But you get a baseball card that's pretty hard to perfectly duplicate, not a link to a digital picture of a baseball card, which can be copied at virtually zero-cost, and where you have zero control over the hosting of that picture, and can be replaced at any time.
What's the point of 'owning' a digital baseball card if anyone can download it and store it on their PC? There's only one Mona Lisa, it only hangs in the Louvre, you can't just have an exact copy of it at zero cost.
It's make-belief ownership. The only viable application I've seen is digital licensing, for non-free software or digital assets. This can work in a closed-garden system, like in-game assets, software licensing, ... where you don't have control over the environment you're in, but cannot work on an open internet. But anyway, the gas-cost on eth is WAY too high ($70-ish to mint?) for this to be actually used for these applications, and if you're in a walled-garden anyway, who needs decentralisation?
Please stop with this ridiculous comparison. I can hold a baseball card. I can look at it. I can put it on a binder. It's an object of appreciation, like a painting I hang on the wall. It is tangible. NFTs are nothing but an empty concept which seduces programmers with a weak grasp on reality. It's fairy dust, or an eunuch's cum.
NFTs are magical thinking, occultism for programmers.
So you would pay thousands of dollars for a stupid baseball card? That is just ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as paying that much for some pokemon card or whatever. Pokemon are not real you know.
But people pay that price, no? Just as they do with NFTs. So who is to say how they should spend their money?
But it is an apt comparison. NFTs collectibles are a subset of the NFT technology use, and are similar to trading cards. There are two generations of people that don’t care about holding something to determine value so how is that a line in the sand.
They are not similar enough for the purpose of validating the intrinsic (as opposed to strictly monetary) value of NFTs.
Only a subset of people purchase baseball cards (or any collectible for that matter) exclusive as an investment, and even if I bought Action Comics #1 mostly due to its monetary value, it is not just a token, it is an actual artistic object that can be appreciated for it's intrinsic and historical qualities.
Does the same can be said about NFTs? I don't even know what an NFT is, objectively. A string of bytes? If so, does people appreciate its binary code or whatever? Whatta fuck is it? A virtual contract that states you own real state on the third moon of a planet that does not exist?
No, collectibles are not an apt comparison, and this argument only serves to show how its proponents are detached from reality...
Besides, even the generations you mention usually purchase things that can be artistically appreciated somehow. If I purchase a Fortnite skin, I'm purchasing the ability of having that skin applied to my character. It is something I enjoy looking at, having the knowledge that others can look at it as well. I cannot hold it in my hands, but it has some kind of existence. NFTs are not like that at all. They're like contacts in which the only guarantee is the payment one can collect.
But I suppose even programmers need a mysticism...
The irony being that Fornite skins are an even closer analogy to NFT collectibles. What you described is exactly why many people collect NFT collectibles. With Fortnite skins, the aesthetics, price, clout and access derived are completely beholden to the continued scarcity of the skin as well as beholden to the organization for its continued existence and use anywhere, both of which the organization can modify at any time. The NFT version of this skin has a very transparent and immutable (when properly crafted) supply. The issuer cannot change, and even if they attempted to the market knows which one is the original by earlier time. In a game or metaverse, the NFT version of the skin can convey access outside of that game/metaverse, and be applied as skins in other games, or be used to prove ownership to convey access to physical world events of other metaverses. This is exactly what is happening, right now, right this second, and for months, and what people hoard existing NFTs for and buy new NFT drops for.
How is a skin the same as selling a contract for something that does not exist? A skin can actually be used. Besides selling it, what is the use of an NFT?
The NFT skin inherits all the capabilities of the skin, except that the database entry cant be modified. You are a programmer right? Do you know the concept of inheritance in programming as it applies here. The market finds value in that assurance.
I think you are bringing a lot of inaccurate preconceptions to this concept, there is an opportunity to erase what you knew and look at the concept from this lens: does what I say work? Is this what a portion of the market is doing? If yes, thats all you need to know. Look for those NFTs and ignore the other NFTs.
> The actual distinction is: a skin is something you use. An NFT is not.
Is your assertion capable of being proven false, like for you to change your assertion? From where I sit, it only takes 1 person to use an NFT for your entire perspective to be invalidated, but it's not clear to me if thats satisfactory for you.
On the off chance you rely on an unfalsifiable view then this is only for anyone else passing by:
NFT collections were used during the NFT.NYC conference last week for access to exclusive parties that were not coordinated by the conferenced. Owners of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs were able to prove ownership for access to an actual yacht. Many corporate entrants to the space are aiming to replicate this. This will conitnue happening, it will happen at Art Basel, and some people are willing to forego other luxury status items to purchase the relevant NFTs for status and access instead.
If one were to move a goal post, would we be debating "use" here? I'm not sure.
In the digital space, people use NFTs every at high volume, with games like Axie Infinity having people earn access, and skins and upgrades for characters. Which can be traded off platform because they were NFTs being earned or generated (minted).
Hey dude, I know we're on Hacker News but there's no need to come at people with logic fu. There's a rhetorical dimension to language. You can't really "win" like that, were debating, not playing fallacy UNO.
I think it's pretty obvious that when I talk about NFT I'm not referring to all possible uses of the underlying technology, but rather the subset of its uses that is currently mostly associated with it: the selling of empty tokens which have no meaningful connection with the concept or artwork which determines their value.
Again: rhetoric. Semantics. Not Hacker News strong suit.
Baseball cards used to come with a purchase of a real product. They were an incentive to buy actual things. People collect them now, but they didn't exist on their own back then initially.
- those that have something to gain from it, and are likely insincere;
- those that are ashamed of not getting it and merely pretend to understand it;
- those that duel in such profound abstractions that the actual world for them becomes a nuisance, a minor detail, an after thought.
NFTs are a joke, a thought experiment taken too far. They're the modern version of The Emperor's New clothes.