At the Bored Ape restaurant, your ApeCoin is no good now
latimes.com
latimes.com
I thought, "if the people in the vanguard of this movement can't figure this out, maybe it isn't all that it's cracked up to be".
So if I found a quote about someone saying nuclear energy would power cars…would that disprove crypto? I guess so
The tech even then seemingly worked for you then. Your anecdotal is comparable to saying students at a college not being able to add one another on Facebook in it's early days, because the campus Wi-Fi was on the fritz.
EDITED to correct autocorrect.
(signed a MtGox victim.)
the people “in the vanguard of [the cryptocurrency] movement” absolutely use non-custodial wallets (SW or HW). the part of this story where “the vanguard” is using custodial wallets is the least believable.
the average speculator, sure — they’ll go with whatever’s easiest for them, which is probably to keep their crypto on the exchange. “vanguard” users? lmao.
And cash is cash, but I don't think crypto is really competing with cash, more with cash-alternatives (like credit cards, venmo etc.)
There's a process for taking the details for an offline credit card payment[0] which is settled later.
[0] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/8322/how-are-cr...
A wire transfer is really a more apt comparison when discussing sending money from Coinbase.
It's true, but it's also missing the point.
Regular bitcoin transaction OTOH would presumably have worked just as well as credit cards.
Facebook isn’t an appropriate analog to what BTC/crypto aims to be.
Nope. Reminder for those new to how credit cards actually work, there are two distinct transactions and they are not connected. Authorization transactions establish that this is, in fact, really a credit card issued by BIG BANK, and optionally that some credentials you've got are genuine (e.g. a PIN for modern chip and PIN cards, or a 3-4 digit security code for a remote payment). Authorization aims to protect merchants from crooked customers and to some extent to protect banks from crooked merchants. Nobody cares about the customer, if you want protecting ask your government. Settlement transactions move money from the customer's account to the merchant's account.
An offline credit card terminal may be able to perform some limited Authorization with chip cards in particular, it can confirm that the chip card says this is the correct PIN for example, but regardless it can begin the Settlement transaction.
Now, the Settlement won't actually happen immediately, but eventually the transactions are batched up and sent to a bank and the bank executes them, and the settlements occur.
Debit cards can need an online transaction because the card may be unwilling to authorise the Settlement process if it can't confirm you actually have the money, as these cards may be issued to people who aren't allowed credit.
Six equivalent cards, each performing six offline transactions for $5 each results in thirty six $5 transactions, $180 from one account to various merchants. Settlement transactions can complete more or less instantly or take several days, you don't care and your card isn't involved.
Credit cards suffer from a similar problem, the transactions will not necessarily go through when you get online.
Only because they trusted each other! I mean, any currency or barter mechanism anywhere in the world or throughout history works if you trust the person to pay you tomorrow.
BTC was supposed to be able to move beyond that, somehow. And it turns out that the world still runs on trust.
edit: am i getting downvoted for not having a smart phone or for asking a dumb question? i cant tell what i've done wrong here, I'm just not a phone person.
I imagine that the ancient version of this story is exactly how money began in the first place. "Man, it was just too hard to coordinate who got how many cows for the rocks, we just wrote a bunch of IOUs"
Wow. I can't imagine what anyone is thinking when they pay that much to brag about some random blockchain that says they own an arbitrary URL that may or may not link to an image.
With those NFTs you get copyright ownership of the image.
It's basically completely disconnected, so while the transfers may traditionally be done at the same time between the same entities, that's not a contract. The NFT just gives you a Blockchain url. If you didn't sign anything else then you got nothing else.
https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/terms
> When you purchase an NFT, you own the underlying Bored Ape, the Art, completely.
> Subject to your continued compliance with these Terms, Yuga Labs LLC grants you an unlimited, worldwide license to use, copy, and display the purchased Art for the purpose of creating derivative works based upon the Art (“Commercial Use”).
No, you just have a license to use it according to a license. That's very clearly "not owning".
It's something, but it's not owning.
You’re just restricted by contract to pass on said ownership if you sell.
It’s like a house with a homeowners association. Can’t ditch the HOA by selling. Still own the house.
You yourself said that all you get is a license, not ownership.
That is not even remotely close to the legal basis under which HOAs have power, which is a lien on the house, not with you.
House: You bought a house with an HOA lien.
NFT: You licensed (do not own) an image. Like YOU quoted there is no ownership change at any point.
These are not even remotely similar.
This emperor has no clothes, but still mant people choose to believe.
Certainly the first person to buy a bored ape from BAYC, they definitely entered into a legal contract with BAYC that granted them a copyright license.
But if you bought a Bored Ape NFT from someone else, did the sale contract you made with them definitely include another copyright license transfer? Or did you just buy an NFT?
What if the previous owner of your Bored Ape, while they held the copyright, took it upon themselves to separately sell the copyright to someone else, so by the time you bought the NFT, they didn't even have the copyright any more?
What if the previous owner of the Ape, as its copyright holder, and perhaps unknown to you, chose to release it to the public domain?
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220311005470/en/Yug...
They might be able to enforce terms of their original contract on the first party buyer - ‘once you sell the ape you no longer have this license’. But they have no contractual relationship (no ‘privity’) with you.
Perhaps possession of the ape entitled you to go to BAYC and get a license contract?
That’s great, so long as BAYC 1) continues to honor that agreement (and since you have no contract with them to begin with there’s nothing obliging them to do so) and 2) continues to exist. If they go under and their copyright in their apes gets auctioned off, good luck finding whoever acquired your ape and persuading them that since you own a hash in a blockchain they really have to grant you a license to use that ape.
Now, all you have to legally is prove that you own the NFT, because theft and computer hacking aren't a legally accepted way to transfer ownership.
And as an owner of a second hand ape you have no legal recourse if they (or their successors, or their receivers during their bankruptcy) decide they no longer want to.
But it is by no means clear that someone who bought an NFT from someone who bought an NFT from someone who bought an NFT from the original copyright holder has any basis for being able to expect the new holder of that copyright to continue to allow them to exercise the terms of the original license agreement made between the original seller and the original buyer.
> ii. Personal Use. Subject to your continued compliance with these Terms, Yuga Labs LLC grants you a worldwide, royalty-free license to use, copy, and display the purchased Art, along with any extensions that you choose to create or use, solely forthe following purposes: (i) for your own personal, non-commercial use; (ii) as part of a marketplace that permits the purchase and sale of your Bored Ape / NFT [...]
> iii. Commercial Use. Subject to your continued compliance with these Terms, Yuga Labs LLC grants you an unlimited, worldwide license to use, copy, and display the purchased Art for the purpose of creating derivative works based upon the Art (“Commercial Use”). Examples of such Commercial Use would e.g. be the use of the Art to produce and sell merchandise products (T-Shirts etc.) displaying copies of the Art. [...]
> The Bored Ape Yacht Club terms of service grant a commercial license to exploit the copyright of each Bored Ape to the owner of the relevant NFT.
So the holder of a Bored Ape NFT has a license to commercially use the off-chain image associated with the NFT by way of an on-chain URL. That license is granted by the actual copyright holders of all of the Bored Apes.
Just like you can create anything, and license it as you wish, and keep a list of authorized licensees on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape.
The NFTs are better because...
Look, I hate cryptoc, but this is about the one thing in the whole world that NFT is actually good for.
Perhaps people use the word differently.
I don't understand the word "decentralized" to mean "not occupying a specific physical location".
To me it means more like "having many independent parts" or "not having a single point of failure".
For example, land titles in the US, I believe, are decentralized. There is not one single national/federal list of who owns what.
But having a blockchain is like having that list. I don't know if that is "centralized" in an absolute, yes/no way, but it seems more centralized.
And it doesn’t even require an entire countries worth of electricity to do it.
And has it actually been copyrighted with the USPTO and the various copy protection agencies across the world? Because if not, then who will actually enforce it and what legal backing does that copyright have?
And if it has been copyrighted, then what value does putting it on a blockchain add when the copyright enforcement is being maintained by the same entities that would have done it if it was on Shutterstock?
However, I don't think it explains all of the value.
First is the art itself, probably not worth much considering that it is rather generic and partly generated art, but some people may actually like it.
Then there is the idea of being part of something big. Some people think that NFTs are revolutionary, that in the future, this is what will represent property, more than a paper in some administrative office. Owning a NFT now is like owning a piece of history.
And there is also this idea that many collectors share that if it is rare and unique, it is worth having, and apes are rare and unique.
I know some collectors who spend thousands on collectable items, like video game cartridges or trading cards with no intention to ever sell them back. It is their treasure, it represents a lot of dedication and effort, they may have memories attached to it. It may sound stupid to outsiders but it is important.
Who’da thunkit
"Surely this will appreciate, I am a genius"
Mona Lisa is pretty crap anyway, if you ever find yourself in the Louvre, look at what’s hung on the opposite wall. Now that is an impressive painting.
https://thamesandhudson.com/napoleons-plunder-and-the-theft-...
Exactly proving my point.
A $15 print of the Mona Lisa makes it look good.
In truth, the painting is suffering from deterioration, the poplar panel is warped, the columns that used to frame her are missing, and restoration has obscured some details. A print doesn't convey the physicality of the cracked, rough surface of the paint, the sfumato technique, the almost total lack of visible brushstrokes, the gauzy veil, Mona Lisa's hair, the luminescence of her skin and the overall impression of glowing.
Whatever the actual quality and condition of the original, no reproduction will adequately represent it.
I really do think digital property has value but only when you do it right.
If the Mona Lisa's value was determined purely from physical traits my perfect copy would be worth exactly the same.
It is because blockchains cannot actually be used to do any of those cool tech things in any meaningful way. If you try to build any of those things on top of a blockchain you will realize quickly that blockchains are bad solution. The only purpose of them is to pump up the value of a casino token which is then used to pay a tax to the operators of the network. It's no surprise that after this nonsense you're only left with irrational actors.
And that is only for the average user; for the whales, the purpose of them appears to be mainly profiting off of massive amounts of fraud and criminal activity while maintaining the plausible deniability of being able to say "technically we don't control the blockchain so we're not responsible".
today we have both of the things which GP mentions as being under development 9 years ago, so this part is seemingly false.
> It is because blockchains cannot actually be used to do any of those cool tech things in any meaningful way.
even in the comment you just wrote, you’re still arguing a different point than what you originally said. this time you’ve shifted from “cannot be used to do” to “cannot do”.
there are interesting discussions to be had (why didn’t we have permission-less privacy-preserving coins before blockchains? what are the better ways of achieving such global systems, and solving double-spend/consensus than blockchain, today?). but it’s impossible to have those discussions if you keep claiming one thing and then arguing the other thing.
I think it is clear enough that I meant the same thing. If that wasn't clear, you can ask for further clarification. There is no need to make this into a pedantic game.
>but it’s impossible to have those discussions if you keep claiming one thing and then arguing the other thing.
No, it is not? Why would it be? In fact I will have those discussions with you now.
>why didn’t we have permission-less privacy-preserving coins before blockchains?
We don't have those with blockchains either. They are not permissionless nor are they privacy preserving except under some very extreme and impractical circumstances. You can have your permission to use a blockchain revoked if all the miners/validators reach consensus on blacklisting your wallet. Also, all public blockchains have no privacy by default as all the data is public.
>what are the better ways of achieving such global systems, and solving double-spend/consensus than blockchain, today?
Basically anything else, because blockchains do not actually "solve" consensus. The "consensus" is done simply by paying off the participants in increasing numbers as an incentive to stop them from bad behavior, it has nothing to do with the actual blockchain itself. They are able to "solve" double spend in a very contrived way, at the expense of being able to solve any other problem that might befall the network. The traditional way to solve double spend is to use good old fashioned accounting, it doesn't have that same constraint.
i assume we’re talking about Monero or zcash, as the better-known privacy coins. i grant you that Monero miners can block you by address. how can you be censored on zcash? it’s cryptographically impossible to link addresses to each other, so you can’t block by address. is it permissioned based on IP address? is that defeatable with trivial means like VPNs or Tor or just going to the neighborhood coffee shop? has censorship of zcash transactions ever been demonstrated?
But you don’t own the copyright and can’t make more prints unless there was a separate agreement to that effect.
Seriously, crypto has yet to solve any real world problems I’ve faced. And NFTs are just the worst. Money laundering schemes at best.
If I can’t buy an apple easily with crypto, it’s useless.
Monetizing hacked boxes would be much tougher if you could not turn them into Monero miners.
That must be why ransomware demands were so much higher in the pre-bitcoin era. Unless you're including the cost of sending a cargo jet full of cash or gold halfway around the world?
There is a reason ransom amounts skyrocketed when cryptocurrency entered the picture, and no, it's not because it was "the early days" pre-bitcoin.
Dark markets are described as a small piece of the pie for LE.
But P2P music sharing / digital music sales was also that way until they couldn't be ignored and ultimately destroyed traditional music distribution.
There is a reason big, reliable markets get shut down and it isn't all exit scams. It's because they're incredibly successful and they would not be so without crypto.
The ransomware market is too hard for most to get into and the "deals" take time to put together. There's not a great reason for them to prop up coin value.
However, dark markets are open to just about anyone, and presumably haven't even begun to touch growth potential.
All that said: throw in parent's value prop too--is bitcoin worth $20k a coin today? IDK, maybe? I sold bitcoin-embroidered hoodies at the first ever national bitcoin conference in san jose for half a coin and that seemed a bit nuts.
Traditional music distribution was buying an easily damaged CD for $20 a pop (in 90's dollars). We would have moved to digital distribution anyway, P2P was just a catalyst.
But it seems that some people thought it fixes the "i want to get rich fast" problem, and was bloated as a result. It was never meant for that problem.
I think the idea of digital cash is cool, but practically speaking, it isn’t enough of a upside to deal with crypto. I can’t even tell you the last time I used actual cash. It was at least a year ago.
Crypto does not solve any of those issues. The actual solution to most of those issues is called a "payment service" of which there were many that existed before blockchains. How is it do you suppose that companies like ebay and amazon were able to securely and quickly process internet payments in the 90s? They certainly didn't need blockchains to do it. You could argue that they aren't anonymized, but neither is crypto; it is only pseudonymous at best, in practice it is not even that as the exchanges that do the bare minimum of fraud prevention will require you to identify yourself.
I pay people from Argentina to Ukraine and there are myriad ways I can transfer them money quickly (seconds, sometimes), cheaply (down to fractions of cent on the dollar) and securely without resorting to crypto. I have no need for total anonymity but from what I hear crypto is not great on that front, either.
Not fast. Most cryptocurrencies have unbearably slow transaction or confirmation times. Maybe if you are buying a car, they will be confirmed by the time the paperwork is done. Even with initiatives like the lightning network, it's still slow. So much so that some of the major exchanges will tally your transactions off-chain, to be confirmed later.
> cheap
It really isn't. Be it gas fees or computational power
> secure
Eh, depends. Surely the transaction itself may be from the blockchain's viewpoint. But if your coins get stolen or your exchange gets hacked you really have no recourse. And that's just one issue. And before anyone says "hardware wallet", exploits have been found for those as well, assuming they were even secure to begin with.
> anonymized
They are not anonymous. With a few exceptions, all transactions are visible in the chain, forever. This works as long as you never need to convert to/from fiat. The moment you do, your identity is exposed - even retroactively. It's way worse than cash. Tumblers only help so much.
edit: forgot to add that it's also very energy efficient
No it is not. In banking and in payments, security typically means that there are guarantees your money will not suddenly disappear or get stolen by hacks and fraud, which cryptocurrencies have zero guarantees against. In fact, it is extremely likely that at some point your money will disappear, because the value of these coins is extremely manipulated. And that is not even getting into the huge number of defi hacks, rug pulls and bankruptcies that have happened recently.
If you want to send big money from an account to another, or from a country to another, Bitcoin is really cheap, secure and anonymized.
That's why people use the currency of their nation.
They must pay taxes and fees to exist as a part of society. Not doing so means you either fall off the social ladder or are imprisoned and have your life destroyed.
It's one thing that Modern Monetary Theory gets right. The government creates demand for its currency through taxes and fees that must be paid under threat of violence. So you work and earn the currency to pay for your right to exist.
Is that nice? No. But denying that the threat violence keeps this version of society together is denying reality. And trying to replace a system that is willing to use violence to maintain it's existence with dreams just doesn't work.
No. Because an increase or decrease in taxes doesn't cause anyone to stop or start using currency, or convert from one currency to another.
Then what is the point then? Apecoin and Ethereum certainly cannot be used for payments and holders don't even want to spend their ETH or APE crypto. They have either been terrified with the 10,000 BTC pizza purchase to never spend it or they are scared of the gas fees that will eat up the transaction cost if the chain gets congested again.
It is a loss of confidence that is so bad that they have no choice but to use dollars for payments instead.
That is a complete failure and it just took one crypto crash.
Extreme deflation is arguably more deadly than hyperinflation. If you know that by holding a dollar today, you can get 2 dollars worth of goods tomorrow, why are you going to spend a dollar?
Likewise, once Bitcoin went from fractions of a penny to a dollar, what incentive was left to spend it? You could argue an ideological want force it as a currency... but how many people's morals hold up at 10x returns? 100x returns? 1000x returns?
If BTC (or any major crypto) had become the official currency of a country, it'd be a failed state by this point.
Hardly a promotional asset…
- The % of male population imprisoned. My guesstimate is 4%.
- The % of male population between 18 and 29 y/o imprisoned
I don’t have the raw data to calculate it at this moment. But it must be higher once gender / age / income are considered.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/el-salvadors-road-currency-c...
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/crypto-crash-leaves-e...
President Bukele’s government declared a state of emergency on 27 March, following a spike in homicides allegedly committed by gangs, which has since been extended twice....Despite a drop in the homicide rate in recent years, El Salvador continues to be one of the most violent countries in the world....The government's financial problems are not because of bitcoin, but they have gotten worse because of bitcoin.
QED
There was an intiative by the treasury to try and have people use a single document to deal with taxes, where we previously used two, this is something important for most people, the guy hasn't even mentioned on his social networks.
They also build a public vet that was supposedly financed with the earnings of BTC - when the price dropped the president mentioned that he hasn't sold any meaning all the money spent to promoto chivo or crypto has come from our tax dollars.
People are overall indifferent or disappointed with the decision.
We don't know who or whom holds the BTC that was bought with tax money.
It just takes a couple day of rain to have the capital flooded and our president is busy talking about crypto.
Web services build by the government are a disaster, can't handle a decent volume of requests or are simply too buggy.
With our taxes we've financed "chivo", the entire thing has been a disaster they spent an awful amount of dollars to have basically nobody use it.
Not even crypto bros use the chivo apps, most transactions can be attributed to people doing "scalping".
I'm originally from an "emerging market" (aka 3rd world country) and I don't share the enthusiasm crypto bros do about emerging markets interacting with crypto.
It's rarely from a beneficial place. Crypto is absolutely perfect to allow a corrupt government to quietly siphon the nation. No planes full of dollar bills, no heavy gold bricks. Just a movement from one digital address to another.
Sure in a pinch it might be a lifeline, but it's a flimsy lifeline and these countries need a lot more than a glorified remittance system to recover. It's fun to laugh at NFT bros trying to buy overpriced restaurant food, but last few months have likely been disastrous for a lot of very poor people.
But BTC hasn't helped at all. It's not even _the_ official currency, just one alongside USD, and yet it's already accelerated the country towards defaulting on their bonds.
While all this goes down the president is still making noise about a "Bitcoin city". A very "meta" commentary on cryto I feel.
And its day to day usage is very low.
There was a spike in use after $30 sign up bonus and during the 2021 bitcoin conference and following months which attracted tourism from bitcoiners though.
I would say that being able to differentiate between El Salvador, Salvador and San Salvador is a shibboleth for those familiar with El Salvador. They are easy to confuse.
There have been cases in which people book their air tickets to the wrong airport, and end up in San Salvador, El Salvador instead of Salvador, Bahia, Brasil.
Obligatory Daily Mail link:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2658716/Soccer-lovi...
Does that mean if you can find a non-defaulting bond that pays higher interest than inflation, the US dollar will completely collapse?
Because why would anyone spend $1 when they could get $2 of goods in N years...
Second, problems with hyperdeflation and hyperinflation are both rooted in the hyper.
If you can buy a pizza today, or have $10 million dollars in a few years, why buy a pizza?
Third, the issue isn't just deflation, it's specifically deflation of a currency. If you invest $100 in a company, there's a chance it will be $1000 next year. But your $100 will circulate in the meantime and generate value.
Now if instead there was just as good a chance you could put $100 under your mattress, and next year it'd magically have become $1000 despite never having left your grasp... why would anyone ever invest again? You get to keep your money and have it increase in value, there's no incentive to invest or spend any more than you absolutely have to.
But then as people spend less and less, there's less and less economic activity being generated. You stop wanting to pay people so jobs disappear. Eventually you end up in a game of chicken where everyone is scared to spend money.
A BTC based country (fully BTC based, not El Salvador's lip service) would be an utter hellscape devoid of any economic output other than people waiting for their currency to appreciate. Not unlike the real thing...
I'm mostly crypto-skeptic, and appreciate your insights, but this part is to be expected with any market: when the value of something is up, certain business models become profitable and start manifesting. When the value goes down, they stop being profitable and those models vanish (or become sustained externally).
It's easy to see in high profile markets like resource extraction, real estate, venture capital availability, etc
So of course the business model of "use crypto as a currency" will vanish/diminish when the currency value of a coin is substantially down.
Disclosure: I hold virtually no crypto (a few thousand XRP)
As I watch this show from the sidelines, I wonder if the latest crash (and no doubt future crashes) isn't exactly the force needed to distribute crypto more widely into more hands, normalizing to some roughly steady state value. After several swings of the pendulum, you end up at some more or less stable value with many more users, making actual marketetplace purchases with crypto more ubiquitous. I guess time will tell, eh?
You can buy fractions of it, meaning the affordability is relative to the individual and what they can spend.
See Central African Republic and El Salvador. Countries are waking up to the mafia operation that is the IMF and its favorite weapon, the dollar. Because it's still early in the adoption cycle, critics will continue to be "correct" until one day they wake up and find they've been left behind.
I'm not an economist, but doesn't the IMF use a basket of currencies called SDRs instead of dollars? And isn't the IMF owned by member countries?
Interestingly, El Salvador still owns more IMF shares than Bitcoin.
- El Salvador Bitcoin: 49million USD after compunding for -53% losses [2]
- El Salvador IMF shares: 402 million USD (207 million SDRs) [1]
[1] https://www.imf.org/en/About/executive-board/members-quotas
Yes, which are just claims on that basket of currencies, the U.S. Dollar being the majority currency (in the current 5 year basket 43.38% with the next closest being the Euro at 30.93%). My point was admittedly hyperbolic, but as the majority currency in the SDR basket (and the world reserve currency) the USD has both voting and trade sway as countries need it to pay debts and acquire resources.
As for governance, U.S. votes account for over 16% (the greatest shareholder of votes) with the next closest being China at 6%. In effect, the U.S. has a soft-monopoly over the basket as the stated requirements for ranking/inclusion "take into account their current prominence in terms of international trade and national foreign exchange reserves."
Combine that with the U.S. military/intelligence threat, NATO threat, and all of the other tentacles of U.S. hegemony and its currency is—for all intents and purposes—a weapon.
Something like Bitcoin is a significant enough threat that the IMF as steered by the U.S. is incentivized to dismiss it (and has [1]).
As for El Salvador's holdings, well, yeah. Even as a Bitcoin maximalist I'd think Bukele were putting his country in a dangerous position short-term if he went all in as other countries would just threaten to cut them off from resources/aid (see link which makes my point).
A full-blown transition to Bitcoin is going to need enough countries with tradeable resources to start accepting it as payment. Again, we're in the early days of the transition away from state currencies. The real battle will be when they try to rug pull everyone with CBDCs [2] (which is precisely when the intelligent but timid will realize that Bitcoin is the only option to preserve personal/state sovereignty).
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/fbf9aef0-453f-4e61-bd83-ff2b2bc92...
[2] https://twitter.com/martybent/status/1537946342890168323?s=2...
It will if they're smart enough to ask "why" people lost their shirts and take the POV of someone like John Templeton. The best time to buy is when everyone else is panicking or ignoring an asset you view as undervalued.
Just like the stock market, though, that's not likely to happen. Most people are controlled by emotions, not logic, and so miss out on many opportunities.
No. Hodl the dip.
Yes, but not "crypto." Bitcoin. The entire crash was due to VCs and hedge funds overleveraging into shitcoins [1]. It started with Luna and that created a domino effect for the rest of it. Sprinkle on the panic typical to all markets and kablamo.
In essence, that's good (albeit painful to some degree) because it's a truly free market. Bad players got washed out and there's more to come as far as I can tell. Fairly excited as, like you suggest, it means people have a chance to acquire more Bitcoin while they still can.
[1] https://twitter.com/DylanLeClair_/status/1524377921338724354
Then we have all the whales and hedge funds manipulating the market, pump and dumps... it's really is the wild west out here still unfortunately. On top of all that, your parents probably think Crypto.com is the only place to buy it, and the more tech inclined may read 'not your keys, not your crypto', create a wallet and lose the keys or typo an address and lose the coins.
Plus we can't forget all the newer investors, over the past year or two. All of which are probably deep in the red right now and will sell at any opportunity when things look to start improving (and probably tell their mates to avoid it too).
I think the whole industry needs to take a step back, quietly work away for a few years, keep building things, improve security, increase trust. Drop all the DeFi farming pools with the ridiculous earn rates, stop the hype every time a new coin is launched. Get back to basics, create some real utility.
I'm not sure what the answer is on stablecoins or encouraging people to spend crypto. I think it's become too ingrained in peoples heads that crypto is an investment rather than a currency. Stablecoins were a partial answer to that, but they also kind of defeat the purpose too. We're back to trusting the US government, Tether and/or algorithmic stablecoins - which so far have proved to _not_ work. I believe it will take decades for people to stop tracking their crypto holdings and always converting it back to local currencies. Maybe we need some 'super' stable coin, that's backed by stocks, currencies (fiat and crypto) globally but not pegged to any one thing, kind of like an ETF? Is that possible algorithmically though and would governments ever legalise it and allow people to be paid in it?
I do think the tech that the crypto industry has created is great, and I do hold numerous cryptocurrencies (and am making a loss too...) but we're a long way off making prices recoveries, rebuilding trust and actually becoming useful in society.
It is not faster. It is not cheaper to transfer. It is not even as anonymous as cash I’d say.
I can see why would someone buy stuff online using crypto but this does not make much sense.
Some fanatics may have claimed that. But the bitcoin whitepaper itself says that traditional payments are good enough for most cases (and then enumerates cases where it's not, such as if you want non reversible transactions).
Fanatics are major proselytizers for any movement.
I guess you could make an onion router style delivery network to get your meal, but you’d also have to convince thousands of others to use it as well to hide amongst them.
BAYC transfers ownership of IP for the ape you've bought. It's not just a picture of the ape on OpenSean; you can use it. There's something really fascinating about this. It's one character, but it's also broadly part of the larger ecosystem.
We're so used to, say, Disney owning IP. But what if you could spend $300k and have a restaurant themed like Mickey Mouse? And you're not a cheap knockoff... you're expanding on the lore and the You could have a community of built in people or, like the guy in the article, maybe they just thought the vibe was cute and didn't know what BAYC was even.
I think it's really interesting that people are building and creating and expanding this universe. Imagine something like Pokémon, where everyone was able to create and consume games/content/etc.
Here in HN, the sentiment tends to be against Disney-style copyrights. The crypto community is playing with what community and intellectual property actually could mean.
You can't make, say, a cartoon featuring one of them, but would you want to do that?
> It's one character
no, it's one picture. some one else might own the rights to functionally the same character but with a smile instead of a frown or even just a different background color.
Does it, though?
> Subject to your continued compliance with these Terms, Yuga Labs LLC grants you a worldwide, royalty-free license to use, copy, and display the purchased Art, along with any extensions that you choose to create or use, solely for the following purposes: (i) for your own personal, non-commercial use; (ii) as part of a marketplace that permits the purchase and sale of your Bored Ape / NFT, provided that the marketplace cryptographically verifies each Bored Ape owner’s rights to display the Art for their Bored Ape to ensure that only the actual owner can display the Art; or (iii) as part of a third party website or application that permits the inclusion, involvement, or participation of your Bored Ape, provided that the website/application cryptographically verifies each Bored Ape owner’s rights to display the Art for their Bored Ape to ensure that only the actual owner can display the Art, and provided that the Art is no longer visible once the owner of the Bored Ape leaves the website/application.
That's not IP ownership, just a conditional license, despite their talk of "owning" and "purchasing".
For anyone curious to read the full terms, they're here: https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/terms
Full copyright transfer and licensing are not the same thing. The BAYC terms seem to be a sale of an instance of the Art, with a limited nonexclusive license to the intellectual property. An exclusive license is considered a transfer, but this isn't one. If you got an exclusive license, nobody else, including BAYC or OpenSea, could display the Art without your permission until the copyright runs out. BAYC didn't give up that much.
It's not clear that BAYC images are copyrightable in the US, because they are procedurally generated from templates. That will probably be litigated at some point.
There's an interesting trade dress question. Suppose you fed a supply of BAYC images into a machine learning system and had it crank out similar images. Does Yuga Labs have any claim against you?
[1] https://www.intellectualpropertylawfirms.com/resources/intel...
This is an even less interesting use of the blockchain than Bitcoin - at least with Bitcoin there is no longer a central authority needed to prevent double spending. Here the blockchain is facilitating a transaction that can already be done without some authority to recognize it.
But if it worked that way, then the concept is pretty cool. You say "you can already license..." yeah, but this is one click stuff and you're good to go. What you're saying is slow lawyer stuff and a fully manual process.
Of course this one click to purchase IP could be done centralized. But decentralized can add transparency, instead of relying on paper trail and companies that can go defunct.
How would you keep track of who currently has ownership? How do you make sure I don't sell ownership to 5 people, or keep using it myself? Do I need to hire a lawyer each time?
Yes, this can be done without the blockchain. But also, does it matter to you if the code is in SQL or the blockchain? The blockchain is just a technology. (I do think the environmental impact is worth considering, for the record.)
But experimenting with copyright law is fascinating. It’s like saying, 20 years ago, that concepts like Creative Commons solves no real world use case.
I don’t think 5 years from now BAYC will matter. I do think, however, experimentation with intellectual property, copyright and ownership will.
I find that AI generated imagery is a much more interesting experimentation on copyright. Rather than trying to introduce scarcity to digital items, AI will destroy ownership entirely as anyone could generate their own brand new stock images on demand.
Mickey had been around since 1928. I don’t think we’ll care about BAYC, specifically, but I do think it’s premature to say no NFT-based project will ever have any significant cultural impact.
Almost every human on the planet knows who Mickey Mouse is, and one corporation benefits. Aren’t you at least curious about a world where ownership of cultural icons is shared?
(I love Disney and hate NFTs so this is a weird position for me to be in, for the record)
>>"pictures of cartoon apes that are procedurally generated by an algorithm"
'Most jurisdictions, including Spain and Germany, state that only works created by a human can be protected by copyright.' https://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2017/05/article_0003.h...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-copyright-offic...
This was intended as a 90-day pop-up, and they reported there were few crypto transactions even before the crash. ApeCoin already wasn't a huge part of this.
The entrepreneur plans another restaurant and is already selling NFTs for it. Their involvement with Yuga Labs was minimal. Bun B paid for the burgers.
Is it possible the entrepreneur still turned a healthy profit? Or that was killed in the crash?
We would do well to start separating the mechanism that stores value from the mechanism of exchange.
That's why I think something like GNU Taler backed by ordinary dollars is a much better way for selling burgers and pizza in any foreseeable time-frame.
A) Point of Sale systems have handled this "volatility" issue for an entire decade. Use an implementation that shields the merchant from volatility. They usually liquidate for you.
B) Why would you list the prices in ApeCoin or Ethereum? Just show dollars and accept whatever, because A) handles whatever proportion you want to keep in dollars or some other crypto.
C) If nobody wants to use that payment method, who cares its free. How often are you getting UnionPay customers, going to make an article about that too?
When I got to the end all I could think was "weird yelp review". I really enjoyed it.
https://99bitcoins.com/coupa-cafe-sells-coffee-to-the-silico...
Obviously he needs cash flow to run the business but most are not paying with crypto. I'm reading this as Nguyen lost faith in crypto.
Crypto, web3 and NFTs are spiritual tech that is throwing off the shackles of corporate control and making a new society. It's an identity. It's a brand. It's a community. If I was in my 30's I'd probably be into it. I would know damn well there was a lot of hype, but so what, it's fun and maybe something amazing will come out of it. Meantime, it's a party, and we can all take turns at the mic making deep pronouncements about how we're empowering the forgotten poor of the world. What's not to like? Who cares if we lose money. It's the price of entry to the party.
Edit: This isn't what I believe. This is me trying to see it through the eyes of a young enthusiast
Crypto is about shallowly co-opting the patterns of discourse of genuine social movements to try and get rich quickly.
The entire crypto industry is built on the back of VC money.
And I fail to see how Opensea is not the epitome of corporate control when it has ~80% market share in the NFT marketplace space.