82,891
edits
Non-fungible token: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 7: | Line 7: | ||
Hence some people — clearly possessed of a devastating sense of irony — 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'' — print 325 of 500 created! — of a ''graffito'' which is called “[[Morons]]”, and which directly addresses the gullibility of art buyers, and which actually has the words “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU MORONS ACTUALLY BUY THIS SHIT” written in capital letters on it — and putting a (er, non-representational) representation of it on a [[blockchain]] and selling ''that''. | Hence some people — clearly possessed of a devastating sense of irony — 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'' — print 325 of 500 created! — of a ''graffito'' which is called “[[Morons]]”, and which directly addresses the gullibility of art buyers, and which actually has the words “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU MORONS ACTUALLY BUY THIS SHIT” written in capital letters on it — and putting a (er, non-representational) representation of it on a [[blockchain]] and selling ''that''. | ||
Still, the token | Still, the (anonymous) token seller perceived a rather bricks-and-mortar-ish, old-economy sort of perceptual problem: ''what if potential buyers worried that the physical work might seem somehow more intrinsically valuable than its crypto-token?'' | ||
The token-seller’s solution: ''destroy'' the original work: | |||
{{quote|If you were to have the NFT and the physical piece, the value would be primarily in the physical piece. By removing the physical piece from existence and only having the NFT, we can ensure that the NFT, due to the smart contract ability of the blockchain, will ensure that no one can alter the piece and it is the true piece that exists in the world. By doing this, the value of the physical piece will then be moved onto the NFT.}} | {{quote|If you were to have the NFT and the physical piece, the value would be primarily in the physical piece. By removing the physical piece from existence and only having the NFT, we can ensure that the NFT, due to the smart contract ability of the blockchain, will ensure that no one can alter the piece and it is the true piece that exists in the world. By doing this, the value of the physical piece will then be moved onto the NFT.}} | ||
There are two words I want to pick out from the above: “smart”, and “morons”. One of them is apposite to the someone — anonymous — who bought it, and you don’t even know for sure that ''that'' dude<ref>if it isn’t a sock-puppet for the original seller, of cour — WAAAAAAITAMINNUTE.</ref> isn’t the gimp in all of this because — who can say? — some even ''stupider'' person might buy it for more.<ref>At the time of writing said buyer ''does'' seem to be the gimp: it bought for 228.69, and the offers that have flooded in to date have been in the range of 0.001 - 2 ether coins (that is $500 more than it is worth, but it puts it in some perspective.</ref> That is someone-call-Alanis-Morrissette ''staggering''. | There are two words I want to pick out from the above: “smart”, and “morons”. One of them is apposite to the someone — also anonymous — who bought it, and you don’t even know for sure that ''that'' dude<ref>if it isn’t a sock-puppet for the original seller, of cour — WAAAAAAITAMINNUTE.</ref> isn’t the gimp in all of this because — who can say? — some even ''stupider'' person might buy it for ''more''.<ref>At the time of writing said buyer ''does'' seem to be the gimp: it bought for 228.69, and the offers that have flooded in to date have been in the range of 0.001 - 2 ether coins (that is $500 more than it is worth, but it puts it in some perspective.</ref> That is someone-call-Alanis-Morrissette-grade ''staggering''. | ||
It is not out of the question that the buyer and seller are in fact the same single person perniciously trying to create an artificial market. If so, ''so what'' if the only bid is 500 bucks? ''It’s still 500 bucks.'' That’s a week’s work in some places. If this is a scam — and I have no idea and make no assertion in that direction — it is clever, so ironic it is almost artwork in itself, and, well, fraud. | |||
In any case, bitcoin in general and NFTs in particular throw into sharp relief some fairly metaphysical questions about [[value]], [[identity]] and [[authentic|authenticity]] that the [[information revolution]] has been lobbing around for a while now and which, in most of us, haven’t generated much more that a nagging feeling that our conventional models of the world might be due an upgrade. | |||
===Creative destruction?=== | ===Creative destruction?=== | ||