NFTs aren't art -- they're just the Cult of Crypto's latest scam

[Doc Sportello]

Conversation with media analyst Dan Olson. Some aren't going to like it, but he makes some salient observations.

snip

If it looks like a scam, it's probably a scam.

Cryptocurrency and its ugly art spin-off, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), are perhaps the 21st century's greatest example of that eternal principle.

But don't try saying that to anyone who's been sucked into the Cult of Crypto, because the next hour — or five!— of your life is about to be spent buried in technobabble jargon to make this particular form of tulip-trading sound like it's simply mathematics on a plane too high for your small brain to comprehend.

snip (from the interview)

"The biggest problem that's been plaguing crypto since 2009 has been a lack of things to use it on and a lack of respectability that comes out of that. It's like, "nah, it's not a currency. You don't use it to buy and sell stuff." Crypto has a long history of not being spendable. There's nothing that you can actually use it on.

So NFTs effectively get built as a thing to spend crypto on. The two end up being unextractable from one another. NFTs, they're literally built on top of cryptocurrency. They literally share the same technological foundation. NFTs were basically these goods being wheeled into existence in order to provide something crypto can be spent on."

Compares to MLM schemes:

snip

"The product exists to sell the culture and the culture exists to get people to buy into the ecosystem and buy the starter pack and sign up and develop a downstream and recruit, recruit, recruit.

I think people accurately recognize that just by watching people get involved in crypto. You watch an artist who starts selling NFTs, and over the course of months, their artwork itself shifts and it starts becoming more and more about crypto itself. We see those shifts in the people around us and the people who get involved in it, it's like it becomes the singular thing that they talk about. It very much mirrors the same cultural trajectory of somebody getting involved in multi-level marketing."

https://www.salon.com/2022/02/16/nfts-arent-art--theyre-just-the-of-cryptos-latest-scam/


My take: I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but if it walks like a duck ...
When a friend who gets involved with every scheme from MLM to an EST-spinoff self-improvement to get rich program got into Crypto I thought here we go again.

[PoliticAverse]

1. Olson's long video explanation of NFTs and Crypto...

[Doc Sportello]

3. Thanks for posting

I only got part of the way into it but plan to finish later.

[GoneOffShore]

37. I've been watching this. It's well researched.

Sure, it's confirming my bias against crypto, but I had the same bias when I was approached by the Mormons, the Scientologists, the Amway-ites, the EST-ers, and the Campus Crusade for Christ folks.

The crypto/nft bros love to shill for this stuff, not getting that it's only making guys like Thiel and Musk richer and just about no one else.

[Pinback]

2. NFTs explained:

[Doc Sportello]

4. Hilarious

Thanks for posting.

[lagomorph777]

5. That's funged up!

[keithbvadu2]

7. Clear as mud. I think I've been funged over.

Clear as mud.

I think I've been funged over.

[genxlib]

9. I have a crush on her

She is like a cross between Desi Lydec and Anna Kendric

She did some great stuff on the pandemic that helped to keep me sane.

[Pinback]

12. Yes!

That one where her future self advises her February 2020 self... hilarious! "You might want to plan a trip to Costco."

[JanMichael]

24. It is being and nothingness. It can't be funged...like Sarte created NFT's. Duh.

[dalton99a]

35. +1

[smirkymonkey]

43. This is great!

Thanks for introducing me to her. She's hilarious!

[Pinback]

45. Hats off to DUer gristy

for posting this to the Personal Finance and Investing group about a month ago. Glad you enjoyed this as much as I did!


I think she did a great job all around — writing, acting, photography, audio, and editing. I thought it was especially slick to have one “character”’s dialogue begin while the other is still on the screen.

If you’ve seen her other videos, you know there’s lots more where this came from! Hope she has a lot of success — very entertaining, appealing, and she has loads of talent.

[smirkymonkey]

48. I have been watching her videos all night and she is very talented!

What a find! Thanks to you and gristy for sharing her with the rest of us!

[Pinback]

49. Fantastic!

I’ve actually watched only a couple so far myself. Lots to catch up on, and what fun it will be! I think perhaps this will be added to tomorrow’s agenda!

[MerryBlooms]

6. r&k This will take me a couple days to

Digest. Thanks for posting. 🤯🤗

[LetMyPeopleVote]

8. NFTs amd Crypto are both scams

[JCMach1]

34. Absolutely not... Your music will be an NFT soon and artists will

Finally have some control over it vs. getting ripped off by corporations.

It amazes me how myopic and anti-tech the anti-crypto DU crowd is.

Judging NFTs and smart contracts as they are would be like judging the internet based on your personal review of Gopher in 1993.

[GoneOffShore]

38. ........

[GoneOffShore]

39. Crypto and NFT's just a chain.

[snowybirdie]

10. Always thought

I had a fairly good vocabulary. However a phrase like "non-fungible tokens" makes absolutely no sense. Sticking with plain old English words to make investments.

[PoliticAverse]

11. If NFTs were honest...

[Pinback]

13. "Why waste all that time hanging a painting in your home

like you're some sort of Renaissance baronet, when you could just pay to associate your name with a jpeg of a fecund echidna?"

[chowder66]

17. Funny stuff!

[bringthePaine]

14. still true: there's a sucker born every minute

[Tommymac]

15. And I have a cyber bridge to sell cheap. Or maybe some cyber land in Florida suits better?

A fool and their crypto are never parted.

[oldsoftie]

16. I STILL DONT GET IT! Why buy made-up shit?

I heard a guy in the bank the other day talking about getting his two kids computers and they were "making NFTs and selling them for .003 (something like that) Ether. I think we'll make about 10k this month"
I may be off on some of that because I didn't wanna be TOO obvious in my eavesdropping. But I still don't know what he's talking about. WHAT are they "making" to sell & why would anyone want it?
Or he could be lying. trump talks about all the money HE makes and most of that's a lie!

[Johnny2X2X]

18. Things of value all have only the value people give to it

Gold is relatively worthless except for electrical applications, human being place value on it, same with dollars or baseball cards. All worth next to nothing unless people say so. So NFTs are worth something because they are unique and people have created a market for them that gives them value.

[PoliticAverse]

20. They want it because they believe in the "Greater Fool Theory"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

In finance, the greater fool theory suggests that one can sometimes make money through the purchase of overvalued assets — items with a purchase price drastically exceeding the intrinsic value — if those assets can later be resold at an even higher price.

In this context, one "fool" might pay for an overpriced asset, hoping that he can sell it to an even "greater fool" and make a profit. This only works as long as there are new "greater fools" willing to pay higher and higher prices for the asset. Eventually, investors can no longer deny that the price is out of touch with reality, at which point a sell-off can cause the price to drop significantly until it is closer to its fair value, which in some cases could be zero.

What they are making isn't important, what is important is the buyers think it will go up in price which is why they are buying it.

Why were people paying $1,000 for a Beanie Baby (original tags, nonsmoking home only please)?

[oldsoftie]

27. Oh yeah I've heard of that too. I just meant other than that

Obviously you expect someone else to pay more than you but is it actually something that can be USED? Like a stock is a piece of a company but WTH is this crap

[PoliticAverse]

29. If it is a somewhat famous picture you get your name linked to it and if you pay a lot...

you get your name in some news stories, so it can be an ego/publicity thing.

For example:
https://gizmodo.com/disaster-girl-finally-gets-the-ca-h-money-she-deserv-1846772804

No you can't really do anything with it other than sell it.

[oldsoftie]

31. As I read that link I KNEW who it was! And I guess I CAN see it from her POV.

And you're right, EGO is a massive driver of shit like this. That guy I heard at the bank was nowhere near me, but spoke loud enough so we ALL could hear him!

[getagrip_already]

19. What I don't get.....

If I buy an oil painting, I can be relatively certain I have an original, or at least a 1/x copy. Sure, the artist could later make more copies, but the provinance of my copy would still hold value as a physical item.

If I buy an nft, that original still exists and could easily compete with the nft.

Copies could be made of the original, and then what happens to the value of the nft?

We aren't talking about painted elvis's here. These are 5 and 6 figure purchases.

Who could tell if your digitally displayed nft is any different from my digital capture of that nft?

Doesn't seem like there is any real value in it being an nft. Who cares if it is an original digital image?

[PoliticAverse]

21. The sellers hope buyers care, so the price goes up. But, like with other bubbles and fads...

the price can continue to go up until there are no "greater fools" left to buy. Eventually reality will assert itself.

Just having your name in a book (or blockchain) as being "associated" with something isn't usually worth anything.

[oldsoftie]

28. There IS a difference but its nothing that would matter to me. Look at the first one;

That silly video of the British kid saying "Charlie bit me"
If you copy it and post it on FB, they'll block out the music playing. Big deal I can still see the stupid kid

[Buns_of_Fire]

22. "If you nail together two things that have never been nailed together

before, some fool will buy it from you." ~George Carlin

[Pinback]

26. Tape works, too

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/maurizio-cattelan-banana-explained-1732773

[GoneOffShore]

40. I thought that the duck was better.

[andym]

23. No copyright transfer with NFTs

What a scam.

[PoliticAverse]

30. Correct you don't get rights to the image, only your name linked to it really. n/t

[sir pball]

33. The rightsholder isn't even minting the NFT in a lot of cases

It's literally like a bloke outside the Louvre offering to sell you an un-copyable chit that grants you "ownership" of the Mona Lisa, by dint of its uncopyability, but you can't actually take the painting off the wall and if you did (or tried to demand payment for its display, or exercise any other intellectual property right over it), you'll be laughed out of court.

[Initech]

25. If you ask me to pay any amount of money for a JPG image, my answers are "hell" and "no".

[Hav]

32. Yeah but you also get a bunch of symbols

so that you can prove to anybody that cares that you are part of a very special group in regards to this specific image (a group that still doesn't own the image)!

Yes, it so obviously is a scam.

[dalton99a]

36. It is a scam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token

An NFT is a unit of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain, which can be sold and traded.[3] The NFT can be associated with a particular digital or physical asset (such as a file or a physical object) and a license to use the asset for a specified purpose.[4] An NFT (and, if applicable, the associated license to use, copy or display the underlying asset) can be traded and sold on digital markets.[5] The extralegal nature of NFT trading usually results in an informal exchange of ownership over the asset that has no legal basis for enforcement,[6] often conferring little more than use as a status symbol.[7]

NFTs function like cryptographic tokens, but, unlike cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, NFTs are not mutually interchangeable, hence not fungible. While all bitcoins are equal, each NFT may represent a different underlying asset and thus may have a different value.[8] NFTs are created when blockchains string records of cryptographic hash, a set of characters identifying a set of data, onto previous records therefore creating a chain of identifiable data blocks.[9] This cryptographic transaction process ensures the authentication of each digital file by providing a digital signature that is used to track NFT ownership.[9] However, data links that point to details such as where the art is stored can be affected by link rot.[10]

Ownership of an NFT does not inherently grant copyright or intellectual property rights to the digital asset a token represents.[11][12] While someone may sell an NFT representing their work, the buyer will not necessarily receive copyright privileges when ownership of the NFT is changed and so the original owner is allowed to create more NFTs of the same work.[13][14] In that sense, an NFT is merely a proof of ownership that is separate from a copyright.[12][15] According to legal scholar Rebecca Tushnet, "In one sense, the purchaser acquires whatever the art world thinks they have acquired. They definitely do not own the copyright to the underlying work unless it is explicitly transferred."[16]

[GoneOffShore]

41. Waiting for the NFT bros to appear shouting.....

BUT, BUT, BUT......!!!!! Reasons!

[smirkymonkey]

44. It's funny how I know f**k all about NFTs

but somehow, I instinctively knew right off the bat that what you are saying is true, even when they first came out.

[DVRacer]

42. The way someone explained it to me was

All crypto has become is a multilevel marketing scheme and NFT’s are an offshoot to bring in fresh dollars. They wrap it up in buzzwords to hide what is really happening. Part of it a big part is the 5% wanting to become the next 1%. You don’t really understand anything because that’s a feature not a bug. Keep in mind the players behind the scenes are the same ones that preceded the crash in 2008, Wolf of Wall Street and Winkelvoss twins are near the top.

We nod and go along with all this because we fear looking stupid, you are not stupid it looks like a scam because it is a scam. The only way to make money is to find someone else to pay more than you did there is zero value in the thing itself just the idea it could be worth more later if someone else will buy it from you.

[Hav]

46. What you describe is also known as the greater fool theory

NFTs have become the perfect example for that.

[edhopper]

47. They are today's version

Of Thomas Kinkade Giclees.