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Celebrity NFTs Risk 'Catastrophic Failure.' Just Ask John Cena (bloomberg.com) 107

Tokens from several celebrities have fallen in value in recent weeks, leaving buyers with losses. From a report: Celebrities like the musician Grimes have been quick to cash in on nonfungible tokens, making millions from minting collections of their own digital art. For buyers, however, the payoff has been far less rewarding. Consider "Earth" -- one of several NFTs issued by Grimes in February. Depicting a cherub spearing the globe, perhaps in a reference to her baby with SpaceX's Elon Musk, it was part of a collection that netted the artist (whose real name is Claire Elise Boucher) about $5.8 million after selling out in 20 minutes. While the cost to originally own one of the 303 limited editions was $7,500, one unit recently resold for just $1,200 in a stunning 84% drop. Likewise, a piece rapper A$AP Rocky sold for $2,000, showing him spinning around in space, in April just traded for about $900.

The list goes on. After seeing artists like Beeple make tens of millions from selling nonfungible tokens, a slew of celebrities including singer Shawn Mendes, socialite Paris Hilton and wrestler John Cena have jumped on the bandwagon to create their own digital art tied to blockchains. However, the prices of many of these art pieces have declined precipitously since their release. The resale market outside of fans appears to be small, with long-time NFT investors shunning the category as a money grab. Certainly there are more profitable corners of the NFT market, which hit a record of more than $300 million in daily sales at the end of August, according to tracker NonFungible. CryptoPunk #561, which initially sold for about $8,000, recently fetched more than $2.4 million. Bored Ape Yacht Club #2224 also recently traded for more than $335,000, up from less than $10,000 five months ago, per NonFungible.

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Celebrity NFTs Risk 'Catastrophic Failure.' Just Ask John Cena

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  • NFT = (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @02:55PM (#61993827)
    Nothing Fracking Tangible
  • OK, and how is this rising and falling value any different than physical art?

    • An 84% drop within the space of a year is pretty bad. I say get the word out there so these can be valued more accurately. To me it seems like it should be $0, and irks me that anybody made $5M for nothing, although I can't quite put my finger on why it bothers me.
      • by Sebby ( 238625 )

        although I can't quite put my finger on why it bothers me.

        Probably because we all know down the line they'll be getting a taxpayer-funded "bailout".

      • by taustin ( 171655 )

        although I can't quite put my finger on why it bothers me.

        Because it wasn't you. Bothers me for the same reason.

      • I suspect a lot of these NFTs are secretly purchased by the seller, to create the impression of a market value. Assuming the auction house takes a 5% cut, selling it a later for 16% of the original price still nets a nice profit.
      • false equivalence. This is ONE bad painting falling in value not all paintings.

        You're basically trying to argue that one stock falling 83% is proof that all stocks are bad Investments including the ones that didn't fall 83%.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        An 84% drop within the space of a year is pretty bad. I say get the word out there so these can be valued more accurately. To me it seems like it should be $0, and irks me that anybody made $5M for nothing, although I can't quite put my finger on why it bothers me.

        It irks you because it devalues each of those $5M. No useful work was done for that $5M, and it wasn't given as a gift, but pretending to be a sale of something with value. It's the same reason we get mad when we see highway robbery or other price gouging, even if both parties agree to the sale at that price. It sets the precedence that a bottle of water is worth $10 even when you're not in a movie theater, stadium, or a desert gas station.

      • The thing about Grimes is that she's not really a musician, and this NFT thing is just a sort of hobby for her.
        Gaining or losing $5.8 million is completely meaningless to her because she married so much money she is insulated from real life for ever. She also had the good sense to provide the money with an heir which gives her even more safety.
      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        It's such an obvious scam with these.

        Scammer: Makes a series of numerous of NFTs
        Scammer, via a proxy: Buys one of their own NFTs for $5k
        Scammer, via a different proxy: Buys another of their NFTs for $15k
        Scammer: Drums up press about their big sales.
        Scammer, via a third proxy: Buys another one of their own NFTs for $60k
        Scammer: Drums up more press
        Scammer: Auctions off the remaining pieces for a couple tens of thousands of dollars each to customers "excited" about being able to get these "appreciating works"

    • by taustin ( 171655 )

      Or any other fad bubble.

      Trey Parker and Matt Stone need to do an NFT of the underpants gnomes.

    • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @04:20PM (#61994081)

      OK, and how is this rising and falling value any different than physical art?

      1) The value of physical art has been demonstrated to hold for hundreds of years (and it typically appreciates in value).

      2) Physical art exists separate of the technology used to generate it. If the blockchain supporting the NFT falls out of use then the NFT becomes worthless.

      3) Physical art can be placed in a box for hundreds of years, get unpacked, and it not only has its original value but is generally much more valuable. The keys granting ownership to the NFT are not only fragile but easily stolen. Do you really think many of those NFTs are still going to even be accessible in a hundred years?

      4) You can hand a physical piece of art on a wall and place it on a pedestal and people can appreciate the infinite resolution and physical connection with the artist. No one is going to feel the same sense of awe looking at an NFT, no matter what kind of artificial scarcity you tried to attach to it. Not to mention the formats and resolutions becoming more and more outdated.

      I can easily explain why physical art has value, I can't don the same for NFTs.

      • As a sub-point of 2, the NFT itself does not (and usually cannot) contain the work of art—storing a movie or even a large image directly in the blockchain would be fairly expensive. So the NFT usually POINTS to some art that you own, and that link itself can expire long before the NFT itself does.

      • by mspohr ( 589790 )

        1) The value of physical art has been demonstrated to hold for hundreds of years (and it typically appreciates in value).
        Different artists and styles go in and out of favor and prices fluctuate.

        2) Physical art exists separate of the technology used to generate it. If the blockchain supporting the NFT falls out of use then the NFT becomes worthless.
        You don't understand blockchain. Blockchain can exist in perpetuity since it's distributed and doesn't depend on any single authority.

        3) Physical art can be place

        • 1) The value of physical art has been demonstrated to hold for hundreds of years (and it typically appreciates in value).
          Different artists and styles go in and out of favor and prices fluctuate.

          Yes, but not like NFTs. And I challenge you to find a 200 year old painting with zero value.

          2) Physical art exists separate of the technology used to generate it. If the blockchain supporting the NFT falls out of use then the NFT becomes worthless.
          You don't understand blockchain. Blockchain can exist in perpetuity since it's distributed and doesn't depend on any single authority.

          You don't understand the blockchain.

          If the network gets too small people can launch a 51% attack and create whatever transactions they want. And in either case when the network goes away the blockchain is just another file and people are free to add whatever they want to their own copy.

          More than that, NFTs aren't actual works but just links. So if the link breaks your NFT is again worthless.

          3) Physical art can be placed in a box for hundreds of years, get unpacked, and it not only has its original value but is generally much more valuable. The keys granting ownership to the NFT are not only fragile but easily stolen. Do you really think many of those NFTs are still going to even be accessible in a hundred years?
          Physical art is fragile. It can be easily damaged or stolen.

          Yes, but it's far more dur

      • I can easily explain why physical art has value, I can't don the same for NFTs.

        Joke's on you. I'm going to print out the NTF in binary, have it framed and hang it on my wall. That way it's sure to appreciate in value, and people will forever stare at it and wonder WTF I was thinking when I did it. Just like real art.

      • There's plenty that NFTs can do that physical art can't. You can't use physical art as an in-game item. You can't authenticate to a web3 website with physical art. You can't burn 2 pieces of physical art to receive upgraded new physical art.
      • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Physical works of art can also be stolen, damaged, destroyed, lost or copied.
        Storage of a physical work of art can be highly expensive if you want to avoid the stolen/damaged/destroyed/lost scenarios.

        Value of art, just like NFTs is arbitrary. It only has value so long as someone is willing to pay for it. If noone is willing to pay for it as a piece of artwork, then its value is usually extremely low for the raw materials its made out of.

        A physical metal sculpture may have scrap value for instance if the mat

    • by tofarr ( 2467788 )
      The way I understand it art is often a scam / used in money laundering. One key difference I would see is right in the name though - NFT : Non Fungible Tokens. "Non Fungible" indicates that something can't be reproduced. The fact that these are so easily available that all these different groups / celebrities are creating their own without any significant real world effort, that the creator can arbitrarily decide how many to issue, that there is nothing really that stops a creator issuing more tokens in the
    • by imidan ( 559239 )

      OK, and how is this rising and falling value any different than physical art?

      They probably used JPG or some other lossy image format. If they'd used a lossless format like PNG, their NFTs wouldn't have lost value.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Impossible! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @02:57PM (#61993839)

    Tulip prices are as high as ever!

    • by Rinikusu ( 28164 )

      If you look at the charts you can see the prices of Tulips NEVER GOES DOWN! Get in or be late and miss out completely!

      • by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Are those charts inflation adjusted, if not I call bs esp if we ar talking trends ove decades
        • Are those charts inflation adjusted, if not I call bs esp if we ar talking trends ove decades

          Dunno. Are your savings inflation-adjusted?

  • Get me out of here.
  • Sometimes the greatest fool is actually you.

  • Why ask Cena?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @03:07PM (#61993861)

    Celebrity NFTs Risk 'Catastrophic Failure.' Just Ask John Cena

    Why ask the producer/seller of it, when you should be asking the buyers that have been, basically, duped into thinking it'd be perpetually valuable?

  • If you are going to wash trade it's better to do it with something which won't get you sued by a celebrity for reputational damage.

  • full price for sloppy seconds.

    • I think this. The thrill is you are buying it from the artist sort of the first time. After that it is really nothing but some numbers. At least with real art, you have something to look at. I own some original art, some of which was done by a woman I know. I also know how long it took her to paint a piece. Thankfully her husband made good money.
  • They were things you bought at arcades and car washes so that the arcade or car wash had your money whether or not you ever used the service.

    How much you paid for them didn't affect their value; they were worth 1 play on a pinball machine or 1 trip through the car wash.

    Seems like these people lost their money when they bought the tokens, and were hoping someone else would give it back to them.

  • There's no losses here because this is just people laundering money. Wait a little bit and you'll be able to sell your nft to another money launderer just like you sell your cryptocurrency to another money launderer.
    • by ranton ( 36917 )

      It isn't all just money laundering. Plenty of them are evading taxes instead.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      So essentially, the IRS will come after them, just with some delay? Does not sound too smart too me.

  • by S_Stout ( 2725099 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @03:22PM (#61993907)
    The ones that rose in value are people selling it to themselves over and over at a higher price until someone else is fooled into buying it.
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      They are _not_ a scam. They are things with zero value with sold at whatever the buyers are willing to pay. If anything, the buyers are scamming themselves. Stupid people with money....

      • They are things with zero value with sold at whatever the buyers are willing to pay.

        You just basically said scams don't exist if someone is willing to fall for them. It's a strange position to take.

        • Scam implies intent to defraud. This is just mass hysteria, both the seller and the buyer thought they were on to a great thing. Unfortunately one of the parties trade a tangible asset (money) and the other traded an intangible asset (useless piece of digital crap) and is now getting a short sharp lesson in objective value.

          So it's not really a scam, just stupid people being stupid.

          • Scam implies intent to defraud.

            Yep, NFT in a nutshell.

            This is just mass hysteria, both the seller and the buyer thought they were on to a great thing.

            You just described all scams.

            Unfortunately one of the parties trade a tangible asset (money) and the other traded an intangible asset (useless piece of digital crap)

            Yep, scams often involve trading money for something useless.

            So it's not really a scam, just stupid people being stupid.

            It's hard to scam smart people.

  • NFTs are so hilariously bad that I literally clutched my head in disbelief while discussing them the other night.

    You walk into a shop where they sell apples and NFTs of apples. You buy the NFT of an apple and get a receipt from the cashier. You then wave the receipt around, letting everyone know that you own the apple. But the cashier never gave you an apple, and never intends to give you any physical apple. What you own is the receipt for an apple, and so when you try to sell it to someone else, they're like, "but I want an apple, not a receipt for an apple," and you have to try to explain to them artificial scarcity and why a receipt is just as good as owning the apple.

    It stupid on so many levels, not least of which is that it solves none of the problems it purports to (mostly paying artists for their art on the internet). Like, if you want to support an artist, just give them money and help them make more art, whether you own it or not.

    The digital age was supposed to make information more free, more available. Endless abundance because bits can be copied for zero marginal cost, so you can value the experience rather than own more stuff. And here are some jerks trying to undo that, not even succeeding at it, and bankrupting a bunch of idiots with more money than sense.

    What an era.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      What an era.

      Indeed. Stupid is the new smart.

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        Stupid -- specifically the group think variety -- has always been the new smart. It just takes luck with timing. Everyone on the bandwagon thinks the first people to climb on were geniuses, but in the end what matters even more is your timing getting off.

    • The difference with NFTs is: the cashier is Musk, or Beyoncé, or Pollock. And they sign the receipt for that apple personally.
      Yes, it's still bullcrap.
    • NFTs are so hilariously bad that I literally clutched my head in disbelief while discussing them the other night.

      Sounds like you don't really understand NFTs or what they're capable of.

      You're fear-mongering is on the same level as being angry at baseball cards. It's a little piece of cardboard with a picture of a player and maybe some stats. When you look at the intrinsic value, it's a small amount of cardboard and ink. Not really worth anything.

      But you have baseball cards that sell for many thousands of dollars. The cardboard and ink didn't suddenly become more valuable, it gained value because of what other people

      • Who believes that a picture of an apple is as good as an apple? That's not what people are doing with NFTs so I don't know what point you're trying to make.

        This is LITERALLY the whole market for NFTs at the moment. There is nothing else going on with them. People are buying them, thinking that they own *something*, and they DON'T.

        Your baseball card metaphor is misguided, because there really ARE fewer baseball cards of certain kinds, making them more rare. Of course it's true that we're attributing value based on scarcity of something that's not important, but that describes literally all of currency and commerce. It's all a collective agreement about what has value and whether or not we can trade it.

        But NFTs attempt to introduce scarcity where none is possible. Not only is that image (or whatever) not unique, it's impossible for it to be scarce. The only thing that's scarce is the CLAIM of ownership--the receipt--and even that is fundamentally just a series of ones and zeros, and itself is in theory not unique or scarce either.

        In the end, this sums it up best:

        If you’re like any normal meat human, you’ve often found yourself looking at a cartoon online and wondering: “how fungible is this?” The hot acronym in the art-tabs world right now is “NFT,” which stands for “non-fungible token,” which is a way to burn cash and fossil fuels to create a number that no one else is allowed to own, and then use that number to point to a work of art that is infinitely reproducible. Think of it like buying a very finely-wrought platinum nameplate that says “I OWN THIS” and then attaching it to the ocean. Also the nameplate is just a number. Obviously this is being hailed as the future of art collecting."

        • This is LITERALLY the whole market for NFTs at the moment.

          I implore you to do more research. If that's what you think, you are simply ignorant on the NFT community. One of the bigger things I've seen lately is allowing ownership of items in games. The way it currently works is, the company owns everything, including your account, and the characters, items, etc. that you've found in-game are all property of the company. With NFTs, the company can give up some ownership but allow resales (which most don't these days), which is another revenue base.

          People are buying them, thinking that they own *something*, and they DON'T.

          Sure they do. The

          • by Nugoo ( 1794744 )

            One of the bigger things I've seen lately is allowing ownership of items in games. The way it currently works is, the company owns everything, including your account, and the characters, items, etc. that you've found in-game are all property of the company. With NFTs, the company can give up some ownership but allow resales (which most don't these days), which is another revenue base.

            How is this enabled by NFTs? I can't think of anything that prevents companies from sharing access to each other's databases and allowing players to trade with each other between games. They don't do it now with databases, and I see no reason to believe they'll do it in the future with NFTs, except perhaps as a gimmick to attract venture capital money.

          • They have ownership of that particular NFT, in the same way that you can own a baseball card.

            No, buddy. Either you're completely deluded or you really don't understand what you're saying. That baseball card I found in my old closet in my parents' house two weeks ago while visiting? I own that. It's a real, physical thing. I could sell it, I could keep it, I could set it on fire. My ownership of that card in no way requires a group of people to get together and collectively agree I own it. My access to that

          • "I implore you to do more research. If that's what you think, you are simply ignorant on the NFT community. One of the bigger things I've seen lately is allowing ownership of items in games. The way it currently works is, the company owns everything, including your account, and the characters, items, etc. that you've found in-game are all property of the company. With NFTs, the company can give up some ownership but allow resales (which most don't these days), which is another revenue base"

            Yes, the company
      • But you have baseball cards that sell for many thousands of dollars. The cardboard and ink didn't suddenly become more valuable, it gained value because of what other people are willing to pay for it.

        Can you clarify something for me? Is a particular baseball card artificially scarce? What I mean is, for a particularly "rare" baseball card that's worth a lot of money, are there really an infinite series of the exact same baseball card sitting around, also waiting to be sold?

        • Depends on the card. It's not a 100% analogy, but it's close. Blockchain technology can introduce scarcity, so there isn't an "infinite series of the exact same baseball card sitting around".

      • "Some people want to be able to own digital assets like they would a physical baseball card." Unlike baseball cards, which are limited by their physical access (only a certain number of cards are ever printed), NFT's can be copied over and over, so there's no real way of ever guaranteeing their uniqueness or value.
        • Please read up on blockchain technology. That's not how NFTs work.

          Yes, you copy the image of the NFT. But you don't own the NFT on the blockchain, so you don't have any benefits of being on the blockchain.

          Baseball cards can be copied or duplicates can be made. Older and rarer ones still have value, though.

          • Unless the NFT is transferring all copyrights to you, you don't "own" a damn thing. You have no legal authority to the item a token points to. Moreover your claim is only valid to people that accept the authority of whatever blockchain you conducted the transaction on.

            Your comparison to baseball cards is ludicrous. Some baseball cards are worth money (to some people) because they have actual physical scarcity. Limited numbers were physically produced and a small portion even exist. A yet smaller portion of

            • Unless the NFT is transferring all copyrights to you, you don't "own" a damn thing. You have no legal authority to the item a token points to. Moreover your claim is only valid to people that accept the authority of whatever blockchain you conducted the transaction on.

              You don't really know much about NFTs, what you're regurgitating is surface level fearmongering.

              NFTs and copyright are 2 different things. I don't own the copyright to a book that I bought, but I can read, resell, or store that book as I desire. Same thing with a baseball card. I don't have any ownership of the player on the card, or to any other baseball cards, just that one. Same thing with an NFT.

              Your comparison to baseball cards is ludicrous. Some baseball cards are worth money (to some people) because they have actual physical scarcity. Limited numbers were physically produced and a small portion even exist. A yet smaller portion of extant cards are in good shape. The rarity of the card, condition, and the notoriety of the card's subject all influence the value someone is willing to pay. Physical cards are literally non-fungible. If you have physical possession of a card you control all access to it.

              You're close to understanding! That's what the blockchain is, it can introduce scarcity, so you can have sm

            • You don't own the copyright to a baseball card you own. You just own one specific copy. Copies of the work can be made infinitely, but not by you. Just like an NFT.

      • You're fear-mongering is on the same level as being angry at baseball cards. It's a little piece of cardboard with a picture of a player and maybe some stats. When you look at the intrinsic value, it's a small amount of cardboard and ink. Not really worth anything.

        But you have baseball cards that sell for many thousands of dollars. The cardboard and ink didn't suddenly become more valuable, it gained value because of what other people are willing to pay for it.

        Except that when you give me $1m, I hand over the baseball card. You actually can hold it in your hands, lock it in a vault, mount it in a frame, heck you can even burn it if you so desire.

        But if you give me $1m for the NFT I'm holding, you get nothing. Just the receipt as Dixie Flatline called it. You can't do any of the things with the NFT that you could have done with the baseball card.

        • Sure I do. I can resell it, or trade it. Depending on the NFT, I can do other things with it (it might confer abilities or powers in a game, or maybe it's an NFT of a soccer player that I can use in the latest FIFA game). It's proof of ownership of that NFT.

          But there's more! Maybe it's an NFT commissioned from an artist. Since the blockchain can track the movement of the NFT, if that NFT is resold, the artist can receive a part of the resale, something that's not really possible in today's world.

          You're li

          • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

            It's snake oil. All it is doing is recording something in blockchain. Whoa, big deal. One of the original NFTs was for a piece of digital art. One that I probably have on disk somewhere and probably a million people do. So the artist "sold" the NFT. So someone supposedly owns it. This is not a copyright. The artist still has that. So what did the buyer buy? A receipt showing he's a sucker. If the blockchain goes away and I think it was Etherium there is no NFT. Gone like a fart in the wind.

            There is also no

            • And there are baseballs cards that many people have. People can copy those baseball cards, but the originals still have worth (depending on the player, age of card, etc.). You're trying to equate an NFT to a simple jpeg, and while it can be that simple, that's not all the technology is.

              No one ever said these had anything to do with copyright. No one has ever said that this would enable to you own some sort of copyright to any art made as part of the NFT.

              No security? So...you don't know how blockchain work

      • NFTs are so hilariously bad that I literally clutched my head in disbelief while discussing them the other night.

        Sounds like you don't really understand NFTs or what they're capable of.

        You're fear-mongering is on the same level as being angry at baseball cards. It's a little piece of cardboard with a picture of a player and maybe some stats. When you look at the intrinsic value, it's a small amount of cardboard and ink. Not really worth anything.

        But you have baseball cards that sell for many thousands of dollars. The cardboard and ink didn't suddenly become more valuable, it gained value because of what other people are willing to pay for it.

        Wrong metaphor. New baseball cards are generally worth what you pay at the store (though games can be played there with artificial scarcity).

        The real value is in old baseball cards, and the value there comes from the fact that they survived intact for many years as a physical object (combined with nostalgia).

        I can imagine digital goods appreciating to some degree with age though I doubt to the same degree as physical goods.

        Either way, the crazy NFT prices are for newly created goods, so the age mechanism th

    • You buy the NFT of an apple and get a receipt from the cashier.

      What you get is a record on a blockchain somewhere that associates wallet X with hash Y (either this is a new hash association, or is a transfer of hash Y from wallet W to wallet X). You control wallet X, and the hash was created by hashing a specific image of an apple.

      You can sell the hash (which creates another blockchain record that transfers hash Y from wallet X to wallet Z), or sell the wallet itself.

      In the end, it's all about a specific picture of an apple. Will image display software 50 years

    • When someone asks me to explain NFTs to them, I usually point them to this image: https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzf... [buzzfeed.com]

    • by khchung ( 462899 )

      NFTs are so hilariously bad that I literally clutched my head in disbelief while discussing them the other night.

      You walk into a shop where they sell apples and NFTs of apples. You buy the NFT of an apple and get a receipt from the cashier. You then wave the receipt around, letting everyone know that you own the apple. But the cashier never gave you an apple, and never intends to give you any physical apple.

      This looks stupid, UNLESS the sole purpose of this was for you to have an excuse to give money to the shop, e.g. bribes.

      NFT is the perfect vehicle for bribes or other illegal payments. The payer "buy" some stupid NFT from the payee for some ridiculous price, money changed hands. If the NFT then "loses value" and was sold at a huge loss? Well, it just went to another payee, who will then able to "sell" the NFT at some ridiculously high price later.

      • by Jeremi ( 14640 )

        NFT is the perfect vehicle for bribes or other illegal payments. The payer "buy" some stupid NFT from the payee for some ridiculous price, money changed hands.

        Sure, but if you just want to put a fig leaf on a bribe, there are easier ways to do it. Ask the bribe-recipient to draw you a stick-figure, call it "art", and pay them $xxx,xxx for it, et voila.

        Of course doing it that way doesn't involve any cryptography, so it's not circa-2021-cool.

    • by RobinH ( 124750 )
      Exactly. You *could* imagine a system where owning an NFT has value because the person who sold the NFT agrees to trade an apple for the NFT at a future date, which then makes the NFT a non-perishable apple. Kinda reasonable if the one selling the NFT owns an apple orchard and needs to raise capital. Then you can use the NFT like a currency and trade it to someone who wants an apple.
    • The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe", I'd have been lying!

      —René Magritte

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @03:55PM (#61994013)

    "Reverting to their original value" is the right one. These things have exactly zero value to begin with.

  • I'm having a check writing contest. The fan that sends me the biggest check will get an NFT of a signed 8x10 picture plus a mention on all of my social media feeds!

  • "with long-time NFT investors shunning the category as a money grab." Thats hilarious. Anyone out there not buying these for speculation? Money launderers perhaps?
  • Even the "success stories" are cherry picking. That crypto punk thing listed in the summary did sell for a couple million, but other crypto punks have sold for several million then fallen to a few thousand.

    If you find some sucker willing to pay millions then you get listed as a "more profitable corner of the NFT market." The norm seems to be a flood of crap that sells for pennies, with some outliers that sell for a lot to some eager buyer and then can't be resold.

  • Step Right Up for your LIMITED EDITION NFT! Be the first in your Fan FaceBook Group to own this LIMITED EDITION CELEBRITY NFT! Yeah, that is pretty much how I view the whole NFT thing. I have friends who are artists, the paint on canvas type and over the years I have purchased a number of works that I am happy to hang on my walls. If Banksy offered me a NFT for a $1 I'd turn it down. I think he would agree that NFT is not real art.
  • Next thing you know celebrities will be selling 'thought forms'. Literally receipts for a one-of-a-kind thought a celebrity has. It has value because it came from the mind of a celebrity and it is unique. And it can be yours, for the low, low price of $10,000.
  • It's not the NFTs fault that the digitized content is worthless
  • The resale market outside of fans appears to be small, with long-time NFT investors shunning the category as a money grab.

    LOL long time investors? seriously, the whole concept behind NFT is you are buying nothing, it is inherently a money grab for all categories.

  • Seems like the celebrities have millions of real dollars and the buyers have NFTs. I guess I don't understand what the problem is, this seems entirely intentional?

    Congratulations to Beeple, though.

  • How is this risky to the celebrity? They already sold it for a crazy price, the resell price being -90% less means nothing to them other than the "image" of the value dropping. They already got their money.
  • Who in the world is a 'long time' investor in NFTs? They have not exactly been around all that long.
  • Don't devalue the word, please. A catastrophe has to have larger impacts than some people not getting enough money for their nothing.

  • Dear NFTs,

    Some shares from pets.com just called from 1999, they were wondering how 2021's bubble is going :-)

  • In order for an investment to make any sense, you need to acquire something that you can trade for other stuff you want in the future. That means someone out there in the future needs to want what you've got, and they must have something you want. One alternative is to buy raw materials that people can make useful things from. But nobody makes things out of NFTs or crypto coins. They're just numbers on an arbitrarily limited number line, in a universe where we can keep creating more number lines if we n
  • Well, at least the artists earned some money.

    I'm surprised that no one has brought up that classic economic example of a market bubble - the Dutch Tulip Mania of the mid 1600s (see the requisite Wikipedia article at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ).

    I'd like to say that I don't have a sufficient lack of compassion, morals, and ethics to dip in and out of a market like this - but really, I'm too risk-averse and lack the wit to take advantage of it.

  • NFT makes sense for a few rare items even if the items are not sold. For example, many people would be willing to pay good amount of money to "Own" Mona Lisa even with the condition that they cannot take it home. However this only works for very few well known things and must be controlled from one or a few centralized places.
  • "with long-time NFT investors shunning..."

    WTF? There are already long-time NFT investors? Who knew.

  • Someone pays to get a digital item that says you are the owner of another digital item which can be viewed, downloaded, copied and shared infinitely. But you are the owner since you paid for the certificate of ownership. I have tried but I can not think of something that is more pointless than an NFT.

God help those who do not help themselves. -- Wilson Mizner

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