NFTs (thread now extremely NSFW)

it's a nice way for grimes to have her own mad money... so she doesn't have to keep asking what's-his-name

I didn't mean to approach this in a purely negative manner, and I wanted this new (to me) promising way to sell/own art to actually be new/different, but I can't see it. Everything that tries to be convincing reads as gibberish to me

this sucks bcuz it has absolutely nothing with art and everything to do with goobers that have bad taste and (like bitcoin) it will be a succeess and make goobers rich

I think they are mostly dumb & bad. Sure, artists could use them to make a lot of money if 1) they're already successful and have a dedicated fanbase, or 2) they have a lot of rich friends/connections.

Sure, streaming to the whole world for micropennies didn't work, but that doesn't mean that going back to the patronage system is the answer.

Maybe free market artificial scarcity is just a bad idea.

If I had a time machine I would use it to go back to the moment when I googled “NFT” and “crypto art.”

I would approach my past self and place my present hand on my past hand, taking it off the mouse.

“Don’t. Don’t ever. Knowing about these things will make you feel stupid that they exist. Forget these things. Look at porn or something. Live your life.”

Beeple auction ends Thurs I think

This is stupid nobody should post about this including me

NFT porn though - surely that's already a thing?

simon h., kurt schwitterz, and silby otm. i will never be able to muster any reaction to things like this or bitcoin other than uncomprehending horror and disgust tbrrwu.

All this really is is a way to create a digital certificate of authenticity. I guess that's ok but doesn't strike me as game-changing. I don't see it as a revolution for the art world, more like the creation of a somewhat pointless digital memorabilia market. I don't think there will be any significant market for non-celebrity-driven NFTs. I think there are enough silicon valley assholes, marks, bitcoiners etc. with unreasonably stupid amounts of money to keep sales of the more famous of these going for a while. Upper middle class people buy (non-famous) paintings and middle class people buy prints and posters because they make your home look nice. NFTs don't have any real world value along those lines, they're solely digital collectibles. And I get a bit of a Second Life vibe from the energy around them, which makes me wonder how long they'll really last as a phenomenon.

I probably would’ve expected bitcoin to fizzle out by 2016 or so and here we are, fuck the earth

xpost azaelea banks just did one of these for an "audio sex tape"

smh

I would just add to my previous comment: it actually makes me sort of sad to think about all the scams and grifts that have come to define the space, not because they weren't predictable (at least 50% of the major players to come down the pike since Satoshi, by my estimation, are/were full-on grifters or con men), but because I met a lot of people who really were hoping for a more ethical alternative to the financial system that had just screwed so many, and didn't (just) see crypto as a get-rich-quick scheme

Yeah but it’s just a bad database

There’s only one financial system

you're preaching to the converted!

I don't feel that sorry for people for credulously buying into the Esperanto of currencies.

it's just that it's also causing global warming

I hate them because they are based on this underlying idea that the blockchain is this eternal unerasable record instead of a disgusting waste of resources which needs to be declared illegal and dismantled asap

All this really is is a way to create a digital certificate of authenticity. I guess that's ok but doesn't strike me as game-changing. I don't see it as a revolution for the art world, more like the creation of a somewhat pointless digital memorabilia market. I don't think there will be any significant market for non-celebrity-driven NFTs. I think there are enough silicon valley assholes, marks, bitcoiners etc. with unreasonably stupid amounts of money to keep sales of the more famous of these going for a while. Upper middle class people buy (non-famous) paintings and middle class people buy prints and posters because they make your home look nice. NFTs don't have any real world value along those lines, they're solely digital collectibles. And I get a bit of a Second Life vibe from the energy around them, which makes me wonder how long they'll really last as a phenomenon.

A lot of it is very likely to be money laundering (like pretty much every cryptocurrency thing), or just financial speculation shenanigans - it's worth it for people to spend big to bolster the hype, as long as they can manage to sell what they bought for even more before the market crashes. I would be a little surprised if most of the hype doesn't die out before the end of the year, it doesn't seem to have the sort of longer term speculation potential as bitcoin does but idk

i cannot believe i had to write this. but.https://t.co/ZO3wQyQh1K pic.twitter.com/cau0kixLYB

— everest (@everestpipkin) March 3, 2021

i had one digital acquaintance who appears to have gotten (even more?) rich off of this. she made the same gif over and over, a shot of a CRT TV screen, panning left and right, 500 different times over. lately she got really into the NFT scene and was early and made a bunch of money.

i guess at one stage in my life i might have tried. at this point, i shake my fist at it and say YOU DUMB FUCKS

then again, i'm literally litsening to a simple twist of fate right now, so maybe it is i who is the dumb fuck

my initial thoughts on NFT were that that some aspects of it were worthwhile goals: mainly, some sort of "ownership" over a digital file (and now, i realize, not just digital), some sort of means of tracking who made something. when i made more things, i would get really frustrated about seeing people use my things wholesale - boingboing does it like every 9 months and i always publicly whine about them. even though i'm sure they're wearing dirty jeans like i am.

but everest (see that tweet/medium essay) makes good points that acknowledge that but also make clear that this particular implementation of it fucking blows. i think i'm more optimistic about it than they are. but yeah, i follow some gif dude who has had a handful of his gifs already "minted" by someone else - i mean, what? is this just the first gold rush where you're a dumbass if you don't mint everything you made that might be valuable? ...or is everyone just a giant fucking asshole?

you can browse through all the shit that's being minted. it's so bad. everything is bad. but i may be missing the forest for the trees. there are so many things being "minted" every minute, now. wtf does this mean? what if everything became minted? what if everything was auto-minted and part of a market, whether we wanted that or not? is there anything preventing someone from minting ILX as token? wtf am i even talking about? what a fucking asshole? what the fuck? see what i mean

then imagine you visit this thread in 4 months and some jerk has made $45K off of it on NFT and you don't even know how

anyway, maybe this will be the rare crypto thing that gets regulated, because now Giphy (I think owned by facebook?) is mad about NFTs using Giphy images (which are actually made by real people, not them) so they're issuing a very official Twitter "hey-quit-it" notification to all

NFT's value is built upon an escalating equation that becomes more difficult to solve. as everest says:

...in a digital context scarcity must be constructed- there is nothing that demands the next block in the blockchain be harder to make than the last. If anything, the opposite should be true- computers grow ever more efficient and p"owerful. This means any scarcity is artificial, a process that demands ever more energy, ever more resources lost to continue to operate and return, for no other reason than to insure that tomorrow it will be even more expensive- which makes the wastefulness of today a good investment.

This is why cryptocurrency is valuable. There is nothing high-tech about it. There is no miracle. It is simply futures speculation without the speculation- no guessing required, because we know it will be more wasteful tomorrow; it is baked into the tech.
All that cryptocurrency does is abstract resources into a market by making those resources unavailable to the future.

right?

I had an idea to make some gifs of giant warehouses of bitcoin computers turning into desolate post-apocalyptic wastelands and sell them as NFTs

Ethereum “has been moving” to proof of stake for almost as long as it has existed. It has been so long that “Eth 2.0 PoS Coming Soon!” is something of a running joke.

this really was a tremendous irritant when I was working "in the space"

NFT's the only explainer you will need pic.twitter.com/2yM1LVh1Wk

— SPAC Lindzon (@howardlindzon) March 11, 2021

The digital art community is basically imploding right now as it has polarized into for and against jumping onto this train. People that knew nothing about this two weeks ago, are now cool with creating dox lists of other artists they think are on the wrong side. It’s pretty distressing.

There was a company several years ago (a buddy briefly worked there) selling authenticated, digital sports trading cards... this is nothing newish.

the difference is that the blockchain stuff makes it extraordinarily inefficient & is solely responsible for all the hype & ridiculous money being thrown around

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nba-top-shot-nft-crypto-digital-collectibles-11615266042?mod=e2tws

Bros with $200k to set on fire passing this shit around hoping to not be the last one holding

Hot potato shit

The digital art community is basically imploding right now as it has polarized into for and against jumping onto this train. People that knew nothing about this two weeks ago, are now cool with creating dox lists of other artists they think are on the wrong side. It’s pretty distressing.

are people actually making dox lists?

honestly i am unfollowing #NFT evangelists, though. the shit is gross. don't know what else to say, it's just sad. i do understand why some people disregard the whole "cosmically unnecessary electricity usage at a time when ...god am i writing this again? fuck" thing - no one's making money off of digital art, or if you did you had to sell your soul in order to get compensated. and now this is finally a chance for some people to buy a couple lottery tickets, mint their cool shit, and hope it takes off and makes them some money. i guess i can understand that. i think it's wrong to do, when you're aware of what the actual costs are, or if you imagine a world where NFTs were successful and transactions continued to exponentially grow. that's why the evangelists bother me, because they should know better

beeple sold a NFT at christie's for $70M today (it was actually a bit lower than but fuck)

Had beeple been doxxed before the auction as “mike winkelman “ or whatever ?

i don't want to google this, but the thought occurred to me -- how much of this market is centered on anime fan art and furry porn?

I work for an art technology company, was worried what my bosses might think of all this but one of them just said (re: the christies sale) that it was 'gross' and 'depressing' so, er, phew I guess. Maybe the Germans have a word for when you're relieved at your boss's moral stance on an issue.

Karl Malone, I suppose the word “dox” might be slightly hyperbolic, but there were apparently up to six lists angrily circulating of artists who were “engaging” with NFTs. One of the large platforms, Artstation, put out a formal statement/apology after the backlash. https://magazine.artstation.com/2021/03/a-statement-from-artstation/

Scarcity has never been more abundant.

— fed_speak (@fed_speak) March 10, 2021

honestly, i'm registering my discontent and total disapproval right now because i think it's going to become permanent. may as well be people around from the beginning that argued that it was completely wrong

The sad thing about NFTs is that all logic says they are dumb and will go away and are unsustainable, but ultimately they’re going to make a lot of people rich and I’m just too lazy/shook/broke to buy in

this is a problem created by people who thought "the problem is that i'm not rich. the solution is to try to get rich and outsource the costs to people who don't know what i'm even talking about and don't realize they're bearing the costs. again. in 2021. on purpose, by people who think of themselves as good people"

let me know if you want to know what else they thought

There are collectors who pay millions of dollars for conceptual art pieces. Some of them are no more than a set of instructions. At the same time, I would guess that's a pretty small part of the art market. Most collectors want paintings/sculptures/drawings/prints they can show off at their miami beach villas.

"So it's apes huh."
"Top tier apes."
"Top tier. Top tier?"
"The man says top tier."
"Top tier apes."
"Top fucking tier."
*low whistle*
"All right."
"All right?"
"OK. It's a go."
"It's a go?"
"We'll take the apes."
"Every fucking ape. Every. Fucking. Ape. Top tier."

All joking aside I would love this person to explain what makes them top tier.

Good news! The apes have been recovered, after a bounty payment. Apes are reported to be doing well.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/nft-trader-stolen-bayc-mayc-returned-bounty-payment

so ridiculous

need to check them properly, if they've been infected with a computer virus they'll have to be culled

They might have monkeypox

a fungible infection

That one tweet has so many quotables

Here's how you do it.. create your OWN crypto currency and sell it to the marks

A Colorado pastor and his wife have been charged with duping hundreds of local Christians in a multimillion dollar a cryptocurrency scheme.

Prosecutors accuse pastor Eli Regalado and his wife, Kaitlyn, of fraudulently raising over $3m (£2.4m) by selling "practically worthless" crypto.

The Regalados pocketed at least $1.3m in the alleged scheme between June 2022 and April 2023, prosecutors say.

Mr Regalado said his plan was inspired by God, according to court filings.

The pastor said that "God told him directly that investors would become wealthy" by investing into INDXcoin, a cryptocurrency created, marketed, and sold by the Regalados, according to the complaint.

INDXcoin was offered to Denver-area Christians through the Kingdom Wealth Exchange, an online cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by the Regalados.

The couple "had no experience in cryptocurrency", the complaint said, and a third-party auditor found INDXcoin to be "unsafe, unsecure and riddled with technical problems".

"Despite that report, the Regalados allegedly continued to promote the INDXcoin as a low-risk, high-profit investment," it said.

"In reality, the INDXcoin was illiquid and practically worthless" and the couple used the funds for "their lavish lifestyle".

https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2022/01/SF-righteous-gemstones-season-2-COMP-1-1.jpg?w=620

lmao yes, I hope the writers are taking notes

tbh I am not sure what is illegal about this? what's the difference between this an an apes jpeg?

the difference is the sophistication of the fraud and the elaboration of the pitch. when your customers happily swallow a line about how god is giving them investment advice through you, then taking their money is as easy as falling off a log so why bother with sophistication?

Ha... what a snake

Regalado added: “A few hundred thousand dollars went to a home remodel the Lord told us to do.

“We took God at his word and sold a cryptocurrency with no clear exit.”

The lord told me to pay someone $20 to kick that cryptopastor’s ass. There is a higher law

I am not defending them, but tbh, don’t really see how this is any different than regular tithing.

Jesus he knows me, and he knows I'm right

I'd have to see the details of the "investment" claim, but when you tithe you know you're giving money to the church that you won't get back. Not in money, anyway.

should have just offered a traditional 401(k), people would be less angry if they were investing in the Acts of the Apostles Aggressive Growth Fund or the Barabbas Bond Fund

I’m sure it has to do with the promise of a monetary return on investment. All sorts of laws kick in at that point.

Another thing - it was apparently a 'virtual church,' i.e services on zoom or something.. there was no physical building

god is everywhere

except the bathroom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_god

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers

many are saying that the return on investment on tithing is 90%

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/20/16/80256473-0-image-a-18_1705767451635.jpg

Ah, grift. Enjoy a gift link!

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/business/bitboy-ben-armstrong.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SU0.XIQw.waNRmXK-BCc_&bgrp=g&smid=url-share

Among other joys:

Back then, BitBoy was one of the most popular figures in the wild, scam-ridden world of crypto influencers. Cultivating a persona as a straight-talking everyman, he filmed a livestream five days a week in which he lectured his hundreds of thousands of listeners on the virtues of experimental coins with names like Polkadot or XRP. He said that regulators were fools, and that digital money offered a path to upward mobility. The Lamborghini was vivid proof: Crypto would make you rich and cool and successful.

Two years later, Mr. Armstrong, 41, has lost his production company and much of his wealth. His friends have turned on him, and his wife has filed for divorce. Over the last five months, across countless social media posts and videos, Mr. Armstrong has claimed to be the victim of a “criminal conspiracy” by “terrorists” who took over his YouTube channel. “BitBoy is dead,” he recently declared....

“I’m going through a midlife crisis,” Mr. Armstrong said in one of several recent interviews. “A spiritual crisis.”....

Like any charismatic salesman, Mr. Armstrong has a carefully honed pitch: He used to be just a regular guy, he likes to say, until crypto changed his life. After undergoing treatment for a methamphetamine addiction in the early 2000s, he attended a Christian college and ended up marrying his admissions counselor.

And especially this bit about the woman he's having an affair with:

Since the summer, Ms. Wolfe has been working with Mr. Armstrong to rebuild his fan base and fight for control of his company. Before she got interested in crypto, she considered law school, she said, and ran a small clinic for people who wanted to represent themselves in court — mostly men in divorce cases.

Ms. Wolfe, who has been married and divorced four times, met Mr. Armstrong at a conference in 2022 as she was trying to make her way in the crypto industry. A few months later, an astrologer she had found on the gig work site Fiverr told her that someone was about to “change the trajectory” of her career.

iirc he posted an epic series of tweets about this a month or two ago

It is with a heavy heart I announce the sale of my long term ape, Salazar. Most of my early followers know me as this ape. My kids know me as this ape. I met my wife when I WAS this ape and had my first kid when I was still proudly wore this ape. By extension, it is part of me.… pic.twitter.com/Gv3cwFZyQc

— vydamo (@vydamo_) March 28, 2024

As of today, March 28, 2024, Pacman has refused to acknowledge our letter.

"International Ape Workshop"...

"I recently lost Bumbledoor Glockbottoms to a North Korean zero-day hack. It's tough living without such a critical part of me"

Godspeed, Salazar

Kicking someone who lost essentially a part of them is real class bro

Nice

— vydamo (@vydamo_) March 28, 2024

Good luck explaining the 21st Century to any humans still surviving after the 21st Century is over.

well, shoot, y'all, it's with a mighty heavy heart i gotta up and tell ya 'bout the sale of my ol' buddy, salazar, the fella with egg all over his mug most folks 'round these parts know me when i'm with him my young'uns reckon i'm his partner in crime, and heck, i even courted my missus with this egg-faced rascal been part of my hide for a dog's age

me and ol' salazar, we've been ramblin' 'cross god's green earth together, from them fancy hotels to them rowdy honky-tonks, and them peaceful beaches too but doggone it, them shenanigans of damon albarn and his britpop troupe done gone and turned my egg-splattered pal into a dime-store trinket ever since damon albarn moseyed on in, his market price done fell from a sky-high 85 eggs down to a measly dozen

regrettably, i gotta bid adieu to my ol' buddy to save what's left of my bacon 'fore it's cooked to all y'all good folks in the egg-faced brotherhood who've been sendin' kind words my way, i tip my hat to ya 'til we meet again down the road, so long for now and who knows, maybe one day we'll cross paths again on the other side of the fence until then, take care, y'hear

https://i.imgur.com/FdrOKzt.png

This has been Gorillaz's plot all along, hasn't it?

That guy’s avatar is a modified Pepe isn’t it

this is like the storyboard for a Longmont Potion Castle prank call

I regret to inform you that tweet is a bit. Apologies for forwarding.