Lost money on NFT

User232002

barnstar2077 said:

A print of an actual artwork could never be mistaken for the original by anyone with just a small amount of knowledge. 

As has been pointed out, this is completely incorrect and is a serious consideration in the art industry. NFTs are about proving provenance - which is the reason why the real mona lisa is worth a billy and a good fake is worth a couple thousand at most. 

lozzy1965 said:

Because currency only has a value if it is usable.  Crypto is usable at the moment, but there may come a time when it is not allowed by major governments.  It's all very well having a decentralised currency, but if it is banned everywhere then it is worthless.  I'm not saying that WILL happen, but it COULD.  Most people only adopt what the government allows them to adopt.

Disagree. A good can be unusable but still be plenty valuable. Gold is a pretty unusable (as a currency anyway), but it has value. Coins taken out of circulation can appreciate in value. In countries where Bitcoin has been banned, it usually trades at a premium to the spot price. 

As to the rest,

1. Governments couldn't agree on what to have for lunch, they aren't ever going to agree on Bitcoin. Not to mention that there are some very real game theory consequences and opportunities to doing so.
2. Bitcoin has plenty of advocates and holders in the political elite. We are past the point of it being banned being a realistic option.
3. Bitcoin (and probably ETH too) are resistant to state attack at this point. Even a united world government couldn't shut them off even if they wanted to.

lozzy1965

darren232002 said:

lozzy1965 said:

Because currency only has a value if it is usable.  Crypto is usable at the moment, but there may come a time when it is not allowed by major governments.  It's all very well having a decentralised currency, but if it is banned everywhere then it is worthless.  I'm not saying that WILL happen, but it COULD.  Most people only adopt what the government allows them to adopt.

Disagree. A good can be unusable but still be plenty valuable. Gold is a pretty unusable (as a currency anyway), but it has value. Coins taken out of circulation can appreciate in value. In countries where Bitcoin has been banned, it usually trades at a premium to the spot price. 

As to the rest,

1. Governments couldn't agree on what to have for lunch, they aren't ever going to agree on Bitcoin. Not to mention that there are some very real game theory consequences and opportunities to doing so.
2. Bitcoin has plenty of advocates and holders in the political elite. We are past the point of it being banned being a realistic option.
3. Bitcoin (and probably ETH too) are resistant to state attack at this point. Even a united world government couldn't shut them off even if they wanted to.

I am talking specifically about crypto as a currency.  I'm not saying blockchain has no value.
1.  I agree with you here - on the lunch point.  There wouldn't be agreement, but one might act and others might follow.
2.  Specifically talking about BITCOIN - I disagree that we are "past the point", well maybe we are for it being banned, but it has by no means made it's claim as the new world currency yet.  More likely that it may peter out into nothing over time as new currency blockchain solutions evolve.
3.  Totally disagree.  Look at the downward movements when there is talk of regulation and every time China announces a clamp down on mining.  If the major countries stated that they would not accept BITCOIN - or even if they announced their own crypto currencies do you not think that BITCOIN would crash - and I mean crash to virtually nothing?

EDIT:  Apologies - we're in danger of making this about BITCOIN, and there's a thread for that.

User232002

dunstonh said:

Go back and read a history book. The tulip bubble wasn't just caused by some people believing a thing had value. 

The Dutch Tulip bubble term is used when:
1 - the prices deviate from the intrinsic values significantly.  Largely because of a small number of tulips that did have higher value.  Whilst the majority did not.
2 - A buying frenzy occurs where people forget they are buying something that does not have any intrinsic value.
3 - In the end, people are left holding something that nobody else wanted and any money spent on buying them was wiped out.

Intrinsic value is a meme. Its not a real thing, at least in the way its used commonly by lay people. You come up with a definition of intrinsic value and I'll show you 10 things that fit your definition but are effectively worthless. Water being the easiest example.

dunstonh said:

The whole thing was built on greed and people being persuaded that there was a value because of a small number of cases when there was nothing of value (in investing sense) outside of those.

No, it was built on the fact that the Dutch were messing around with new financial instruments and options contracts were all the rage. It was a leverage and speculation bubble. Actually, it wasn't even a bubble - most of the options contracts were voidable for no or negligible amounts of money, plus many contracts were walked back by the government. Very few people lost money on tulips because when the music stopped that money wasn't 'lost.'

dunstonh said:

Too many critical differences make the comparison fatal.

To me, the comparisons are not that different. 

Scarcity. Durability. Riskless Leverage to start with. Each of them on their own would make the comparison beyond silly.

barnstar2077

darren232002 said:

barnstar2077 said:

A print of an actual artwork could never be mistaken for the original by anyone with just a small amount of knowledge. 

As has been pointed out, this is completely incorrect and is a serious consideration in the art industry. NFTs are about proving provenance - which is the reason why the real mona lisa is worth a billy and a good fake is worth a couple thousand at most. 

lozzy1965 said:

Because currency only has a value if it is usable.  Crypto is usable at the moment, but there may come a time when it is not allowed by major governments.  It's all very well having a decentralised currency, but if it is banned everywhere then it is worthless.  I'm not saying that WILL happen, but it COULD.  Most people only adopt what the government allows them to adopt.

Disagree. A good can be unusable but still be plenty valuable. Gold is a pretty unusable (as a currency anyway), but it has value. Coins taken out of circulation can appreciate in value. In countries where Bitcoin has been banned, it usually trades at a premium to the spot price. 

As to the rest,

1. Governments couldn't agree on what to have for lunch, they aren't ever going to agree on Bitcoin. Not to mention that there are some very real game theory consequences and opportunities to doing so.
2. Bitcoin has plenty of advocates and holders in the political elite. We are past the point of it being banned being a realistic option.
3. Bitcoin (and probably ETH too) are resistant to state attack at this point. Even a united world government couldn't shut them off even if they wanted to.

The Mona Lisa is painted in oils on a poplar panel, it is easily distinguished from a print.  It could however still be forged, but not with the click of a mouse, so it is not the same as the millions of images on the internet that are identical to the NFT of the latest meme someone just bought.

barnstar2077

Alexland said:

Scottex99 said:

Now I’m not saying that that automatically guarantees that my “original” on the ethereum blockchain has more value than a saved image someone else has on their desktop by in theory it does.

But is there anything stopping me making a higher quality scan of the Mona Lisa as a new digital image file and creating a new NFT of that and arguing that mine is more valuable than yours? The whole thing seems such a pointless waste of time and buyers money - has humanity run out of worthwhile problems to solve?

This occurred to me too.  What is to stop me from changing one pixel of an NFT and relaunching it?  It's all a bit crazy.  I can see why some might enjoy collecting them, as some people do cat statues or football cards, but other than that it is all a bit silly.

oz0707

Just read this thread. Still don't have a clue what an nft really is and all i can think about is that Mr. Bean film where he swaps the painting for a print in the middle of the night. Thanks for giving me a laugh

Scottex99

barnstar2077 said:

Alexland said:

Scottex99 said:

Now I’m not saying that that automatically guarantees that my “original” on the ethereum blockchain has more value than a saved image someone else has on their desktop by in theory it does.

But is there anything stopping me making a higher quality scan of the Mona Lisa as a new digital image file and creating a new NFT of that and arguing that mine is more valuable than yours? The whole thing seems such a pointless waste of time and buyers money - has humanity run out of worthwhile problems to solve?

This occurred to me too.  What is to stop me from changing one pixel of an NFT and relaunching it?  It's all a bit crazy.  I can see why some might enjoy collecting them, as some people do cat statues or football cards, but other than that it is all a bit silly.

Nothing at all. You could take a BAYC that has current value of $500K (in ETH) and put a pink hat on it and list it. The difference is you would be selling it on your own OpenSea account, or whatever NFT exchange you were using. You wouldn't be verified as the official project and therefore the value would be close to zero, or whatever someone wanted to pay you for it. Maybe $5. 

There's big communities of fans behind all of the big projects, their Twitter pages and Discord's etc all have many many followers and all of them would separate your new NFT from what the deem as an original.

In fact most new projects have copycats pop up on the likes of OpenSea. I think OpenSea deletes them or they just fade away as most people realise they haven't been created by the original team.

Scottex99

Deleted_User said:

Scottex99 said:

Fakes end up in museums all the time and that’s after being looked at by 10 experts.

If went to the louvre tonight and switched the original with a print, you and everyone else wouldn’t have a clue when you looked at it the next day.

Now I’m not saying that that automatically guarantees that my “original” on the ethereum blockchain has more value than a saved image someone else has on their desktop by in theory it does.

This isn't about experts being fallible. Your "original" image from the blockchain is identical to the image that 1000s of people may have downloaded by right-clicking and saving. Digital copies are always identical to the "original", as I'm sure you know. There is absolutely no difference between having the original image and having a digital copy of it.

If you also happened to own the copyright of the image, you would have various legal rights, which people might be violating by right-clicking-and-saving the image. However, that is a completely separate matter from owning the NFT.

Since owning the NFT is a separate matter from having the image, and separate from owning the copyright, what is it, then? It's just "pure ownership": if you own the NFT, you own the NFT. The NFT is not the image. It is not the copyright of the image. It is just an NFT which refers to the image. And there is nothing to stop there being multiple NFTs which refer to the same image; so the exclusivity of the NFT - only 1 person can own it at the same time - only covers the NFT itself, not the image referred to.

To be over-generous, one could say that it is possible for people to choose to find value in anything, so why not in NFTs? But honestly, if it quacks like a scam, ....

All valid points. 

There is already some drama on Twitter because people are right click saving pics of punks and apes and using them as their profile pics. The actual owners are claiming and I think Twitter is looking at introducing some kind of plan to verify, but I'm not entirely sure as I dont have any NFTs worth 6 figures...yet, haha.

I'd say you're correct, you literally just are the owner of the NFT and for some people that has value. Not everything that's new and doesn't have the clearest form of value is a scam though. Maybe 99.9% of the collections go to zero, maybe it's all hype. And there are many scams too, but I wouldn't be so quick to right it off. And that's not just because I have one could sell right now and buy a half decent car with. 

I also have bought some stupid cartoon mushrooms where the dev team had a cool website, had all this cool utility planned and then they just disappeared, the value went to 0 of all them. Few hundred quid down the drain, no biggy. I'd rather have fun looking at all this stuff and crypto in general than sit on the sidelines saying its all useless and a scam.

eskbanker

Scottex99 said:
I also have bought some stupid cartoon mushrooms where the dev team had a cool website, had all this cool utility planned and then they just disappeared, the value went to 0 of all them. Few hundred quid down the drain, no biggy. I'd rather have fun looking at all this stuff and crypto in general than sit on the sidelines saying its all useless and a scam.

Thereby endorsing the view of some that the initials stand for Not F****** There

Scottex99

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