Crypto. Ponzi Scheme?

notthatkeen said:
Not really. But if you had a digital certificate of ownership of a piece of art, and you replaced the spreadsheet with a public database that was very hard to update illicitly. Then sort of.
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The real question is the value of the digital certification of ownership, rather than the medium for recording the certificate.
 
RetirementPlan said:
The real question is the value of the digital certification of ownership, rather than the medium for recording the certificate.
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Are you suggesting that a decentralised public blockchain ( as the medium ) doesn't add any value in this instance?
 
tecate said:
Are you suggesting that a decentralised public blockchain ( as the medium ) doesn't add any value in this instance?
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I'm suggesting that there is no value in a certificate saying that I own the Mona Lisa, regardless of what medium it is stored in.
 
BBC R4 In Our Time this morning about the gold standard was interesting. One of the experts said that basically the whole system hinged on other people trusting that gold had some intrinsic worth.
www.bbc.co.uk

In Our Time - The Gold Standard - BBC Sounds

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what happened when world currencies were tied to gold
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
 
RetirementPlan said:
I'm suggesting that there is no value in a certificate saying that I own the Mona Lisa, regardless of what medium it is stored in.
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Digital property rights is the only part of NFTs that I do appreciate some value in. Lets say we both claim to own the Mona Lisa. Wouldn't possession of the accompanying digital certificate then have value? How about if we both have a Mona Lisa but one of them is a fake?
ClubMan said:
BBC R4 In Our Time this morning about the gold standard was interesting. One of the experts said that basically the whole system hinged on other people trusting that gold had some intrinsic worth.
www.bbc.co.uk

In Our Time - The Gold Standard - BBC Sounds

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what happened when world currencies were tied to gold
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
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That's absolutely true. Some will point to industrial uses of gold - but those uses are very recent in its history. Prior to that, it was used as jewellery but so were many polished rocks. The difference is that people assigned it value due to its durability and scarcity.
 
tecate said:
Digital property rights is the only part of NFTs that I do appreciate some value in. Lets say we both claim to own the Mona Lisa. Wouldn't possession of the accompanying digital certificate then have value? How about if we both have a Mona Lisa but one of them is a fake?
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Let's say we both show up at the Lourve with our accompanying digital certificates showing that we own it. Which of us do you think they're going to give it to?
 
The Mona Lisa isn't a digital asset that you can own via NFT. The Mona Lisa is in the real world.
 
ClubMan said:
The Mona Lisa isn't a digital asset that you can own via NFT. The Mona Lisa is in the real world.
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There are NFTs of physical art;
appliedblockchain.com

Physical NFTs | Applied Blockchain

What the Damien Hirst Project The Currency Gets Right about Physical NFTs
appliedblockchain.com appliedblockchain.com

aws.amazon.com

What is NFT? - Non-Fungible Tokens Explained - AWS

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) Explained: What is a fungible vs non-fungible asset?
aws.amazon.com aws.amazon.com

"Non-fungible tokens, often referred to as NFTs, are blockchain-based tokens that each represent a unique asset like a piece of art, digital content, or media. An NFT can be thought of as an irrevocable digital certificate of ownership and authenticity for a given asset, whether digital or physical. "
 
tecate said:
That's absolutely true. Some will point to industrial uses of gold - but those uses are very recent in its history. Prior to that, it was used as jewellery but so were many polished rocks. The difference is that people assigned it value due to its durability and scarcity.
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And if polished rocks make attractive jewellery then they will have an intrinsic value like rubies, emeralds etc. But they are quite unsuitable as money mainly for their lack of divisibility. The key point is that, like gold, they have intrinsic value to the human senses. I agree that the industrial use of gold is a red herring.
 
RetirementPlan said:
Let's say we both show up at the Lourve with our accompanying digital certificates showing that we own it. Which of us do you think they're going to give it to?
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That's a good question. The NFT can show a public chain of transactions - so I guess the answer could be the NFT that can be traced back to the first owner to mint said NFT. That's much cleaner when it comes to digital art. If it's physical art, it raises a whole host of other questions and legalities. Maybe this develops such that the societal expectation is that all art comes with an associated NFT. For the physical art ownership aspect of it, perhaps there will be a merging of the conventional ownership process with this digital component?
Last year, the first real estate properties were sold via NFT - but to what extent this works when it would need to be accompanied by the traditional change of ownership process confuses me. I'd imagine for this to have any power and utility, it would need to be incorporated into existing approaches.
Just in case it's not obvious from the above, I have a more settled view on something like bitcoin whereas I have the same difficulty with NFTs as many have here in getting their heads around bitcoin. Trying to keep an open mind on it as it unfolds but no earthly interest in buying an NFT of a JPEG any time soon!
Duke of Marmalade said:
And if polished rocks make attractive jewellery then they will have an intrinsic value like rubies, emeralds etc. But they are quite unsuitable as money mainly for their lack of divisibility. The key point is that, like gold, they have intrinsic value to the human senses. I agree that the industrial use of gold is a red herring.
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Divisibility is another required characteristic but scarcity is key. There is plenty of jewellery made from other earthly elements that 'have intrinsic value to the human senses' yet they're not valuable in the same way as gold because of a lack of scarcity. Additionally, you've acknowledged that people determine what has intrinsic value.
 
tecate said:
That's a good question. The NFT can show a public chain of transactions - so I guess the answer could be the NFT that can be traced back to the first owner to mint said NFT. That's much cleaner when it comes to digital art. If it's physical art, it raises a whole host of other questions and legalities. Maybe this develops such that the societal expectation is that all art comes with an associated NFT. For the physical art ownership aspect of it, perhaps there will be a merging of the conventional ownership process with this digital component?
Last year, the first real estate properties were sold via NFT - but to what extent this works when it would need to be accompanied by the traditional change of ownership process confuses me. I'd imagine for this to have any power and utility, it would need to be incorporated into existing approaches.
Just in case it's not obvious from the above, I have a more settled view on something like bitcoin whereas I have the same difficulty with NFTs as many have here in getting their heads around bitcoin. Trying to keep an open mind on it as it unfolds but no earthly interest in buying an NFT of a JPEG any time soon!

Divisibility is another required characteristic but scarcity is key. There is plenty of jewellery made from other earthly elements that 'have intrinsic value to the human senses' yet they're not valuable in the same way as gold because of a lack of scarcity. Additionally, you've acknowledged that people determine what has intrinsic value.
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What problem would NFTs be solving for the physical art world, or even the digital art world?
 
RetirementPlan said:
What problem would NFTs be solving for the physical art world, or even the digital art world?
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My muddled understanding is that the claim is they provide clarity as regards property rights - but see above. It's not at all clear to me how that can be achieved for physical art/property without some form of merge with the current system. But who the hell knows. Perhaps the be all and end all as far as the digital native set that are coming up after us will be the digital certificate of ownership. For artists, future royalties can be baked in with them getting a commission on future sales. The likes of Adidas, Nike, etc seem to be getting involved - presumably there's value for them in terms of ensuring authenticity - which could help them deal with the fake product headache. The same re authenticity and ticketing.
In the gaming world, NFTs are likely to feature as the end user can take ownership over in-game items - which may then be used across multiple gaming platforms. To those of us who are of an older vintage, this might seem like a load of nonsense but it features in a market worth billions. Ditto re. the emerging metaverse.

I struggle to get my head around NFTs but I'm not inclined to write them off as there's probably other aspects to all this that haven't emerged yet. Personally, I'm not all that interested in art but from what I've been led to believe, we're likely to see new use cases emerge in 2022. I think its important to keep an open mind and see how all of this unpacks itself.
 
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tecate said:
Divisibility is another required characteristic but scarcity is key. There is plenty of jewellery made from other earthly elements that 'have intrinsic value to the human senses' yet they're not valuable in the same way as gold because of a lack of scarcity.
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Yes of course, scarcity is important. I mean air has huge intrinsic value for humans.
tecate said:
Additionally, you've acknowledged that people determine what has intrinsic value.
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Interesting philosophical point. Things do not of themselves have "intrinsic" value. Intrinsic is essentially human - hence my bit of poetry "gold has intrinsic value to the human senses". So I suppose the point you are making is that bitcoin has intrinsic value to at least some humans.
Well what is that intrinsic value?
"Store of value" doesn't cut it for me as it is totally circular.
Speculative chance to make a wada money. That can't of itself be sustainable indefinitely.
Only or best way to buy some things (medium of exchange). Nobody is giving it any intrinsic value on that count today. It is again a bit circular as it needs intrinsic value to be a medium of exchange.
Heck, I don't want to regurgitate all the old arguments.
 
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Duke of Marmalade said:
Heck, I don't want to regurgitate all the old arguments.
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You and me both!
I'm just addressing the 'human senses' bit. You're talking about human preferences - and linking that to intrinsic value. I'm not all that bothered about gold but clearly other humans have been and are. Maybe you (and others) find yourself in the same scenario re. bitcoin but you don't speak for everyone on the planet. I'll park it up at that.
 
RetirementPlan said:
What problem would NFTs be solving for the physical art world, or even the digital art world?
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One is that smart contracts can be formed around transactions of the NFT. It's my understanding for example that it can be made so that every time the NFT is transacted (so effectively every time it changes ownership) some fraction of the sale price goes to the original creator. This of course is only beneficial to the creator, but as you can imagine artists love this idea. This should also give artists a motive to maintain the validity of NFTs for art and provide actual legal rights of ownership I think, it's in their own interest to do so.
 
DazedInPontoon said:
One is that smart contracts can be formed around transactions of the NFT. It's my understanding for example that it can be made so that every time the NFT is transacted (so effectively every time it changes ownership) some fraction of the sale price goes to the original creator. This of course is only beneficial to the creator, but as you can imagine artists love this idea. This should also give artists a motive to maintain the validity of NFTs for art and provide actual legal rights of ownership I think, it's in their own interest to do so.
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Looks like a bit of a solution looking for a problem to solve. Are there really loads of further resales of lots of art that would make this a viable proposition for loads of artists?
 
I have no idea what the size of secondary art market is compared to the primary, but I wouldn't assume it's small.
 
Nasdaq keeps going down and so DJIA since beginning of the year: inflation as key justification. And crypto dropping at higher speed in % than major indexes... For all the believers of Crypto as alternative to gold in times of fear: reality is contraddicting this propaganda...
 
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