Well you were right. 90% are now worthless.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/22/nfts-worthless-price
Absolute rubbish but some people did make a mint out of them. The Guardian reporting a 90% drawdown is totally irrelevant - the smart money got out ages ago and went into cash/bonds other safer assets. Traders are way ahead.
Don't write stuff off though - crypto is flush with money again and the bull market is back.
This is all cyclic and money tends to go from stocks>dollar>BTC>eth>altcoins>meme and shit coins/nfts. Bust.
Higher interest rates gave people with money more money to plough into this stuff. Hence the bull.
Still rubbish though.
Proponents talking a lot of rubbish about solving contract and financial problems that lawyers and financiers don't think are big problems.
Mugs. Same with any form of crypto. For someone to profit, someone else has to lose. That’s never a sound basis for living your life.
It's true but that is the nature of Capitalism.
The main problem with many trading assets from social point of view is it really doesn't add value to much, and is unearned income. But people look for ways to invest and a market appears.
But that's all Capitalism is. Swilling money around rather than creating much.
Depends on what you mean by NFT.
If you mean crap digital pictures of apes then yes, it was a rubbish idea. If you mean the general concept of Non-Fungible Tokens then that's a different matter.
People like to write crypto off saying, 'It's just a database' seemingly without realising that the entirety of modern civilisation is built on databases going all the way back to the Sumerians. Whoever controls the database controls the civilisation.
So yeah, pictures of apes were a rubbish idea. A database owned by everyone and no one on the other hand...
This was published in late 2021 at the peak of the craze and encapsulates my feelings on the topic rather well.
I never did understand the concept of paying to own something that doesn’t actually exist.
Point in case is that very Guardian article. They use an image that is reported to be 'owned' by Melania Trump. Did they have to get her permission? Was she paid for it's, er, rental? I suspect not, and now I can just go and look at it on my phone, reckon I have as much value out of it as she does.
2 problems
Making crypto is a massive source of green house gases
If we all hide our money on servers how does anyone pay tax?
A database owned by everyone and no one on the other hand…
Is only of use in very specialist cases and comes with large overheads.
People like to big up crypto by talking about it being a decentralised database seemingly without realising that a database is generally just a small part of a system. Without the surrounding controls its meaningless.
They weren't worthless, they served their purpose well - to provide a means for money laundering, just like Crypto currencies do.
Is only of use in very specialist cases and comes with large overheads.
So far. The entire ecosystem is still in its infancy.
Crypto is where the internet was in the mid 90s. It was a good place to find free porn but not much else and very few people could see any real world use cases (of course, everyone now professes to have been an internet visionary back then but in reality the number of people who understood and saw what it could do in the future was vanishingly small).
The problem with anything new is that very few people are capable of seeing the possibilities until someone else has made the possibilities a reality.
Without the surrounding controls its meaningless.
Because there have been so many problems maintaining the integrity of the Bitcoin ledger? Seems to have worked fine so far.
By controls, do you mean the people who control access to the database? Because honestly, much of the inequality in our society comes from the fact certain people are skimming far too much which they are able to do because they have privileged access to the databases or the people who control the databases.
If we all hide our money on servers how does anyone pay tax?
What does tax even mean once we all live on the database owned by everyone and no one?
What does tax even mean once we all live on the database owned by everyone and no one?
Fiat currency is not going to go anywhere. The reason for this is that governments can require (and force) their citizens to pay tax in this fiat currency.
However, the world is becoming increasingly interconnected. So far this has been fine because more or less everyone has decided to use USD as an international payment system. Which is now starting to run into problems.
I can't map out the next 20 years of international finance and politics but I'd be surprised if crypto didn't feature heavily, either through the current block chains or through government backed CBDCs. Or more likely a combination of the two.
So far. The entire ecosystem is still in its infancy.
Its been known and easily accessible for about ten years now (conservative measurement).
In the same time from the web becoming easily accessible (we could take ten years from eternal september for example) it has had massive impact on multiple sectors.
Whereas for crypto its only widespread use has been for financial gambling which undermines its use as an actual currency.
Yes you can speculate on proper currencies but thats as a unintentional byproduct and really not desirable.
Because there have been so many problems maintaining the integrity of the Bitcoin ledger? Seems to have worked fine so far.
No I mean the fact its useless without laws and regulations.
For example lets take smart contracts. As anyone who has has worked as a developer knows.
Requirements are an arse and easily misinterpreted.
Writing bug free code is basically impossible (especially when you include requirements misinterpretation).
Reviewing code is hard.
Which is why stuff ends up in court to argue over.
[posts gif of a bored chimp in a jester costume licking an empty wallet]
History is full of people who think they have discovered the next Big Idea
Quite literally the definition of a pyramid scheme, start it up, get in early, make money and then disappear before it falls over.
At least a Ponzi scheme fails definitively. “Crypto” just keeps parting fools and their money.
History is full of people who think they have discovered the next Big Idea
I don't think crypto is the next big idea. It's the thing that makes the next big idea possible. Just like the internet wasn't the big idea. It's the things people were able to do through the internet. Along with all the really bad ideas that people have to have before the right person is in the right place at the right time with the right idea.
In the same time from the web becoming easily accessible (we could take ten years from eternal september for example) it has had massive impact on multiple sectors.<br />Whereas for crypto its only widespread use has been for financial gambling which undermines its use as an actual currency.
You are never going to have one thing that is perfectly analogous with another. Particularly with something like Bitcoin that almost has an early stage volatility inducer built in (the halving cycle).
I can't even decide if the boom bust cycles that have been created by the halvings is a good thing or a bad thing.
Each halving has caused a lot of money to flow into crypto which provides incentives for people to develop more tools and products. In addition, it has created a lot of greed and FOMO which has led to a lot of scams and money flowing into really really bad ideas. The vast majority of ideas are going to be bad, which is something that is analogous with the internet.
With each halving cycle the returns get lower but also the crash isn't as severe. The price is stabilising (although the long term trend seems to still be upward).
Like I said, it's impossible to map out what the next 20 years is going to look like. However, I'd be very surprised if crypto simply died. But not completely surprised which is why I don't have my life savings invested in it.
Our honeymoon was at a fancy hotel in [redacted]. A 'big player' in crypto was at the same hotel as us with a crowd of hangers on, he was meeting the prime minister of the country we were in to try to sell them on crypto/NFT.
One day, in the restaurant for breakfast, we got talking to his mum who was there helping to look after his kid. Someone else asked her what it was that her son was "selling" and what the value of it was. She said, (very loudly 😆), that the whole thing was a big ponzi scheme!
Edit:
Quite literally the definition of a pyramid scheme, start it up, get in early, make money and then disappear before it falls over.
That's just what this guy was doing. But rightly or wrongly, my once in a lifetime trip was, to him, just another Wednesday in a luxury resort on his world tour of scams. The mugs underneath buying his terrible scribbles for thousands of dollars probably aren't seeing the same benefits as him though.
Whereas for crypto its only widespread use has been for financial gambling which undermines its use as an actual currency.
This is the major problem with it as far as I can tell, I've no problem with the idea of decentralised currencies, all they require to work ultimately is trust in the perceived value, establish that and you have a product that folks should be allowed to use and could. That it has been hijacked by essentially shysters grifters and con-men should be the eye opener for its supporters that makes them want do something about it, it tells you that unless there are rules to stop it use like this, then this will be the only large scale use of it, but at the same time, defining that is the very thing that crypto is supposed to not have to do.
Until that paradox is resolved; crypto should be treated by everyone as the equivalent of the 3 card game on the street corner.
At least a Ponzi scheme fails definitively. “Crypto” just keeps parting fools and their money.
One thing that does keep me entertained is watching crypto-bros saying, 'Enjoy being poor' to the loudly and proudly coinless during the boom part of the cycle.
And then in the bust stage of the cycle the loudly and proudly coinless get to say the same thing to the crypto bros.
Anyone who sounds 100% sure they know what is happening almost certainly has very limited knowledge of the subject at hand (and that includes both crypto-bros and the people who like to shout 'PONZI' every time the subject comes up). The only thing I'm sure of is that it is too complex a question for anyone to know what is going to happen.
Me and a mate were trying to figure it out in 2020/21. We've been in music 20-odd years and there were people we respected saying how NFTs were finally going to be the thing that would facilitate a music economy that worked for the smaller guys and the underground, rather than just the big players. So it was interesting to consider what the opportunities were.
A Crypto True Believer mate ran a small music company and sold a stake to some web3 investors, though we couldn't figure out how it was all going to work. But that was real money coming into a small company! Things were moving fast!
So we'd sit over a coffee and map out scenarios - what if a gig ticket was an NFT? What if your publishing rights were recorded on the blockchain? What if you could sell shares of copyright on specific songs to superfans, logged on a public ledger and managed by a smart contract?
It always fell down at one of three points:
a) how do we get over the oracle problem
b) what's the enforcement mechanism
c) isn't this just gambling
None of it lasted beyond the 2021 bullrun. The exciting new projects - Bandcamp but on the blockchain, web3 streaming alternatives to Spotify, DAOs for creators etc, have all quietly wound down or gone bust. The mate who sold up his company still runs it, but his investor boss ditched web3 altogether and has pivoted to AI. He's pretty disillusioned.
I wouldn't completely write off blockchain tech as a whole. But at the moment, I think the scams and weakness of the user experience will hobble it further. 2024 will see a lot more high profile court cases and disasters (Tether are going to be in a lot of shit, Binance is looking wobbly, Gemini, Genesis and DCG etc will have their days in court, Coinbase is running out of money). Maybe something will emerge after all that.
Ponzi scheme ?
Until that paradox is resolved; crypto should be treated by everyone as the equivalent of the 3 card game on the street corner.
Like I said, it's almost like Bitcoin was intended to have a very high initial degree of volatility that stabilises over time. Whether that was the intention or just a byproduct I don't know.
The boom parts of the halving cycle have the effect of drawing in a lot of new money which creates a perfect breeding ground for scams and really really bad ideas. But at least some of the people stick around through the bust cycle and so the crypto space continues to grow.
Each halving cycle the returns during the boom are getting less but the losses during the crash are also reduced each time.
It's difficult to say if the interest would have been there if there had just been slow but steady growth for 30 years. I suspect not, and I suspect bitcoin never would have gotten off the ground if that had been the model.
ah yeah, the safemoon guys. They'll be going to prison too 😆
90% are now worthless.
That number seems very low!
the smart money got out ages ago and went into cash/bonds other safer assets.
The smart money never got in.
Like I said, it’s almost like Bitcoin was intended to have a very high initial degree of volatility that stabilises over time.
From my perspective the problem it has is that the vast majority folks that are driving and exploiting that volatility right now are not honest brokers, they don't care about the theory of the future use of crypto, they're only interested in it right now as a vehicle to enrich themselves with trad currencies. The worry supporters should have about that is that the second part of the hope for the future - that it settles over time. Is that if it carries on like this; crypto (in the form that its supporters might want) might not have much time left.
Yep, just look at the massive standard of living increases in our lifetime in the UK.
Bit of a leap to attribute the increases in standard of living to capitalism, I would say. How about universal education? Surely that has more influence in human advancement than the system you use to distribute resources?
In theory capitalism is the perfect way to distribute resources. But then, in theory, so is socialism.
Very few theories survive contact with reality and that includes the current incarnation of capitalism as western democracies are currently finding out.
That number seems very low!
That number did come from a crypto gambling company so they do have to be optimistic.
Although speaking of NFTs you can still get blinded by the splendour of the bored apes.
The smart money never got in.
I know people who bought new cars based on getting the timing right.
They're not invested in any of this stuff now though.
I don’t think crypto is the next big idea. It’s the thing that makes the next big idea possible.
Ok, so what do you think the uses are?
As a currency they fail not just due to the volatility but also because transactions are slow and expensive if you stay on the blockchain. Hence all the various options to work around it at which point you lose most of the claimed advantages of blockchain.
Smartcontracts hit the obvious problem of imperfect code and then enforceability unless you are just gambling coins. You also have the problem that the big hitters can turn back the clock if they want.
I know people who bought new cars based on getting the timing right.
Yes so long as you recognise it is a bubble and go in appropriately then it can be a fairly smart decision.
High risk but so long as you have the money to spare and ideally slowly take the money out as it rises then its a good move for the first movers.
Its just the poor sods who come in late and empty their savings who are screwed.
Ok, so what do you think the uses are?
If I had to take a guess I'd say the use cases mostly involve databases that have to be maintained but no one wants to pay for.
For example, how do you prove you own your bikes? We know who owns which car because the government maintains a database. The will and the need for a government run bike database is simply not there.
Private databases run into the problem of finding enough people to pay for their service because any database really needs to have the vast majority of legitimate owners using the service. Bikes generally have the unique identifier of a frame number. If you associated an NFT with that frame number you could then record the owner of each bike.
The question then becomes how do you convince people to maintain the blockchain for you. The answer is to provide rewards for a transaction.
Therefore the user has to pay to transfer ownership somehow. In that case they would have two options. One is to simply pay a fee directly by providing a wallet address. The other is to trade something.
This is where something similar to the Basic Attention Token comes in. With the Brave browser ads are blocked and instead their own ads are inserted. The user controls how many ads they see and are awarded BAT based on how many ads they view. The user can either transfer the BAT to the site they are viewing or keep them for themselves.
Something similar could be used in order to 'pay' for recording your change in bike ownership in the ledger.
This idea is not supposed to be a business plan. Please don't start picking holes in it and tell me why it wouldn't work (although I know people will anyway).
Many people's actions are being monetised in ways they have no control over. Crypto has the potential to monetise a range of actions directly without having to use the medium of fiat currency.
It takes a very different way of looking at the world but the potential is there, without a doubt. Whether any of it comes to fruition remains to be seen.
This idea is not supposed to be a business plan. Please don’t start picking holes in it and tell me why it wouldn’t work (although I know people will anyway).
Ok, I wont point out the providers who already exist in this area.
Or the inconsistency between.
" mostly involve databases that have to be maintained but no one wants to pay for."
and
"The question then becomes how do you convince people to maintain the blockchain for you. The answer is to provide rewards for a transaction."
So people are going to pay for it by viewing adverts instead of direct?
Congratulations you have just reinvented google.
Which ultimately is the problem with blockchain. It solves a very specialist use case. In most cases its just a cumbersome and slow overhead. Thats leaving aside your leaping between crypto currencies and blockchains.
on NFTs, I have a mate who's a pretty in demand artist. He learnt about them, and started creating in about a week. Made a good amount for very little outlay. what's happened to what he created and sold? no idea, but he always knew it was a short term fad...
Ok, I wont point out the providers who already exist in this area
Yes they do. And they don't work because the vast majority don't use them. It is still far more common to buy an unregistered bike than a registered bike and that is why selling stolen bikes is so easy and why bike theft is so common. If unregistered bikes were the norm rather than the exception it would become pretty much impossible to unknowingly buy a stolen bike.
Back to the blockchain side of things and how apparently it's no different to google, the idea was more that you should stop viewing the world through the lens of fiat currency (where google controls what ads you see and keeps all the revenue from your attention) to one where you choose what and how you are shown ads and the proceeds of you looking at these ads go to you, or a recipient that you choose. It's a subtle but important difference and once you start looking at the world this way you start to see potential.
But, as I said, most people can't conceive what they haven't yet seen.
If I had to take a guess I’d say the use cases mostly involve databases that have to be maintained but no one wants to pay for.
I'm not sure about this - in general, if people perceive something to have value then someone will pay for it. And if no-one thinks it has value then it is pointless and will die. Even stuff that is ostensibly 'free' - like Google Maps or Instagram - people are paying for it. It's just that the people paying are the advertisers, not the end users.
The question then becomes how do you convince people to maintain the blockchain for you. The answer is to provide rewards for a transaction.
I think this is a fascinating proposition with decentralised blockchains. The blockchain itself must be capable of producing its own reward system, and that's very cool. But it still requires people to accept that the tokens have value, can be bought and sold and traded. Which creates some very perverse incentives. So we have people reopening coal mines to power bitcoin mining, Twitter awash with scammers trying to hack people's wallets, and shysters tricking the gullible into investing their life savings into a pump & dump scheme. I don't really see how these sort of shenanigans can be avoided.
I don’t really see how these sort of shenanigans can be avoided.
I think they are unavoidable with the built in volatility of the halving cycle. We'll see what happens in the coming cycles assuming the extremes of the highs and lows continue to reduce each time.
Yes they do. And they don’t work because the vast majority don’t use them.
Uh huh and crypto solves this how exactly?
Back to the blockchain side of things and how apparently it’s no different to google
I was making fun of your business model which was basically "ad funded". Not exactly a new model.
It’s a subtle but important difference and once you start looking at the world this way you start to see potential.
Sigh, yes its clearly people not being visionary enough vs not being gullible.
Even the model you just mentioned still needs someone sitting in the middle controlling that. Whether it is the browser company or a third party addon. So, again, how does blockchain help here?
Its design is neat for the specialist usecase but its a liability for most other cases.
We know who owns which car because the government maintains a database.
Not in the UK it doesn't...
Private ad-supported blockchain bike registration is a perfect example of the proposition: it's taking something that isn't actually a major problem and solving it in the most round-the-houses way possible.
The main problem around bike theft is not an unreliable or untrustworthy database that leaves people without proof of ownership. It's that thieves take your physical object in the real world and piss off down the street with it! If you had your ownership recorded in a decentralised ledger in that circumstance, you'd be in exactly the same position. It kind of gives the lie to the profound-sounding "whoever controls the database controls the civilisation" line when your bike is disappearing over the horizon.
wordnumb
Free Member
[posts gif of a bored chimp in a jester costume licking an empty wallet]
I'll swap you 6 tickets to Fyre Festival for it!
Uh huh and crypto solves this how exactly?
By being a database that is not reliant on the liquidity of a single company.
And because giving your credit card details to a company is a massive barrier to adoption. Paying in another way that feels like it's free because you aren't actually exchanging fiat isn't.
But yeah, this idea probably wouldn't work. It was just meant as an example to try to get you to think about what is actually trying to be achieved without always trying to bring it back to the processes that are currently used.
Like Henry Ford said
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
I’ll swap you 6 tickets to Fyre Festival for it!
Thnx m8 but Thols2 seems to have stolen my NFT investment somehow and now even jet-skiing on a beach with supermodels listening to Diplo won't cheer me up.
Perhaps Marx was wrong and capitalism isn't a necessary step toward social-utopia. Or something.
It’s that thieves take your physical object in the real world and piss off down the street with it!
Thieves steal bikes because they are easy to steal and easy to sell. Do you know for a fact that none of the second hand bikes you've bought have been stolen? At any point in the chain of ownership?
I certainly don't. It is unknowable because there is no universal or near universal system of recording ownership of this extremely valuable product.
I have never bought a stolen car though. I'm certain of that.
NFT's can be twinned with real world products. Something few people seem to realise. Once there is an immutable system of ownership selling a stolen product becomes far less profitable.
By being a database that is not reliant on the liquidity of a single company.
But for 90% of applications there are ways of solving those issues without coming up with the massively complex (and hugely energy inefficient) distributed solution. e.g. in your case the government (directly or through its police forces) could decide to introduce a DB, a consortium of bike manufacturers could do it, UK cycling/British Cycling could do it, or they could all get together and do it.
And because giving your credit card details to a company is a massive barrier to adoption. Paying in another way that feels like it’s free because you aren’t actually exchanging fiat isn’t.
They could fund it with a token cost on the original registration (potentially paid by the retailer) or on each change of ownership, or they could show you advertising whenever you went to check/change details (idea opportunity to helmet/light/tyre etc manuf to promote kit to people with new bikes!), or they could probably provide it FOC to cut down on crime / keep market prices up / encourage membership or by providing paid access to anonymised data to bike makers, councils etc to understand the market/need for active travel etc.
But yeah, this idea probably wouldn’t work. It was just meant as an example to try to get you to think about what is actually trying to be achieved without always trying to bring it back to the processes that are currently used.
Of course it would all fail because without any legal obligation to update your details it would be forgotten about.
The idea of having ways to prove the authenticity of something is not new - almost every website in the world uses cryptographic certificates to do this. The idea of doing that with the block chain is that you wouldn't want a single trusted authority to make that decision so the overhead of having many distributed ledgers makes it worthwhile. In reality for 90%+ of proposed use cases trusted authorities would work just fine.
But for 90% of applications there are ways of solving those issues without coming up with the massively complex (and hugely energy inefficient) distributed solution.
The fact you think NFTs are highly complex and energy inefficient tells me... something.
(Before you post a link showing that each NFT uses 142kWhrs of energy to produce make sure you understand the difference between PoS and PoW and are aware of a rather important event regarding Ethereum).
I have never bought a stolen car though. I’m certain of that.
How?
Did you check the VIN number? Do you know how to check it's not been tampered with? Engine block number?
That's a lot to be certain about.
Blockchain is mostly a solution looking for a problem.
(Before you post a link showing that each NFT uses 142kWhrs of energy to produce make sure you understand the difference between PoS and PoW
Ah yes Proof of Stake.
So instead of having overly large and powerful banks instead we go for a system where the power is given to the largish miners instead.
Which really is the problem. To make crypto usable on a wider scale you bin off most of the theoretical advantages of it.
Even a POS Blockchain is complex and inefficient compared to a centralised database though.
Using the bike database example; you could have (say) the police run a database and everyone pays an extra £1 in tax, or you could could have a distributed network with 1000 nodes, data replicated in 1000 places, and a system of tokens that can be sold for real money, and a way of tracking the value of those tokens.
Whatever the other benefits, you can't say it's not complex and inefficient compared to a single database.
I have never bought a stolen car though. I’m certain of that.
So you're saying the DVLA database is good at keeping track of ownership of valuable personal property...?
the massively complex (and hugely energy inefficient) distributed solution.
Hang on a minute. I thought blockchain was just a series of transactions, and bitcoin uses blockchain, and the energy wastage was caused by people trying to find new bitcoins? I didn't think the concept of a blockchain for whatever purpose does not necessarily come with massive energy consumption?
Hang on a minute. I thought blockchain was just a series of transactions, and bitcoin uses blockchain, and the energy wastage was caused by people trying to find new bitcoins? I didn’t think the concept of a blockchain for whatever purpose does not necessarily come with massive energy consumption?
There are two dominant ways to do a blockchain*. Proof Of Work, which means the more computers you have running flat out 24/7, the more likely you are to win the reward. This is what Bitcoin uses.
And Proof Of Stake, where the more money you have, the more likely you are to get the reward. This is what Ethereum recently moved to. It uses far less energy and just cuts to the chase - in both cases, the people with the most money end up with the most rewards (the major Bitcoin mining companies are worth billions and buy tens of millions of dollars worth of computers at a time), it just skips out the planet-burning part.
But it's still obviously far more complicated than a single database somewhere.
* a decentralised, public blockchain, obviously. I could set up the Doris blockchain, that I control and run, and just pay everyone £10 a month to host a node.
This reminded me, I wonder how Bicycle Club NFT is going.
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/bike-club-nft/
Oh.
I’ve genuinely tried to be optimistic about crypto stuff but I’m still not sold. Literally every time I see it challenged thoughtfully the people defending it have reverted to ‘you don’t understand it and I’m not going to explain it, do your own research’ which doesn’t fill me with confidence. I also think that the key difference between the internet and web3 is that the internet did a great job of solving the first problem it was designed for. I don’t think web3 has really decentralised anything, more re-concentrated it in the hands of different, less accountable people.
I don’t think web3 has really decentralised anything, more re-concentrated it in the hands of different, less accountable people.
Indeed. One of the popular arguments with BTC and Proof Of Work is that the more nodes there are, the harder it would be for a single attacker to compromise 51% of the network, and be able to force through whatever changes they wanted (ie 'all of your Bitcoin belong to me').
But in reality, yesterday 56% of all blocks mined were mined by two particular companies. If they wanted to collude for nefarious purposes, the fact that there are millions of nodes in the BTC blockchain wouldn't matter a jot. One of the companies (Foundry) is owned by DCG, run by Barry Silbert, who will probably go to prison for fraud next year. The other company is BitMain, who make all the mining machines. Decentralised, it is not.
The underlying legal proceedings mentioned in the MSNBC article won't result in Silbert being sent to prison- they're not criminal charges.
Really? Must've misunderstood it. I stand corrected!
