Topic: Are NFTs just marketing gimmicks with no added value? (Read 326 times)

A Bitcoin maximalist had entered the chat.
1.Smart contracts aren't scams. They are a tool, which can be used for good projects or bad projects. It depends how you use it.
2.Meme coins shouldn't be taken seriously(however, some crypto traders are taking them seriously).
4.Some altcoins are legit, while others are pump and dump shitcoins(actually most altcoins are shitcoins). You can't put all altcoins in the "scam" category.
5.The idea behind NFTs has some valid points, but the execution is what makes NFTs a joke.
Please move this forum thread in the Altcoin Discussion forum, since we aren't talking about Bitcoin.

At the end of the day, whether you're an engineer, developer, or investor, profits matter most, so as long as the game can make a profit, there's no reason for people to say no. In this market, besides bitcoin, the rest of the market are all money games, we don't need to care what effects they create or how they are applied. As long as we feel we can profit from it, we can participate. If you don't like those money games, stay with bitcoin you will be safe. Many people laugh at the NFT trend, metaverse, P2E... but it cannot be denied that it has also brought huge profits to many people and that is their purpose when participating in this game.

So what. Everybody else around him did. And who is to say Satoshi won't sell someday? Or that he actually intended to sell but died before he could?

Ethereum is also universally recognized as a commodity, as are many other cryptocurrencies. ETH market cap is over $400 billion. Not as high as BTC, but far larger than most corporations in the world including GM and IBM, and around the same as Exxon Mobile. Bitcoin is the biggest brand in digital currencies right now, but it's certainly not the only one, and who knows what the future will bring.

What you are saying is akin to calling everything that isn't an Apple computer a "scam" because they are from companies that are less valuable than Apple.

And if you think something as volatile as high-tech is going to stay the same "forever", maybe talk to somebody who thought the same thing about IBM in the 80s or Microsoft in the 90s or AOL in the 2000s. Don't get too attached--all I'm saying...

However, very much similar to the art collecting community and the market behind this, the NFTspace appears to have become developed into something similar where money will be laundered in these markets and this will be liquidity that will be greeted and accepted happily.

Also, the development of new NFT standards like erc404 will create new types of usecases where big inflows will go and where new markets will be created.

You don't know what you're talking about. Satoshi himself has never sold one bitcoin or sat.
To this day Satoshi's wallet(s) still contains a million bitcoin in it and has never moved.


That is why bitcoin is universally recognized as a commodity while ethereum and all the other scam coins are not.

That would all describe Bitcoin as well. Maybe it wasn't called an "ICO" at the time, but that's what it amounted to.



Once again they had absolutely no reason to use blockchain technology in their offering--they only did that as a gimmick. You (identified you) buy a thing from the NFL team (identified as well). What possible value add does blockchain have in that context?

So I guess if you call drawing attention to your collectable using a popular (but meaningless) buzzword, "legit utility", then you'd be right, but in that case I can't see this hype cycle lasting too much longer. There have been collectables in the past for things like this without blockchain, and I suspect they will simply revert to that soon enough.

And I haven't seen any actual concrete examples of how they would use them in gaming and music, but the above rule would probably still apply: you can create the same exact product without blockchain without any loss of end-user value.

For the most part yes.  Just like with ordinals.  I honestly don't understand why bitcoin devs even waisted their time on them.  Is/was that really necessary? How about spending time improving the blockchain or working on satoshis proposed escrow that doesn't involve a 3rd party.

Now some NFL teams used NFTs for game tickets.  Now that's legit utility.  I know there's stuff in the gaming and music world that can utilize them in some fashion that is legit, but I don't really understand how they work. 

Anything that started with a premine or ICO is by definition a scam and unregistered security that was created to get around the disclosure laws.
Why do you think that is? What do they have to hide? Early investors, VCs and devs reward themselves with hundreds of millions of tokens which they proceed to dump on retail, which the ETH developers and insiders are still doing to this day.

Exactly what features does ethereum have that are actually useful in the real world with real value beyond being used as a platform to promote memecoins, NFTs and other assorted scams? Whenever I hear that some shitcoin has some great unique feature that is never seen before they are never able  to describe exactly what that feature is in plain English. They will just spout off a bunch  of techno babble nonsense that no normal person can understand. That is when you know it is a scam, not unlike the smooth-talking snake oil salesmen roaming around selling snake oil cures during the days of the wild west. These days you have modern-day snake oil salesmen most of which are in the crypto industry. Don't be fooled.

Correct, but if the holders of the NFT ever need to enforce their contract, they need to reveal themselves as actual human beings.

And since that's the case, the blockchain aspect of the transaction has no value whatsoever.


Why not? Do you keep track of every commercial rental transaction at every strip mall you drive past? Contracts are enforced by the parties involved, not a generalized "they". The minute you want to enforce your contract, you'd need to reveal yourself.

Note that there are privacy-enhanced ways of hiding your identity from the general public, e.g through an LLC or whatever. But you cannot, by definition, hide the identity from the court, which would require documentation proving the parties in the lawsuit lawfully represent the lawful owners. (I suppose, with enough key pairs, you could devise a scheme to bring a suit using only key pairs, but this would require a mind-boggling string of new legislation that I think we could all agree would never practically happen* ).

(*And note here we would just be talking about key pairs and not blockchain, which would still just be an implementation detail that would be pointless for a system whose primary purpose is to be revealed to a central government).

Absolutely its the same with a photo. But nobody is paying say $100k for a photo. Because you aren't buying a photo because you think it is some rare asset. You're buying it because you think it looks nice and you want it on your wall, so you're maybe paying a few hundred dollars for it and the frame if it is really nice and a big frame. People who buy NFT pictures are silly enough to think they are getting something unique and valuable that only they can own, when in reality anyone can copy paste the picture, and the creator or literally anyone else could create more of the same or similar things. If they were buying it because they think the picture is cool...well that is worth $0 because anyone can copy-paste the picture.

However a physical piece of art, like a painting, is different, because that times time and effort and unless the artist is also extremely skilled at copying they aren't ever going to make the exact same painting again and again. And a print of a painting is of course obviously not the real thing. And this is why an original painting can be worth a lot, but a photo is not worth a lot, and NFT pictures are only worth a lot because rich crypto people don't know the difference in value these things hold so they go around trading NFT pictures for many thousands of dollars when there is no underlying value there.

Similarly, a signature from a famous person is more about like proof that you met the person, unless of course you bought it off someone else, but still it is proof in the object that the person actually held and signed this thing. And signatures are limited, and everyone understands there will be many signatures, but they are still limited by some amount. And having a copied signature is meaningless because the value is based on the idea that the person actually signed that exact physical object, while having a copy-pasted NFT picture gives you the exact same picture. Anyway signatures are a pretty silly thing to be valuable because its literally just the fact that someone wrote their name on something haha.

I think the main point, as I said in my first post in this thread, is that NFTs are only valuable if the valuable thing is in the ownership, not in the data. Which is basically what you said: people feel like the get value from being part of an NFT club. That is their own fault for thinking their is immense value in that haha, but that is each person's individual decision to throw away money on that idea. The picture itself is worthless because you can copy paste it endlessly. But I don't know any NFT pictures where you actually get any value from the ownership, though if you say there are ones with member-only perks I'll believe you, but with the vast majority the value is supposed to be the picture itself. Maybe there are some that gives you some sort of special owner-only access to other things. In that case the value of the NFT would be derived from that, and not the useless copy-pasteable image in the NFT.

Basically, NFT pictures are the epitome of greater-fool theory, because there is no actual utility of the picture (anyone can get the image for free), there is no actual scarcity of the picture (anyone can get the image for free), the only value is that you paid a lot for it so you hope that alone means someone else later will buy it from you for even more money. So yeah, you're right NFT pictures are mostly worthless, and people are only paying to feel like they are part of some club, and given the prices some people pay, they are paying fortunes to just feel like part of a pretty useless club online haha. But physical media is different. And also let's realize NFT does not equal NFT pictures. NFT pictures are a type of NFT, and specifically a type that doesn't take advantage of anything of value NFT tech can provide, so its a very dumb use of NFT tech. It just happens to be that the really dumb thing became popular because its visual and rich crypto people speculated their way into paying absurd sums of money for things that have no underlying value.

I don't agree with that. But its fine if that's your opinion. If a real estate company says they are legally bound to giving out payments to the holders of the NFTs, then they are legally bound to do that. And the payments would all be transparent. So if they aren't paying it would be very obvious to everyone. As to whether or not the owners of the NFTs would have to identify themselves I don't know, but it would be extremely easy to call out the company if they aren't making the payment since all of the NFT owners would be aware that none of them are getting any payments. What you are saying is that a company would be allowed to transparently scam people, and everyone would know about it, yet no one would do anything about it....obviously that is not how things work.

Besides, the whole thing could be automated. Like: money from rentals gets sent through a crypto service that converts the appropriate amount to the cryptocurrency used and it gets sent out to the NFT holders. Rest of the money goes to the company. This is very doable. So I don't see any ground for you thinking this couldn't happen. I'm not saying it will happen, I have no idea if this kind of real estate crypto product will be created by companies, but it could absolutely be done.

Why? becasue it is a easy way to scam money from the idjits that buy into them.
What is their added value? Only thing I like about them is the massive fees they generate for us miners. If fools want to spend their BTC on high fees to give to us miners, works for me...

If the artist made no promises about the number of reproductions, that would be correct. If you buy a print of a Banksy, and it doesn't have something like "42/100" in the corner, then you are just buying an official copy of a Banksy, but he can make as many as he wants. But there's also an implicit notion of limits since it's a physical thing. Banksy might make 1000 prints or even 10,000, but he probably won't make ten million, so your print will be worth marginally more than just the production costs. Old posters have value of being from a particular time, etc.

Every work of art (any kind of intellectual property, really) will have some implicit or explicit contract associated with it, e.g. it's copyright statement for instance.

NFTs can't enforce their contract unless they are connected to an identity. I like the idea of buying and selling contracts on the internet, and this notion that NFTs have popularized is very cool, but using blockchain for it is pointless.

Isn't it the same with art? Let's say you buy a framed photo of something. The seller could make a copy. You pay $1000 for it and the next day he makes another 50 copies. Unless it's written in a contract that he can't make copies, he can.
It's the same with other collectibles. People buy signatures of other people for money, but we all know they can make more of these.

IMO NFTs are mostly worthless, but if buying that monkey or penguin makes you feel better, special, like you're a member of an elite club, you should do it. Some NFT's are such entries and allow you to get member only content.

I'll just call out that one example of what I am talking about. Without a contract enforceable in a court of law, who is to say what "profits" are? What happens when you don't get paid? Are you going to sue? Sue who? You can't take a private key to court.

So in your example, #2 will never be met. Ever.

Bitcoin--and currencies generally--work because the value is inherent in the singleton brand name. You value Bitcoin because it's Bitcoin.

In the case of NFTs, the value is supposed to be a contract--but an unenforcible contract is no contract at all. It's just a worthless piece of paper.

Contracts are only enforceable when there are two identified legal entities--known individuals or known business entities. Entities that can, for instance, hire lawyers to defend themselves in court.

If the counterparty if a private key, then it cannot do so--but you can't sue it, either.

In other words, if you buy an NFT connected to a contract that states you will get half of the profits from the rentals in an apartment complex, you have... just been ripped off. You will never see any of those profits because there's no way for you to collect them.

I get that some (many?) NFTs are based on contracts with the names of real people and/or real business names. But if that's the case, why bother with blockchain?

NFTs are nothing but useless digital contents. With the advancements of AI technology, 99% of the NFTs are created by Ai algorithm without any human interference (apart from typing prompt) and then sold in the marketplaces. Just because the ownership is recorded in a blockchain, NFTs can's draw value out of it. It was a hype which has died down long ago, died even faster than ICO craze. Also it is a playground for the money launderers at a much larger scale.

So if you are planning to invest in NFT, hold on. Rather invest in Bitcoin or ETH for long term and forget everything else. NFT is a pure scam business.

That's what I think but maybe because I don't understand it very well. In any case I think the vast majority of NFTs are garbage and maybe a few are saved. For as in art, many people paint pictures or make statues but few become of great value.


Of the latter, but not of the former. Mozart took much less effort to compose than Salieri, and guess who went on to fame.

For me, I think they've got their own value. It's like paintings or sculptures, and it's value should be dependent on how much effort was put into it and how many people perceive it's value. Inherently speaking, it doesn't have a lot of value but then again, it's the people that would give that value. Also, shouldn't this be in the Altcoin Discussion or maybe the Other board? Seems out of place to talk about NFTs in Bitcoin Discussion.

Definitely a gimmick but I'm not going to let it be a bad thing, the reason people hate on NFT is it's lack of utility but it's also the fault of many people that look forward to buying NFTs, they're the reason that it's got a value, because someone's buying them, if you're mad about NFT, don't give it the attention and see it overnight becoming just a fad.

Yes! That's what NFTs are minus the marketing, they're just gimmicks that is used to siphon a lot of money from crypto investors that want to bank on their potential to make a lot of money and profit by investing in them, that's how I see NFTs and even though they're a profitable thing to invest especially if you know the right ones to invest into, I still can't get behind from the fact that it's not worth anything besides being just a JPEG or an item, at the list when it's an item, you've got some utility but other than that, it's useless. Kind of like a painting that doesn't even took any effort to be created, that's how I would answer those who say that NFTs are a work of art.

NFTs have value, but people have to use NFTs for its strengths.

Like with fungible cryptocurrencies, there's Bitcoin, which is using blockchain to its strengths, and then there's altcoins which definitely do not use blockchain to its strengths. So in fungible cryptocurrencies there's basically Bitcoin which is really valuable and then a bunch of fluff.

With non-fungible uses of cryptocurrencies...well, we've pretty much only seen the fluff so far. Digital images are a terrible use case for NFTs, because the valuable thing is the image, which can simply be copy-pasted regardless of owning the NFT. So a really terrible use case of NFTs has become the main use of NFTs lol, and I think a lot of people even just equate NFTs with digital images on blockchains now. But of course NFTs can have plenty of uses, we just need to play to the strengths of NFTs. Specifically, the valuable thing of an NFT needs to not be the data held, but the actual act of ownership. With images the valuable thing is the data, which is why its a terrible use of NFTs.

Anyway, to more directly answer your question, once someone finds a good use case in which to use NFTs, the only real reason to choose to use it over some other existing digital infrastructure would be if you want to allow ownership to pass between people in a p2p network.



So I'd say NFTs are useful when:

1) its the actual ownership of the NFT that is the valuable thing, where there is nothing supposedly valuable about the NFT data itself

2) the usefulness of owning the NFT comes directly through the blockchain itself, like partial owning of real estate split up into NFTs where the payouts of rental earnings get sent out to the NFT owners on the blockchain itself

3) you want to allow free market p2p passing of ownership (trading) of the ownerships. So like if this is some regulated thing or some centralized thing there's no reason to use NFTs because ownership would have to go through third parties anyway, but if that's not the case and you want the ownerships to be freely traded in the market then the easiest thing to do would be to do it through NFTs.

NFTs make the most sense when all three of these things are met. For example, NFT pictures only hits #3, making them pretty useless because there is no value in doing #3 if the first two things aren't very important to your NFTs.