Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down | Hacker News Reader

Digital collectibles on Instagram is winding down

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114 pointsthm136 comments

What's interesting here is that it's not really affecting the perception of people who believe in web3.

As someone who's working on a decentralized product, I speak with nft creators and collectors every day. They see this as a confirmation that Meta wasn't really in. There was also a perception that Polygon NFTs aren't as valuable.

Interestingly, Reddit has managed to sell Polygon based profile pictures fine, and there is a healthy market for their avatars.

Just look what happened to doomsday cults when the doomsday clock ran out and no doom occured: some members left, dejected, and those who stayed doubled down in fervor.

More like, there have been enough boom/bust cycles by now that many are taking a recovery and future upside for granted.

> “What's interesting here is that it's not really affecting the perception of people who believe in web3.”

I think that’s the definition of belief: it’s not derived from facts so it can’t be shaken by evidence.

Faith would probably better describe that condition, a very steadfast form of belief.

not all beliefs are non-factual.[1]

[1]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/

And not all “true beliefs” are based on fact. [1]

>At first sight we might imagine that knowledge could be defined as 'true belief'. When what we believe is true, it might be supposed that we had achieved a knowledge of what we believe. But this would not accord with the way in which the word is commonly used. To take a very trivial instance: If a man believes that the late Prime Minister's last name began with a B, he believes what is true, since the late Prime Minister was Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman. But if he believes that Mr. Balfour was the late Prime Minister, he will still believe that the late Prime Minister's last name began with a B, yet this belief, though true, would not be thought to constitute knowledge.

[1] THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5827/5827-h/5827-h.htm#link2...

Reddit’s successful feature enjoys its success for reasons that have nothing to do with NFTs or crypto or the blockchain or whatever else.

In that same fashion, the Pokemon collector craze is successful in a way that has nothing to do with them being on physical cards. It would be successful in other form factors as well.

Collectors like to collect, no matter the medium. I have a large collection of both physical and digital-only games. Many of those digital games aren't anything more than an entry in a database table that says my steam id is allowed to download and play the files associated with a particular game id, at least until I actually play them. And yet I've probably spent $12k+ on Steam games over the past decade.

Hell, probably $5k at least were spent on games I never even got around to actually playing, effectively just giving free money to Valve.

I don't understand how this can be a valid comparison, unless you bought games planning to never play them, just check them off against your list? That seems like a very minor use case. This would be like people saying they "collect" Kindle books or itunes music. Collecting is based on the idea of scarcity, either real or contrived, and digital plus not even owning the object makes that both impossible to be true and near impossible to pretend.

It's not a minor use case. According to Forbes[1], 37% of all games purchased on Steam never get played.

Collecting definitely doesn't have to be based on scarcity. Board games aren't scarce (some are long out of print and rare, yes, but most aren't) yet I know people with vast collections (I myself have about 500 board games, and only maybe 3 or 4 are rare enough to be worth any significant money beyond its retail price). If 500 games is not a collection, then what would you call it?

500 board games isn't even necessarily a lot for a collector (it is for me, as I don't have the space to store them anymore and need to sell like 200 of them, but yet I keep compulsively buying new games anyway, I bought 2 more just this past week). I know another guy in my area that has over 2000 board games in his basement.

And I (and many other board game collectors) don't play the games anywhere near as much as we buy them. We may justify the purchase with 'oh this would be good for this group someday' but mainly it's just an excuse to get it onto our shelves.

Before I started playing board games solo, I'd say about 80% of the games I bought I hadn't played since I bought them, sitting on the shelf (for years) for the possible right board game night in the future for them to be played. Or I played the game since, but someone else's copy, since between my friends we often have 2-5 copies amongst us.

Now I mostly buy games I can play solo, and I've played a good chunk of my new purchases the past two years at least once.

Buying yet never playing is so common in board games, in fact, that there's a term for those unplayed games: 'The Shelf of Shame'[2]

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/04/17/nearly-37-o...

[2]: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2199795/lets-stop-calling-i...

Many people buy games, books, even music and movies with the “I’m interested and will get to it someday”.

It’s more rare for someone to explicitly buy something with the firm intention never to play it (and usually that is a second copy they want to keep pristine).

Most of my unplayed steam games are that - oh, $5? I’ve heard of that and want to play it someday, I’ll grab it now.

I mean, that’s my justification too, but let’s be honest, I won’t ever have the time or energy to properly play half of the things I buy, and I’d save a lot of money if I took that into account before I bought them.

Yeah - I spent only $5 on morrowind on steam and just started playing finally (on Xbox where I paid $15 for it).

I think there are two issues at play in the current NFT space, both exacerbated by the get-rich-quick potential of NFTs

1. NFTs as ownership standards are not there yet. Even on ETH, there are significant compatibility issues between NFT minters and discussion about downsides of the diverse storage architectures and ownership systems.

2. Classical business is still in flailing hands mode when it comes to adoption of decentralized tech, be it collectibles or more serious stuff.

I am happy we are having a winter now and I hope this one will last a while so that the true builders in this space will get the time they need to actually sort stuff out, build much needed infrastructure and for traditional businesses to read up a bit.

> true builders in this space

That's a lot of belief riding on there being "true builders".

What do you mean?

That no such thing exists and the space is a top to bottom grifting scamfest.

I don't think that this view can withstand any sort of scrutiny...

I think that it can, given articles like this showing that established profitable companies are dumping NFT strategy as quickly as possible.

Established profitable companies have a track record of missing the point when it comes to doing decentralized things. For one a lot of them just fall for VC backed tech which in most cases isn't even a legitimate decentralized network.

Sure we can blame grifters for this too somehow

The opposite view, that there are some mythical "true builders" is the one that can't withstand, and hasn't withstood, any sort of scrutiny.

At best those "true builders" can't understand reality around them (like all the "builders" building tickets or property rights with NFTs). At anything below best it's a sea of scammers and grifters.

Oh, no I didn't talk about the "mythical builders" I talked about the actual builders.

The crypo space has become very big in the past two cycles but every techie should be easily able to pick a decentralized chain, look at its community and identify those who build from those who grift.

> Oh, no I didn't talk about the "mythical builders" I talked about the actual builders.

And those are?

> look at its community and identify those who build from those who grift.

Ah. "Just look at the discords" argument again. I'm having this conversation in the sibling thread.

Let me summarise:

This is equivalent to "just sift through millions tons of shit before maybe finding something worth looking at (which invariably isn't worth looking at)".

Me and others have already told you on multiple posts, the ecosystem is too big to just start pointing out random stuff.

Also, I really could not be bothered to go out of my way to compile examples just to feed a troll like you. DYOR and please stop perpetuating closed discussions.

It doesn't take belief if you spend any time observing these communities.

The builders and grifters are in pretty separate camps.

If you're only observing this community on Twitter, yes, you will see relentless, low-quality scams almost as a rule.

Ah yes, the usual "just follow the discords".

https://ethereum-magicians.org/

Are you in the right place?

You seem to be repeating a trope directly in contradiction to my earlier point about your view being social media biased...and also heaped on a little snark, as well.

Please consider politely considering different perspectives here, without necessarily agreeing with them.

> https://ethereum-magicians.org/

Another random link, indistinguishable from "just follow the discords"

> and also heaped on a little snark, as well.

Of course there's snark. That line of "oh you just don't follow the right communities" has been repeated over and over and over again by the crypto proponents. The outcome was invariably the same: a pronounced lack of "true builders".

> Please consider politely considering different perspectives here, without necessarily agreeing with them.

Please consider that "but there are true builders and true communities" bullshit has been repeated too often for anyone to pay any serious attention to.

Even your link is "Ethereum Magicians is a forum for the crypto community to have a place where anyone can join, create topic and discuss mainly about EIPs and technical difficulties of Ethereum ecosystem." So a lot of ado about nothing. It's a self-reinforcing loop of people patting themselves on the back with new ways to do something on the world's most ineffecient VM. Does not make them "true builders".

You seem to have missed that an effort toward a useful decentralised global consensus chain¹ should only have a secondary-at-best interest in efficiency of a VM, focusing primarily on the priorities of security and decentralization.

¹(whether Ethereum or something else)

> an effort toward a useful decentralised global consensus chain

> should only have a secondary-at-best interest in efficiency of a VM

Yup. Useful, global, and "efficiency is secondary-at-best". True builders, indeed.

But my point wasn't strictly about efficiency of the VM. And, as it always is with crypto-proponents, that point is completely lost, because I don't follow the right discords, sorry, magicians.

> But my point wasn't strictly about efficiency of the VM.

MY point in addressing your efficiency comment is:

1) at least know what you're talking about, regardless of where the heck read it, before writing tech off wholesale, and

2) stop taking weak, adjacent-to-point cultural potshots, because it distracts from your point, which I actually think has some merit.

I hate discord, and actively have avoided projects that use it, as well. There, I said it.

> at least know what you're talking about, regardless of where the heck read it, before writing tech off wholesale

You want to argue that EVM is in any way shape or form efficient? There's a reason why storage or large contracts are prohibitevly expensive in it.

> stop taking weak, adjacent-to-point cultural potshots

No idea what you're talking about.

> I hate discord, and actively have avoided projects that use it, as well. There, I said it.

It doesn't matter whther you hated it or not. This statement, "It doesn't take belief if you spend any time observing these communities." is indistinguishable from "just follow the discords" which was (and probably still is) the standard response from crypto-proponents.

This is equivalent to "just sift through millions tons of shit before maybe finding something worth looking at (which invariably isn't worth looking at)".

Your link to show "a community of builders" is not much diferent: they invented a playground and are busy inventing ways to play in the playground (replete with a new jargon)". You still have to sift through millions tons of shit like people wanting to rename gas to mana or "standard to enable reacting to NFTs with emojis". Or people discovering reality and painfully re-inventing existing mechanisms like liens and or contracts forbidding re-selling of something.

There's probably something to look at, maybe, but the usefulness of that something will be questionable at best because it still runs in the same self-reinforcing loop of "we have this thing that we say is useful so anything we do in this thing is useful by extension" (both are statements that haven't been proven).

This is not "true builders". This is children playing with playdough and coming up with cute names for their playdough creations. And literally everything they do is only applicable to their playdough (because even their main plaything, NFTs, cannot be even store objects it references in the playdough, and needs to store it somewhere else, and has literally zero relationship to, say, real physical world).

> You want to argue that EVM is in any way shape or form efficient?

I do not. Didn't say anything that be interpreted that way — only that you're missing some things.

> This is not "true builders". This is children playing with playdough and coming up with cute names for their playdough creations. And literally everything they do is only applicable to their playdough

Can also easily be said in a new conversation every year about new types of databases, frontend/other frameworks.

Just isn't a compelling or concise enough argument for me to forget about how helpful offline ZK-proofs will probably be for near-future real-world transactions, for example.

> Can also easily be said in a new conversation every year about new types of databases, frontend/other frameworks.

I a) should be said, b) is often said, and c) more often than not is

> Just isn't a compelling or concise enough argument for me

That is not the entirety of the argument. But in true crypto-proponent fashion you skip from context from context, from tangent to tangent hoping to forget and ignore the gist of what the conversation started with.

Even if I helpfully brought it back to original context: This is equivalent to "just sift through millions tons of shit before maybe finding something worth looking at (which invariably isn't worth looking at)".

> how helpful offline ZK-proofs will probably be for near-future real-world transactions, for example.

Yup. Exactly what I said. Of course the entire usefulness will lie squarely within the playdough, sorry, the blockchain, will have extremely limited applicability, will not be applicable to anything in real world (without significanly reducing real world problems to trivial applications), but will be marketed as the best thing since sliced bread.

You can bookmark this link and come back when this "near future" happens

I would not be surprised if US FedNow uses it now or later in their offering, launching this year.

I wish you hadn't spent so much time fighting a straw man in my place, we might have been able to talk any sort of tech.

> I would not be surprised if US FedNow uses it now or later in their offering, launching this year.

"if", "sooner or later". Any ource of evidence for your wishful thinking?

> I wish you hadn't spent so much time fighting a straw man in my place

That's the problem with any crypto proponents: they have only demagoguery and wishful thinking instead of arguments. I literally started with skepticism that there are any people doing anything useful in crypto space.

Instead of "taking technology" you provided zilch (as I explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35505598).

Instead of "talking technology" you're saying "oh, there's absolute lack of any evidence, but I believe that FedNow will use ZK proofs" because if you believe strongly enough this will surely happen.

And so on. But sure, it's me who's fighting strawmen, and not crypto space profucing tons of bullshit.

I'm not convinced they will ever be a standard for "ownership"

They may have a boring but practical use as UUIDs in decentralised systems. Without wading through a sea of scams it's difficult to find anyone doing anything in that space.

This tech is worthless and has had 10 years to prove useful for something.

NFTs are just the latest iteration on finding a problem to fit the solution of blockchains.

I get why people view crypto as nothing but scam, it's certainly mostly scam, but there's a glimmer of an actual use there if people care to look.

AI is going to give us a crisis of authenticity, and here we have a tool that might address it.

I find it funny that we still call this web3. Web3 might still be something that comes up, might even be the GPT wave.

Apparently the name stuck because some libraries and websites already adopted the term even if there was no Web3 at all. Lol Jack Dorsey's already working on a Web5 that nobody is interested either.

I think that the real Web3 will be mature and developed enough that there will be no need to create a bunch of apps boasting they're on the Web3 nor libraries abstracting Web3 APIs called "web3.js" before the term is even tangible

“And any man who must say 'I am king' is no true king at all.” ― George R.R. Martin

I wonder if saying "I am the next big thing" has any impact on the probability of being relevant in 15 years.

>Jack Dorsey's already working on a Web5

What happened to web4?

>Reddit has managed to sell Polygon based profile pictures fine,

That probably has more to do with selling the digital equivalent of funko pops on reddit, than any technological merit.

But it does bring up the ever-fascinating schism between what we as technologists think is required for a new technology to begin experiencing adoption. and what that bar actually is for consumers and corps.

This is good for bitco^ web3.

> There was also a perception that Polygon NFTs aren't as valuable.

Valuable to who? This sounds like a quasi-religious schism between ETH blockchain and the Polygon chain. Don't they both accomplish the same thing, i.e. a permanent record of ownership?

Centralisation of failure points matters in this context.

"Real" blockchains don't have downtime, etc.

"Wind down"? I cross this out several times with my red pen, leaving deep grooves in the paper, and offer a few sensible, meaningful, clear, definitive options:

"end"

"remove"

"shut down"

"terminate"

"cancel"

LOL, indeed. "Winding down" is something that crypto gamblers do with their portfolios, because a free-market sell would be too devastating to the ego.

(Ron Howard interjects... "They did not, in fact, wind it down.")

Wind down seems fine. They are slowly ending the product in a somewhat graceful way.

I’ve never seen NFT features on Instagram, so I’m not sure what they’re winding down either.

Presumably that explains why they decided to wind it down.

Huh Instagram was trying to get into the business of selling magic beans, but turns out that magic beans aren't selling these days.

That's a shame.

So, you could collect NFTs of instagram posts? What a weird concept. Reddit avatars make more sense IMHO, they work as a form of status symbol. They are displayed on all your posts and comments, so you can show off your fancy avatar everywhere. I cannot see why anyone would care about a collection of posts.

No, this is avartars/PFP

Are you sure? Everything I see in the announcement article and documentation is about collectible posts.

https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/instagram-dig...

"Once connected, creators and collectors will have the ability to choose which NFTs from their wallet they would like to share on Instagram."

Many artists use instagram to display their art, and a big portion of that art is digital and it was intended to be perceived on the screen, so it can’t be collected/purchased in the traditional sense. That’s why a lot of artists I follow and deeply respect were supporting this concept - finally their 3d renders, digital images etc. can enter the art market. See @mikeyjoyce

It is like a democratization of collecting art, instagram being the medium. The motivation for collecting digital art being the same as collecting physical artworks (paintings, sculptures, whatever).

On the other hand, it gives you an opportunity to support the artist you like and get something in return, in a similar fashion bandcamp does with music.

But NFTs aren’t about buying art. You buy a pointer to something, in this case the something is an instagram post containing the asset.

A marketplace like bandcamp would be more interesting IMHO, I regularly buy digital artworks from games or movies, that’s more analogous to buying an album on bandcamp.

Its like saying you are not buying steam games, you are buying pointers to those games. I would say that you are in fact buying games/art, but doing so in a closed environment/ecosystem. An even better analogy is buying skins inside a game

The marketplace you propose could be interesting, but IG already existed with a huge number of artists who’ve already had a following/status/lore. Also there is the exposure to a tremendously broader&bigger audience than any other platform could possibly have. Not saying that migration would be unachievable, but so much would be lost for something that I don’t see come close to being a compensation

On steam you are buying licenses and digital assets. An NFT is a pointer to something, not the thing it points to. People who bought NFT of instagram posts own a pointer to this post, and that’s it. It’s quite evident now they are winding down the feature, people who bought NFTs of instagram posts own a pointer registered on a distributed ledger that has no use anymore. You can trade it, but without Instagram support it lost its social value. They never bought the asset, they never engaged in a contractual relationship with the artist.

What you seem to want is a kind of tipping or patronage system integrated with Instagram if I understand correctly? Sounds like a cool way to support artists. NFTs are a very contrived way of achieving this.

reddit has avatars?

Yes, Reddit has a quite complexe avatar system, with a builder, lot of accessories and styles, and now collectible ones: https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/7559750587540-C...

Meanwhile wizards of the coast is out there printing money still. Such a missed opportunity for a smaller TCG to come in and get a real foothold.

Making a successful TCG seems to happen about once a decade. NFTs are an implementation detail in the end. One that also makes a lot of false promises that the game developers won’t want to keep. They’ll still nerf/ban overpowered cards whether they’re NFTs or not and they won’t be transferable to anything else because game devs don’t want to relinquish control of their game economies for very good reason

Didn't realize this feature existed in the first place.

Finally. Jeez.

Sorry for the off-topic.

This whole NFT debacle would be fun for me if it didn't cost me a dear friend; he's been working full-time on his "collection" for almost two years now, convinced he's "just around the corner of making millions" out of it when it's obvious the ship has long sailed. I guess there's more to it than just NFT craze, and he's probably struggling with other things, but his new "know-it-all NFT bro" persona makes it impossible to even approach him with a normal conversation.

Weird rant, I know. I simply don't know what to do anymore.

some ppl do enjoy collecting art, toys, coins, pokemon cards. but if he tells you he’s about to make millions, he might just have a gambling problem. Like stocks which can elicit same behavor.

Crypto, and now AI, are likely the great differentiators between those who seek get rich schemes and those who lever up humanity through innovation, hard work and grit.

If I had the ability to migrate to another planet, the last thing I’d take with me would be an NFT image of some stupid primate.

Are we still doing “AI is the new crypto” here? I’d like to think that we’ve moved past this by now.

just wait until they start really attacking AI. they'll roll out the same playbook.

1. dangerous new technology

2. that uses far too much energy (more than the entire country of X!)

3. do we really know how it works?

4. controlled by a shadowy cabal of super-coders

5. followed by a litany of anecdotal stories about victims of AI

6. and increasingly frequent and increasingly negative coverage of those getting rich off of it

they also used the same playbook against the internet, and open source, and mobile/social networking. probably the original cell phones too, at some point.

edit: oh, i almost forgot

7. turning the tables on any goldenboy/girl they previously pumped, then will viciously dump when the going gets tough or the inevitable fraud occurs. (unless of course they donated $40million+ to politicians)

i'm under 40 and i've seen this cycle about half a dozen times.

That's been the exact playbook.

Also mock what it's been used for, find the "worst" example.

If not mock, as you say, label it as dangerous.

If you want to promote adoption of something like NFTs it's up to you to present the compelling use cases, not get mad at the detractors. The reaction to the reaction here is even more predictable.

The playbook against NFTs is that they did nothing useful. That seems to still be the case. ChatGPT is useful, some of us are just not sure how useful it is yet.

Of course if your criteria is "do something useful" (whatever that means exactly), a whole lot of things in both the digital and physical worlds would have a hard time justifying their existence.

i'm not pro NFT, i wouldn't touch that stuff with a 10 foot pole.

consider, however, that "BUT I'M TELLING YOU IT'S USEFUL!!! WHY WON'T YOU BELIEVE ME!!!" is the exact position the FUDsters want to put you in re: AI.

they're constantly on the offensive, no matter what the target is.

You're making an analogy with something (ChatGPT) that isn't analogous.

ChatGPT kan be useful or useless and NFT:s would have the same value or qualities otherwise.

NFT:s can be useful or useless and ChatGPT would have the same value or qualities otherwise.

The one playbook that exists here is defending NFT:s in lieu of it defending itself by being actually useful. (Which is not me saying that they are not nor that they couldn't be. Just that shouting that everyone is dumb and that your product is in fact awesome isn't a good look, is it?)

You're getting downvoted but you shouldn't be. There's already discussion about ChatGPT's energy usage, and once this starts scaling more, there's going to be more and more people concerned. Hell, I'm already a bit concerned with its energy usage, and I'm already struggling being a fan of crypto while also being concerned for the environment (didn't use to have to be, crypto didn't use a ton of energy 8+ years ago).

It really hit home to me when I saw something (that I can't find right now for some reason) about ChatGPT-4 being much more complex and would need X times more resources than ChatGPT-3.5 for the same queries (the number I don't actually remember, but I want to say 2 or 3x). Gave me a bit of a pause from me asking it to generate a bunch of sitcom scripts on random silly concepts for my private, personal amusement (Seinfeld in particular seems to work pretty well).

I was able to find an article on Bloomberg[1] talking about how the increase in AI is also increasing its carbon footprint, so yeah, it's coming. Also I saw this article[2] that estimates ChatGPT's usage in January alone to be equivalent to he power used by 175,000 people. And that's before ChatGPT-4.

People who are fans of AI right now reading this, eventually you're going to have to come to terms with it being responsible for a ton of carbon emissions as well, as it takes up more and more resources and scales to billions of people as they use it more and more in their everyday lives and the models and computation get more complex.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/how-much-...

[2]: https://towardsdatascience.com/chatgpts-electricity-consumpt...

this has always struck me as a weird argument. one could make a very rough comparison to the energy required to run a gaming PC for an hour, and the energy (inference + amortizing the training run) to run a conversation with ChatGPT for an hour, they're probably order-of-magnitude comparable. But there is no serious concern by anyone for the climate impact of PC gaming. It's just fundamentally that computers require electricity to run.

If the dreams of companies making large sequence models do come to pass, and they really do scale up to where training and running large sequence models is a significant portion of world electricity usage, then of course it becomes a real problem, but the same would be true for any large electricity-intensive industry.

the people writing this FUD have never seen the inside of a datacenter or understand how anything really works. they're just FUDsters, professional shit-stirring stooges. it doesn't matter if the tech in question is total garbage or the next coming of the internet.

It's a flawed argument. Consider the profit equation (revenue minus costs). The argument ignores that crypto is designed to have a minimum in cost (and that minimum is high). For most other computing applications, compute cost is just a cost and does not have a fixed lower bound. In other words, crypto is designed to be an energy use competition, AI is not.

i'm getting downvoted because we're in an NFT thread and people think i'm pro-NFT (lmao. lol. etc.) instead of anti-dipshit-FUDster "tech journalists".

There's one crucial difference between AI and Bitcoin when it comes to energy usage.

With AI there are strong incentives to make everything more efficient and use less energy. This is already happening: people are finding ways to run AI models on less powerful hardware (see LLaMA etc), and AI providers like OpenAI have managed to run things. Lee efficiently - that's presumably how they could drop the price of an API call by 1/10th for GPT3.5 compared to GPT3.

With Bitcoin efficiencies don't actually help, because the entire system is designed as a competition. The person who burns more energy wins more value. If the tech becomes more efficient the miners just increase their activity, so energy usage doesn't meaningfully decrease.

I'll agree with you on Bitcoin mining specifically, but other aspects of cryptocurrencies I wouldn't. For example, the Lightning Network is a layer built on top of Bitcoin is all about increased speed and efficiency.

Then there's Ethereum, which just completed a major upgrade to convert its Proof of Work method to Proof of Stake and now uses a negligible amount of energy compared to other things, as shown in this article on their site[1].

And there are newer cryptocurrencies like Solana, that started as proof of stake to begin with and can handle at least 8500[2] transactions per second (compared to only 4 transactions per second with the much older bitcoin, and 30 transactions per second with Ethereum).

That's a hell of a lot more efficient as well, and also seems to be more efficient than ChatGPT is per query, as Solana's energy use per transaction is 3,290 Joules, or 0.00091 kWh[3], versus the conservative estimate of ChatGPT (3.5)'s estimated energy usage on this article [4] of 0.00198 kWh, or 7,128 Joules.

So I think that overall, crypto is still incentivized to become more efficient. Bitcoin is not, as more people care about the security provided by proof of work there than they do about energy efficiency, which is unfortunate.

[1]: https://ethereum.org/en/energy-consumption/

[2]: https://crypto.news/solana-transactions-per-second-hit-an-al...

[3]: https://solana.com/news/solanas-energy-use-report-september-...

[4]: https://towardsdatascience.com/chatgpts-electricity-consumpt...

That's why I said Bitcoin.

That's just a poor attempt at some cheap poisoning the well from you.

The grand difference between the NFT craze and ordinary collecting, is that the latter is not primarily driven by cultish behaviour or the want for Internet Money.

I'm sure NFT, just as crypto, apps and The Internet eventually presents new findings or "just" novel ways of doing stuff. But so far, we have people confused by things _they_ don't understand, setting themselves up for a great loss.

The cultishness in it is the incessant: this is the way. This is new and nothing like this has ever existed before.

When it totally has! Manias and scams have come in all shapes and sizes and will continue to do so.

The reason y'all are buying in to this, is because the sucker's goin' up. Just like with crypto. Just like with dotcom stock and a ton of other things. The fact that there _are_ useful things that came out of the dotcom era, is not a proof of the viability of _your_ mania.

Crypto is useful. A very long time ago there was a conversation about killer use cases. People on the ethereum side of the room thought programmable chains were it. People on the Bitcoin side said it was micropayments and script based post dating.

I said that it was likely paying for compute resources that would be a killer use case. Implementing 402s would be that manifest: https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture

Now we’re moving deep into the AI markets, this will be a thing, combining both.

That said, con artists will still try to hustle others.

> I said that it was likely paying for compute resources that would be a killer use case.

As if we didn't have ways to pay for compute resources already.

> Now we’re moving deep into the AI markets, this will be a thing, combining both.

Of course it won't.

> That said, con artists will still try to hustle others.

Indeed. By saying things like "innovative ways to pay for compute resources" and "our AI-enabled crypto bullshit is a cuting-edge thingamabob"

I’ve found that when I don’t state things as fact on here that I don’t end up getting as much ire, but sometimes I just know what I do is true and am too lazy to explain it in my glee in seeing it manifest.

Time will tell, but as of now there are still no killer uses for crypto, other than hustling others.

hot air is still hot air. Yahoo! being a useful web directory doesn't mean that Pets.com is going to be good because it's "Web-powered".

Right now the majority of AI startups are hypeware.

I think I know what you are trying to say, but there night be an issue with your metaphor. The whole point of an NFT is that you don't have to take it with you as you owning it is chain state.

Out of curiosity (not into crypto so very little knowledge), what do you have to take with you to be able to view the NFT?

The NFT does not contain the asset itself, it’s just a meta-document that points to the asset. So if that pointer is a URL, the answer would probably be “a good chunk of the internet”.

I’d reckon the simpler answer is more likely a jpeg or mp4.

This is dependent on what the NFT actually gives access to or is linked to.

90% of NFTs probably are just ownership certificates of JPGs so if that is what you want to "view" then the answer probably is "a JPG".

Other NFTs though might be some sort of online game char, access tokens to a live feed or just symbols of on-chaining offchain consensus. In those cases the answer isn't that straight forward. But generally I'd remark that an NFT in itself only has utility as long as you have access to its underlying chain, so if you cannot take the interaction with the chain with you its not going to be very useful. OTOH, if your sole purpose is looking at pretty pictures then one will probably best just compile JPGs to a folder. But that doesn't mean that one owns those pictures or that there are NFTs involved.

If I’m 50 light years from here, the colored coin on a backwaters planet has zero meaning.

It’s a continued fallacy that a physical thing may be secured by a crypto transaction (entry to a DAG).

Now, immediate identity and exchange of contract value, such as on Lightning, may be useful for compute resources, but only in the moment of inference.

Crypto was built to service AI, and more specifically, GAI. This is crypto’s “killer” use case. Everything else done with it is a sideshow.

Funnily I agree with these points. But I think they go a bit overboard with regards my initial comment.

Ownership does not imply security of the underlying object, digital or physical. Point in case, I owned my car when it was torched by anti globalism riots. Same principle applies to NFTs. Actually the real revolution of NFTs as "JPG ownership certs" is that they democratize art in that everybody can look at the linked JPG in full resolution but only one wallet can own that NFT.

> Crypto was built to service AI, and more specifically, GAI

Wow. Retconning history has reached new highs. I mean, it's easy to do it, because crypto origins are in such a distant past of * checks notes * only the past decade.

> The whole point of an NFT is that you don't have to take it with you as you owning it is chain state.

"Hey guys, I own this valuable piece of `something`. You have to trust me, as it's 50 light years away, and all I have is a pointer to an address on a chain that is also 50 light years away"

Okay, so you are 50ly away from earth. There are only two possible scenarios here

1. You and "your guys" have low delay comms to home which means you have network sync and so everything is dandy

2. You and your guys have delayed comms so everything relating to state back on earth is time delayed (ie: you live in the past when it comes to things related to earth) in this case it only makes sense to talk in the context of that past, for which you actually again happen to have chain sync so everything is dandy.

> You and your guys have delayed comms so everything relating to state back on earth is time delayed (ie: you live in the past when it comes to things related to earth) in this case it only makes sense to talk in the context of that past

So there's literally no point. Because that valuable thing is needed now, not X years in the future when the sync happens.

The whole chain thing literally relies on fast internet available everywhere everytime

You don't seem to understand how relativism works so I will not continue amusing your strenuous try at a counter argument. You have gotten your answers from me and others in this community. Either actually comprehend them or leave it alone.

Maybe read advice on how to deal with a friend or family member joining a cult. AFAIU, don’t criticise the hobby, and try to maintain contact, so that when he wants out he still has a friend.

Well, speaking of a cult, we have NFT.NYC in a few days here in my city. It has many corporate industry sponsors, takes over the largest hotel in Times Square for three days, and many of the billboards. Cults don’t usually have that level of industry involvement. And many people from all over the world will be coming to have fun with NFTs and try out new things.

I guess Bitcoin can be considered a cult, too. HODL became a religion since 2013, after it became obvious Bitcoin wouldn’t be “an electronic peer-to-peer cash system” and the “store of value” aspect of money was the only one left.

> Cults don’t usually have that level of industry involvement

I think there's a level of money laundering involved.

I imagine it is the same with Bitcoin as well, and also highly overpriced art, and casino gambling, and investments in startups, etc.

> Cults don’t usually have that level of industry involvement

Scientology probably puts NFT-bro-ism to shame with its level of industry involvement... It's just usually less in your face about the cult part.

I thought about mentioning scientology for comparison, to say I don’t remember Scientology taking over Times Square with a lot of industry participants… but then again I am not part of that world so for all I know they could have a huge convention in Vegas every year, with megachurches AND some sort of new books / auditing companies etc.

They don't need to do conventions, they have an entire town in Florida.

Also the Moonies owning a bunch of stuff, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church#Businesses, including UPI and the Washington Times.

MLM is also a corporate sponsored cult and puts on ostentatious events. One commonality is how they tell you to remove negative influence, ie skeptical and concerned friends and family, as they hold you back from achieving success.

What about stuff like

Tony Robbins (self-help)

Landmark Forum (self-help MLM)

Billy Graham (Christian revival)

Joel Osteen (prosperity gospel)

etc.

They seem to help a lot of people with just mindset stuff

Joel Osteen is great at helping people give him money in return for absolutely nothing.

If you have to pay to learn something, it's a grift.

There's carve outs for technical fields, for people who are willing to pay a premium for speed, or personalized learning, or putative 'networking' of course.

So college is a grift probably. Overpriced scarcity with education most people can get from the library for a buck fifty (to quote Good Will Hunting) or on the Internet these days. But enough people are still told to go to college and so much of it is subsidized by the government that it remains an institution that faces little market competition. And getting into an “ivy league” school is so prestigious that even super-millionaire celebrities with great networks feel they have to bribe admins so their kids can go.

https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/college-a...

And public school is just a day care center to keep kids out of trouble so both their parents can work for corporations 10 hours a day. We’ve essentially created a prison environment for kids, and instead of fixing issues in it, we overdiagnose them with ADHD for fidgeting and prescribe amphetamines. Even Paul Graham noted these things: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Also banks are a grift, for many people. The “American Dream” was co-opted where you are sold the idea now of “owning” a home, but to do so you “rent” money issued by a bank, and then work 30 years to pay it back with a lot of interest. The government has to print more money eventually or people will work harder and harder and default. Money printing is actually what frees people up from having to slave for corporations as much (as we can clearly see happened after 2020 with the great labor exodus).

Figuring out for yourself why college and Landmark Forum aren't the same grift is a useful life skill.

They were replying to the comment:

  If you have to pay to learn something, it's a grift

Your response applies equally to it.

Seemingly that statement is just not logically true (just need to find one counter example)

Perhaps corrected by saying: _sometimes_ it's a grift, or _often_ a grift, or IMO it is a grift.

Those things are bad too.

> Cults don’t usually have that level of industry involvement.

Sure they do[1][2][3].

Mixing business and faith is critical to cult recruitment: industry allows the cult to establish "legitimate" footholds and develop stable income sources using the cheap (and often free) labor of its believers. This should ring a bell.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NXIVM

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology

As someone embedded in the space and tending to be an apologist for the technology here: I'm really sorry for your friend. I think due to the polarization and frenzy, the parallels to gambling and gaming addiction and the broader context of mental health is something that isn't talked about enough in a constructive manner in "investment" circles. Many aren't aware how much they're putting on the line not necessarily financially but emotionally, mentally, and identity.

Your friend is an addict and should seek gambling addiction groups.

Yup, that's what happened to a former friend of mine. 2020 Rolls around, stock market goes crazy, everyone starts talking about something called "options". Few weeks later everyone lost a little bit of money and tapped out, not much, just a few hundred here and there. Except one friend, who blew all their savings for a high they never got again. Went hook line and sinker for GME, shitty IPO scams, NFTs, you name it. They got burned over and over. Eventually broke off contact with the friend group because of money.

It’s not weird. What you’re wittnessing is gambling addiction. Seek out advice how to approach such a person and suddenly everything will make sense.

> but his new "know-it-all NFT bro" persona

A bit like the emerging ai bros. Every few years we get these types bubbling up. I admire their commitment but some need a break.

I keep hearing about these ai bros. Can you give me a specific example of one?

My problem too - you can’t really babble some unverifiable stuff (macroeconomic predictions, societal changes for crypto) in AI. If you don’t know how it works you are sol, bro or not.

What other major companies still use NFTs?

Define "major company".

I guess that means the answer is "none"

Twitter. Last I checked, you have an option to use NFT as pfp.

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