock to see the actual Sistine Chapel ceiling than one I commissioned for my living room, I'd still have an easier time wowing people with the living room artwork than a NFT with a gif, even if it was countersigned by the Vatican
It's almost like the important bit of the provenance for appreciation is in having the actual physical original the actual artist worked on, not a certificate saying you sent some money to someone on an aftermarket and exactly the same gif everybody else has
For example, consider a baseball or other trading card. Can be easily replicated/printed - yet certified authentic cards have value much more value. Why?
This isn't difficult to understand.
It is not artificially scarce. Picasso could've painted a Guernica every month for the rest of his life. Even then, he would've only painted a few thousand paintings. Instead of doing that, he painted the other thousands of paintings...
Any NFT could have infinite copies. You simply decide how artificially scarce you want it to be. Picasso could not have painted infinite Guernicas if he so chose.
You can buy a print of Picasso's works. The value doesn't come from the art. It comes from the fact that Picasso painted it.
It's the same way for collector guitars. People want guitars famous musicians played. There are plenty other versions of that exact guitar. But they weren't played by the famous musician. That's what makes it truly scarce.
In both cases, an artist merely places their “this is official” stamp on something that is effectively a copy, and limits the number of copies available based on the desired economics for their work. And the fact that the “official” version is worth more than a “fake”, is merely because humans value genuineness and provenance, even when the end product is indiscernibly different.
And that's the reason you don't see many lithographs selling for millions of dollars.
Still, the combined "wealth" of lithographs may very well be in the 10s if not 100s of billions.