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by wiradikusuma·5y ago·view on hn ↗
In my previous comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289339), I lamented how I missed the boat on BTC and ETH, and then somebody commented about NFT.

I want to like NFT, but I don't see how randomly generated stuff like this (no intention to dismiss author's work) can be valuable?

First tweet — Yes you can't reproduce being first, but it's only valuable because it's the first on Twitter. If it's the first post on SomeRandomSocMed.com, I don't care.

Original Disaster Girl meme — It's valuable because the meme is famous. If you create a new meme, I don't care. Unless it's famous.

So, unless the randomly generated content somehow becomes popular, I don't see how it's more valuable than the another unique content by the same algorithm.

Now, many artworks for sale as NFT are beautiful. I'm sure it took some time and effort to create. But, harsh as it may seem, it's no different than those cheap paintings being sold by the roadside.

Or am I missing something?

3 comments
> So, unless the randomly generated content somehow becomes popular, I don't see how it's more valuable than the another unique content by the same algorithm.

NFTs benefit famous people, celebrities and the creators of early famous internet memes. They know it is a scam and they are doing it quickly before the demand collapses because they can.

The fool is the one that buys it off them for a high price and at the ATH of the crypto markets. It would take years and luck to find another fool to buy it off them for higher.

I’m clearly missing something.

I see NFTs a way to sign your digital work - which was previously impossible.

Or a way to speculate, aka create (art)work which can have arbitrarily any value, from O to infinite, depending on how powerful the person / network is who sets the price.

It's just a scam. There's not really any more depth to it than that.
What really made me change my mind on NFT's is collectibles. Not so much random pixel art, but actual collectibles (e.g. think stamps, baseball cards, basketball cards, pokemon, etc). The success of NBA Top Shots is a case in point. The blockchain allows for decentralized verifiability of a collectible's origin/authenticity (making fakes impossible), and even more importantly: seamlessly allows to create a marketplace around the collectibles without needing to rely on ebay and shady sellers. I definitely think this pixel art fad will pass or remain a niche, but the concept of collectibles has been around for a long time and will stay for a long time to come.
> (making fakes impossible)

The problem with this claim, and kind of NFTs in general, is that all the collectables in general are fake, and all the NFT really does is try to prop up scarcity, which is also fake in this scenario. There's nothing genuine about any of this.

Pokémon cards, back in the day, was at least some cool looking sheets of paper and a game to play. But you can buy a single $100 NFT and pay $200 in "gas fees". That's already exceeded what an average parent probably spent on Pokémon cards per year.

NFTs do not actually do any of that.
Call them pointers, or whatever you want. but to say they don't do any of that is not really true nor conducive to the discussion.
They don't, though. An NFT can't prove authenticity of a physical object.
This is an interesting thought: I buy an object and the NFT with it. Then I swap it and sell you a fake lookalike, and the NFT. Which one is the "original" object now? Who is the owner of the "valuable" object? Is it the person who holds the NFT, or the person who holds the original?

Most people would say it's the latter, but what makes an object valuable is not as clear-cut. Yes, a fake Picasso isn't as valuable as a real Picasso, but the NFT was (presumably) verifiably minted by the original artist, so maybe the NFT is the art, and the object is just something that comes with.

(It's not.)
Because the art market is nothing if not perfectly rational.