NFTs Are, Quite Simply, Bullshit | Hacker News Reader

NFTs Are, Quite Simply, Bullshit

jacobinmag.com

91 pointsherodotus26 comments

NFTs are actually quite useful for outing your friends as either morons or con artists. MAGA hats serve a similar function. I knew P Hilton and J Fallon were morons before this, but now I have the evidence. If I were a young person on the make I'd be clear to people I'm trying to impress that I'm in on the con and thus smart, or risk the danger of being considered a moron.

> I knew P Hilton and J Fallon were morons before this, but now I have the evidence.

They're part of the con.

How are people not getting this?

Sure they are but they are willing dupes who don't understand what an NFT is - hence my statement that Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon are morons. I mean, even before NFTs, no one accused either of being smart

This is the second time in as many days I stumble upon a piece explaining how NFTs and the whole ecosystem around them are at least problematic.

While I share the sentiment, I am not sure if it is because I just haven't understood the details behind NFTs, crypto and so on or if I actually understand enough to grasp a reality.

But I just can't understand how or why I should pay for something that basically is some arbitrary calculation being stored in an arbitrary public data structure representing (more often than not) a link from a central entity towards a link target that could change (or be taken offline) at any time.

Why talking about decentral stuff when there is a central entity managing the link. Why paying for something that is burning energy to create but doesn't add any additional protection against central parties' control or even loss of the link target.

As said - maybe I just don't know enough. That is my mental model to be able to continually learn and unlearn. But somehow I just don't get NFTs.

I get that everything can be an object of speculation. That part is totally clear to me. From tulips to stocks and NFTs.

I just don't get the rest (if there is one) and the rhetoric.

I think the technical jargon (a mix of crypto, distributed systems, and finance) leads people to believe that what's going on in crypto is smarter than it is.

It's what P.T. Barnum might have called "flim flam"; ~ "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."

Relevant discussion in the "Line Goes Up" Youtube video that's very good but extremely long (2h!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g&t=8m36s

My understanding is that access to the image (or whatever) is absolutely not the point of NFT's.

It's all about bragging rights. People want to be able to say they are considered the owner of something. Sure, the ownership only exists in people's imaginations, but that's often the case with these sort of honors.

At my high school, we had an honor society. In addition to needing good grades, you needed to pay in 10 bucks every semester. They never gave me a clear explanation why I needed to pay, so I stopped paying. The only impact that had was not being able to sit in an exclusive section for the honors kids during graduation. As far as I'm aware, every single other student (or their parents, more likely) who had the grades paid the fee.

It's the same with clothing brands, especially the "luxury" ones. For me both expensive clothing brands and NFT's are bullshit but it doesn't mean there's no bragging rights market for it. And it looks its huge, possibly I would have cared more about these rights when I was still a youth.

I agree, but at least with expensive clothing brands you may get something that might actually have some value. For example, someone gave me some branded clothing for christmas a few years ago, that I would never have bought myself, and it turned out to both be super comfortable and lasted far, far longer than the cheap brands I bought.

Of course, there is also much expensive brand clothing that's garbage, so its certainly not a given, but my point is that with clothing you at least have something you can wear, which may or may not have value in itself, while with NFT's you just have the brand.

> While I share the sentiment, I am not sure if it is because I just haven't understood the details behind NFTs, crypto and so on or if I actually understand enough to grasp a reality.

NFTs have been around for five years (or longer, depending on definition). Given that in that time no-one has been able to convincingly articulate why they're useful, one could be forgiven for assuming that there is no there there.

My understanding is that while some idiots are putting links to S3 servers like you describe that some NFTs use IPFS links which AFAICT are not vulnerable to being taken offline.

The article points out, sort of as an afterthought, that there is exclusivity in an abstract "bragging rights" way.

Isn't that the whole point of NFT's?

Not that I would buy one, but in the US (and many other countries), we worship our celebrities, and it's not surprising that someone would pay a lot of money to be considered in an exclusive "club" with them (and BAYC intentionally plays into this angle), at least as long as the celebrities continue to hype it.

Also, bragging rights is what makes lots of "luxury" things valuable. Most people on the streets wouldn't be able to tell a diamond from zirconium, or a rolex from a knockoff.

> Isn't that the whole point of NFT's?

Not if you ask the pro-NFT people, because if that's all it was, the pyramid scheme wouldn't be strong enough. But that is the only actual real use case that makes some sort of sense to me, any others I've heard typically have easier, better or cheaper ways to solve using "traditional" tech, or, in some cases, aren't actually solved by NFT's in any meaningful way (eg NFT's aren't actually decentralized if the asset they represent is held by some centralized party and the ownership they confer is meaningless in many cases, eg if you buy an NFT claiming you own part of mars or a tweet or something you don't actually have legal rights over).

NFT's as a token to brag about is fine, but very few "ordinary" people will actually make money on this, so I'd still advise to ignore them. Bragging rights also have a high potential to become another forgotten fad.

Well, there is one more use case: money laundering.

I would ask them to think of it as art, collectibles like trading cards and sports cards coins; or even to remember the beanie babies...

Just that it is even more abstract, less physical and might be less persistent. At least those kept in relatively decent environment last. Not that there isn't chance to make money, but it is rather risky and they probably aren't on ground level...

Is "bragging" really the motivation?

Because I don't understand what they are bragging about here.

Are they bragging about being a member of a class that can discard $500000 like it's nothing? Rather than donate it to a philanthropic cause? That the beneficiaries of charitable causes are outside their area of concern? That's nothing to brag about.

Maybe it's more about getting attention than bragging?

It’s the same concept of people buying Rolexes

Singularity, transhumanism, Gurdjieff's ray of creation, dot com's "new economy", and now this crypto mania, all make me feel the same way: I have no idea what prople are talking about.

I'm like the guy in Brave New World: I let out a moan when everyone else climaxes, just to fit in. If everyone else is hitting ectasty, I must be doing something wrong.

Or. Everyone else is faking it too.

I just powered thru the Ezra Klein episode with a16z's Katie Haun, who's apparently a crypto expert. Because maybe I am wrong and just not getting it. (Not unheard of.)

Phrases like "digital asset class" and "scarce digital goods" are like koans. One hand clapping, dry water, solid air.

I love a good paradox as much as the next geek, but come on. These people know they're full of shit, right? It's just a grift, right?

What is scarcity in a digital medium? If we wanted to be serious about this stuff.

The only two things I can think of are attention and trust. Any others?

I can't imagine how bitcoin et al relate to attention (distinct from effort, like PoW).

I'm pretty keen about the trust stuff. I've spent too much time thinking about trust wrt voting systems and medical records. But here's the thing: current high trust solutions are also low privacy.

Worse, the current crypto currencies are both low trust and low privacy. So I really don't get the point.

I really wish I didn't understand the nature of these things. A lot of clowns are getting rich by purposely not understanding. I feel like a moron sitting on the sidelines.

Having some kind of rudimentary sense of ethics really sucks sometimes.

You are not alone, friend.

Yes NFTs are bullshit, crypto is a questionable ponzi scheme and blockchain might actually be usable maybe sometimes in the future.

The thing is market does not care about this at the moment and many many people are earning incredible amounts of money with these things.

NFTs are content-free DRM.

Not sure where I first read that, but it seems to be the most succinct description that nails it for me.

This is pretty good, but it might be giving too much credit if interpreted as suggesting the content isn’t good enough so that part is important to explain.

I've come across three people regarding NFTs. People who trade them and don't care whether it's bullshit or not, and hope they will come out ahead in the end. People who are very hyped about them but don't know anything about the actual technology. And people who see some useful niche use-cases for them in the future.

There’s a fourth group: people who see it as a bullshit fad and actively avoid it.

You seem to be entirely disregarding the person who wrote the post we are commenting on?

What about people who say sure they work, but we can do things as well or better without them.

This article right here finally broke the camel's back and I became a paying subscriber of this wonderful magazine.

I believe NFTs will be an amazing memory of a weird zeitgeist of 2020s.

Ok that Fallon clip is really bizarre reminds me of the one million pixel website episodes of late-night.

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