Current Events > Remember when NFTs were a thing?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Those died out without much fanfare, huh

They died when AI became a better scam. Cant wait to talk about it in past tense next.

I still don't really understand what those were tbh

I bought them. All of them. They're all mine now.

I'm sure SMAL is rolling in virtual cash from all of his licensed NFT crap.

copy/paste killed the NFT...

SketchDog posted...

I still don't really understand what those were tbh

No one does. Everytime someone explained them it actually managed to make less sense.

Funko still does them unfortunately and they lock a bunch of cool characters and lines behind them too. There was a recent Wonder Man one that looked awesome but the only way to get the actual physical POP is to buy those mystery NFT packs and hope you get the one you want. Apparently they sold like shit and most of the packs were destroyed.

Bitcoin is the new (perhaps resurgence) craze and the people, in the U.S. at least, moved on from NFTs to bitcoin because Trump moved on from NFTs to bitcoin.

SketchDog posted...

I still don't really understand what those were tbh

Essentially they were a digital receipt saying that you had purchased said digital receipt.

rick_alverado posted...

Essentially they were a digital receipt saying that you had purchased said digital receipt.

Still don't get it

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Sounds like grifter talk to me

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/eadd5cd8.jpg
I was looking for the nft apes back in pog form but this was the best I could find

Arent they like virtual trading cards/figurines/collectibles? I remember when Trump got in on the craze lol

SketchDog posted...

Sounds like grifter talk to me

it was NFTs where a scam from day one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwMjPWOailQ&t=

this video explains them very well

MotaroRIP619 posted...

Arent they like virtual trading cards/figurines/collectibles? I remember when Trump got in on the craze lol

no no they where not

they where claiming ownership to the link to a jpeg

It always sounded like a waste of money to me. People will use whatever they want online regardless of who "owns" it. That battle was lost from the start.

Mist_Turnips posted...

No one does. Everytime someone explained them it actually managed to make less sense.

It's not that hard to understand. Blockchain is basically a ledger. Like signing your name on a form saying "I was here". The way it's built makes records extremely hard (impossible?) to falsify, thus it can be used for things like money. ie: Bitcoin.

And NFTs were just that concept applied to other things like digital art. It's basically just a normal picture but with ultra secure code saying "Yup, that's mine." The idea being that, while anyone could just "download" it, they could never "own" it. They don't have the ledger that proves they own it. In the same way that I can go download a photo of the Mona Lisa, but cannot own the original work.

But like. There's a few key differences between a jpg that was never anything more than a jpg and the literal Mona Lisa. So it was a terrible idea and the vast majority of people didn't care about how many digital certificates you owned stating how many apes you collected. With no one other than the scammers buying into the ecosystem it was obviously going to crash sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, AI has too many uses (both nefarious and not) to go the same way. Your grandma was confused by all the young'uns obsessing over ape pictures. But she loves AI generating family photos into Ghibli styled "masterpieces". The scale here is several orders of magnitude different.

Uta posted...

It's not that hard to understand. Blockchain is basically a ledger. Like signing your name on a form saying "I was here". The way it's built makes records extremely hard (impossible?) to falsify, thus it can be used for things like money. ie: Bitcoin.

And NFTs were just that concept applied to other things like digital art. It's basically just a normal picture but with ultra secure code saying "Yup, that's mine." The idea being that, while anyone could just "download" it, they could never "own" it. They don't have the ledger that proves they own it. In the same way that I can go download a photo of the Mona Lisa, but cannot own the original work.

But like. There's a few key differences between a jpg that was never anything more than a jpg and the literal Mona Lisa. So it was a terrible idea and the vast majority of people didn't care about how many digital certificates you owned stating how many apes you collected. With no one other than the scammers buying into the ecosystem it was obviously going to crash sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, AI has too many uses (both nefarious and not) to go the same way. Your grandma was confused by all the young'uns obsessing over ape pictures. But she loves AI generating family photos into Ghibli styled "masterpieces". The scale here is several orders of magnitude different.

I'm sure if you're hallucinating or something this makes total sense

SketchDog posted...

I'm sure if you're hallucinating or something this makes total sense

watch the video i linked

AceMos posted...

watch the video i linked

I'm not watching videos on this stuff, it's stupid.

SketchDog posted...

I'm not watching videos on this stuff, it's stupid.

yeah thats the point of the video

showing how stupid it is

Remember the ugly monkey cartoon?

NFTs only make sense in a closed ecosystem where scarcity of something is possible, but a closed ecosystem wouldnt need NFTs to function.

Uta posted...

It's not that hard to understand. Blockchain is basically a ledger. Like signing your name on a form saying "I was here". The way it's built makes records extremely hard (impossible?) to falsify, thus it can be used for things like money. ie: Bitcoin.

And NFTs were just that concept applied to other things like digital art. It's basically just a normal picture but with ultra secure code saying "Yup, that's mine." The idea being that, while anyone could just "download" it, they could never "own" it. They don't have the ledger that proves they own it. In the same way that I can go download a photo of the Mona Lisa, but cannot own the original work.

But like. There's a few key differences between a jpg that was never anything more than a jpg and the literal Mona Lisa. So it was a terrible idea and the vast majority of people didn't care about how many digital certificates you owned stating how many apes you collected. With no one other than the scammers buying into the ecosystem it was obviously going to crash sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, AI has too many uses (both nefarious and not) to go the same way. Your grandma was confused by all the young'uns obsessing over ape pictures. But she loves AI generating family photos into Ghibli styled "masterpieces". The scale here is several orders of magnitude different.

Your explanation is correct but it already begins at a jump that (rightfully) confuses people. Why does blockchain anything need to be part of this? We can already store ownership. Databases are not new. You can buy a shitty CSGO skin on Steam marketplace and Steam has recorded that you own it and no one else can own until you sell it to someone else then Steam records that they own it. No blockchain involved.

People would say "but blockchain is like a ledger and it's like every transaction ever is on it it's revolutionary". That's called an append-only database. It's not new. People would say "but blockchain is decentralized. that changes everything." It doesn't change anything for any user anywhere. The goal of the decentralization with bitcoin was that a central bank wouldn't control it. But what do I care that Steam or any other company controls my monkey jpegs. Especially since the blockchain involved here isn't even really a receipt to the monkey jpeg but really a receipt to a URL of the monkey jpeg by a company. And they could just turn off the monkey jpeg on their side even if the blockchain says I own the monkey jpeg.

It actually makes less sense the more you work your way backwards

Kuuko posted...

Your explanation is correct but it already begins at a jump that (rightfully) confuses people. Why does blockchain anything need to be part of this? We can already store ownership. Databases are not new. You can buy a shitty CSGO skin on Steam marketplace and Steam has recorded that you own it and no one else can own until you sell it to someone else then Steam records that they own it. No blockchain involved.

People would say "but blockchain is like a ledger and it's like every transaction ever is on it it's revolutionary". That's called an append-only database. It's not new. People would say "but blockchain is decentralized. that changes everything." It doesn't change anything for any user anywhere. The goal of the decentralization with bitcoin was that a central bank wouldn't control it. But what do I care that Steam or any other company controls my monkey jpegs. Especially since the blockchain involved here isn't even really a receipt to the monkey jpeg but really a receipt to a URL of the monkey jpeg by a company. And they could just turn off the monkey jpeg on their side even if the blockchain says I own the monkey jpeg.

It actually makes less sense the more you work your way backwards

Feels like listening to a pitch of some shitty start up explaining to a VC why they need to fund their ai machine learning blockchain company

Remember more than one user trying to scam people on here with that shit.

I do wonder, with how much AI is being shoved down our throats, its similar to NFTs. Will AI crash and burn too once people actually click how detrimental to everything it is?

Will we course correct and go back to type writers and other older tech, like in sci-fi movie?

buddah86 posted...

I do wonder, with how much AI is being shoved down our throats, its similar to NFTs. Will AI crash and burn too once people actually click how detrimental to everything it is?

Will we course correct and go back to type writers and other older tech, like in sci-fi movie?

Well ai is a much broader term and has a lot of valuable uses. NFTs are a useless grift.

Umbreon posted...

Remember more than one user trying to scam people on here with that shit.

I remember one user who was super into them, and talking about how in a few years you wouldn't be able to play video games without buying NFTs. He was completely confused when I told him that even if all video games moving forward required them, I would just play old games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8f-BQFo7lw

Uta posted...

It's basically just a normal picture but with ultra secure code saying "Yup, that's mine." The idea being that, while anyone could just "download" it, they could never "own" it. They don't have the ledger that proves they own it. In the same way that I can go download a photo of the Mona Lisa, but cannot own the original work.

The problem with your proposed explanation is right here. The ledger doesn't prove that you "own" it. The ledger proves that a cryptocurrency transaction occurred but that by itself means nothing. Now sometimes that transaction purchased you a contract that confers exclusive rights to an image. But in that case it's the contract that proves you own it, not the ledger, and there's no reason you couldn't have just purchased that contract using regular old currency.

An NFT is unique data that's specially yours, so, kinda like a Pokemon! But with a receipt!
...
...That you paid $10,000 dollars for.

(I don't really claim to understand it.)

Kuuko posted...

It actually makes less sense the more you work your way backwards

Fair enough, yeah. My point was that the technology behind the stuff was pretty easy to understand. The reason for why people would want it to work the way they wanted to is mostly just, "Dumb capitalism stuff; mostly fueled by spite from techbros too young to have made billions on the 2008 housing crisis / recession". Pinning down a single coherent logic to it is near impossible since it's all based on fringe ideas of like. Trying to craft a digital world as real as the real world yet somehow never managing to make anything 25% as powerful as Second Life.

Unfortunately it might be coming back with Trump

I genuinely believe the Line Goes Up video in January 2022 was the cultural turning point after which NFTs began to crater and die.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

Dan Olson killed them

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Dan Olson killed them

Ayyyyyy high five

I still remember when that one dude was posting pics from a Cheech and Chong (or even just one of them) NFT party and expecting us to react like he was backstage at the fucking Oscars.

It was basically "shitty convention center decorations with shitty convention center people" and then Cheech and/or Chong didn't even show up, just did a two minute Zoom call.

The topic was like watching The Harlem Globetrotters get into a combination dunk/roast contest with some Dave-from-accounting-motherfucker.

__aCEr__ posted...

I'm sure SMAL is rolling in virtual cash from all of his licensed NFT crap.

That's a name I haven't heard in a while. I wonder if he's still disowning his sister because her boyfriend was black?

Remember when someone stole Seth Green's NFT? Thank god he got it back and made that game changing Tv Series with it...

i got this badboy for sale for $100000
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/10f6ec37.jpg

remember when they weren't a thing?

thronedfire2 posted...

remember when they weren't a thing?

https://youtu.be/_7zZuBQs0bE?t=12

The marriage certificate explanation is easy enough to understand.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/da5ec70e.jpg

I remember the certificates you could buy to name stars