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Comment by lying4fun | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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