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Non-fungible token: Difference between revisions
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A unique reference to an external thing — in this case, a Banksy artwork, but it could be anything — that has been cryptographically encoded on a [[blockchain]]. Rather like a derivative (!) it does ''not'' confer ownership on its referent, or even contain a copy, but — unlike any other copy of the work — it is a ''unique'' token of non-ownership. There is no other token of non-ownership quite like it, you see, and given its unique status on the [[bollockchain]] it is quite impossible to create one. That is why it is “non-[[fungible]]”. Now this would not to stop someone else creating a ''different'' unique token representing of the same referent on the [[blockchain]]; the two tokens would just be different representations of it. Not identical: each unique. With me? No? Don’t worry: that’s not your fault. | A unique reference to an external thing — in this case, a Banksy artwork, but it could be anything — that has been cryptographically encoded on a [[blockchain]]. Rather like a derivative (!) it does ''not'' confer ownership on its referent, or even contain a copy, but — unlike any other copy of the work — it is a ''unique'' token of non-ownership. There is no other token of non-ownership quite like it, you see, and given its unique status on the [[bollockchain]] it is quite impossible to create one. That is why it is “non-[[fungible]]”. Now this would not to stop someone else creating a ''different'' unique token representing of the same referent on the [[blockchain]]; the two tokens would just be different representations of it. Not identical: each unique. With me? No? Don’t worry: that’s not your fault. | ||
Somehow this crypto-token magically bootstraps itself to some kind of intrinsic value. This, we sense is not so much because blockchain is clever, but that people who buy | Somehow this crypto-token magically bootstraps itself to some kind of intrinsic value. This, we sense is not so much because blockchain is ''clever'', but that people who buy non-fungible tokens are ''stupid'', or at any rate (as we shall see) lacking any sense of irony. For all the NFT demonstrates is that blockchain has solved the problem — if it even ''was'' a problem — of “how to make a non-copyable ''thing'' in cyberspace.” | ||
This is not quite the same as — it’s not, er, ''[[fungible]]'' with — “making a non-copyable ''artwork'' on the internet”. | This is not quite the same as — it’s not, er, ''[[fungible]]'' with — “making a non-copyable ''artwork'' on the internet”. | ||
===Enter the Banksy print=== | ===Enter the Banksy print=== | ||
Now | Now non-fungible token ''buyers'' might be lacking in their faculty for irony; [[NFT]] ''sellers'' have more than enough to go around. Some bright spark hatched the idea of taking an already subversively self-referential artwork — one that plays with the idea of its own lack of intrinsic value, being a ''print'', of a ''graffito'', which is called “[[Morons]]”, which in its subject directly addresses the gullibility of art buyers, actually having the words “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU MORONS ACTUALLY BUY THIS SHIT” written in capital letters on it and, without the artist’s involvement,<ref>Banksy was not involved, though the (anonymous) seller claims he was “aware” of the event. Maybe they hit him up on [[Twitter]] or something.</ref> putting a (er, non-representational) representation of it on a [[blockchain]] and selling ''that''. | ||
Still, the seller perceived a rather bricks-and-mortar-ish, old-economy sort of perceptual problem: ''what if buyers worry that the physical work might seem somehow ''more intrinsically valuable'' than its crypto-token?'' I mean, just imagine. | Still, the seller perceived a rather bricks-and-mortar-ish, old-economy sort of perceptual problem: ''what if buyers worry that the physical work might seem somehow ''more intrinsically valuable'' than its crypto-token?'' I mean, just imagine. | ||