Bitcoin Forum

I'm reee-ing this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5413690) as it was opened and closed before I even saw it... and I do have a lot of responses to comments in it.

Personal plea: I'd appreciate it if respondents didn't just rehash knee-jerk opinions on NFTs for the sake of cranking out a post to fulfill their weekly quota, thanks.

Obviously OP realized pretty quickly his particular vision of the idea wasn't gonna fly with the community, so no need to belabor that point.


I agree this should be the case when it comes to high-profile members, like satoshi and Hal... it wouldn't be right for just anybody to make them and sell them... or sell anybody's w/o the consent of the user themselves... would be interpreted as a cash grab.


Funny you should mention it -- this is actually what I did, but in reverse: your avatar IS the NFT (https://xchain.io/asset/BITCOINFORUM.nutildah). The image attached to the token changes when you change your avatar.


Thanks for bringing it up. And I'd just like to point out that this is all accomplished entirely on the Bitcoin blockchain. I thought it was cool because its sort of an identity token that represents who you are on the forum and the blockchain. Alternatively, you have the option of minting multiple copies so you can trade them with others (this can be done in a trustless fashion using the Counterparty DEX). It would be a fun way to collect Bitcoin-backed trading cards of other forum users. For the entrepreneurial, you could even wrap them and sell them on OpenSea, or any of the other NFT markets.

I was thrilled to have a wisened OG like philipma1957 (https://xchain.io/asset/BITCOINFORUM.philipma1957) volunteer to go first... There are 4 other members who expressed interest that I'm current waiting to hear back from.


Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin being the first and most prominent) is the digital representation of money. NFTs are simply the digital representation of everything else.

If you believe that society is headed into an era of digital expansion, where the idea of the metaverse becomes more prominent and maybe even a central focus point, you should root for blockchain-backed digital ownership to play an important role in this new paradigm.

If you don't believe in any of this, then I have to ask, why do you believe in Bitcoin?

I will start that the other thread was not clear about that (or I've just missed it, and many others).
Still, some value their avatar, while many others don't, or just rent it. And here one point - maybe interesting for some - could be that maybe certain companies or signature/bounty managers could get interested in that.


NFT may be a good idea, but imho the implementation is bad, hence comparing it with bitcoin is inappropriate.

Many don't see in the current use of NFT more than childish images. Many have came with - imho good - points that currently NFTs are pretty much centralized (Open Sea) and the blockchain information points to an old school server / database with all the problems of that (mutable, prone to hacks).



Maybe I'm wrong, maybe other bitcoiners are wrong too, but asking "If you don't believe in any of this, then I have to ask, why do you believe in Bitcoin?" is imho a big step in the wrong direction.

What exactly do you mean by "implementation"? The blockchain? That is what NFTs are implemented on. Some are even implemented on the Bitcoin blockchain (some of my favorite ones, as a matter of fact).


OpenSea is a business, but its not where the NFTs are stored, so in essence the NFTs themselves are only as centralized as their blockchain. Sure, the metadata of some NFTs is mutable & prone to hacks but its a far cry from all NFTs... for some NFTs the metadata isn't important at all and its only the token itself that matters, which cannot be hacked, so much as a blockchain can be hacked. You're making sweeping generalizations to paint all NFTs with the same brush to further convince yourself that your pre-conceived viewpoint is the correct one. It's based on limited knowledge of an extremely nuanced subject.


Here you've stated an opinion backed by zero reasoning, not much I can do with it.

The blockchain part is OK. But linking it to data stored by a business on its database is not OK. That's the implementation I was telling about.
Are there any NFTs that don't have "the metadata" on various companies' servers? I am not aware of more.


This is the part that made me stop believing in NFTs as viable tech. Of course, if you have good example/explanation to prove me I'm wrong, I will be happy to see it's not everything lost.
For now I see it a hype based on an incompletely baked idea/tech. And hype is .. nuanced (see, I can say that without using strong words).


You didn't manage to convince me that my reasoning is incorrect.

I saw your NFT project before and I think it has potential, but I really don't understand why I have to believe or not believe in any of this like in some religion.
Metaverse is just a stupid idea and I don't know how that crap has anything to do with Bitcoin or with NFT., unless you plan to stay locked at home for life with your metaverse helmet on  :P

Yes, hundreds of thousands by this point... Take this one (https://xchain.io/asset/BITCOINFORUM.nutildah) for example, its what I am doing to build my Bitcoin Forum NFTs. The data which is presented in the Information tab is totally immutable: it cannot be changed by me, nor can it be changed by anyone b/c the file that contains it is stored in a decentralized database. More commonly used than this is IPFS, and an entire blockchain (WAX) already revolves around using it to store data for its NFTs.


You're basically saying a lack of understanding is what is preventing you from understanding NFTs. I've actually heard this line of reasoning from other forum members over the last couple months, though its still quite bizarre.


Sure, one of the clearest-cut examples is the earliest, which is Namecoin domain names. Namecoin names are, in essence, non-fungible tokens that provide a censorship-resistant method for website access. Because the Tor network and I2P achieve the same effect in a more robust manner, they never really caught on, but they could still serve a role in the future some day.

Other good, non-image uses involve NFTs that grants their holders rights, permissions, or special access. For example, there have been bots made for ETH, BTC and even DOGE NFTs that allow token-gated access to Discord channels, meaning you must own the token in your wallet in order to join the channel. Property rights have been conveyed via NFT, rights to music & video IP, and all sorts of media. Its quite possible that NFTs will be used to convey ownership of smart property, e.g. an apartment or car door that unlocks after proof of corresponding token ownership has been established. The most promising upcoming use case for NFTs in the future are related to identity.


You didn't provide any reasoning with which to do so... you just made a statement, "I think this is a big step in the wrong direction," but you didn't say why.

This is the first interesting thing I've read about NFTs in a very long time. Can you tell more about the "decentralized database" the (this specific) image from your NFT is stored in?


When the vast majority of NFTs one sees are images like made of 5-years old kid in Paintbrush (ok, I'm generalizing badly, but I think that you get the point), all on OpenSea, I would not be surprised that people gets sick and tired of it.

Explaining that the things can be better, explaining at least to those open to read the explanations, debunking the incorrect info, is something that maybe should be done (or done better) now and then.
For now you have given me a nice surprise, still, I am still somewhat wary and I need more details (or links).


Also, exactly because many share "my" opinion, my suggestion would be to add somewhere in the top post some (very) short debunking information, to keep the rest of the posts on-topic.

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LE: I will continue here, to mot create too many posts. This is about the original topic and it's something I've also said in the other post.
One problem with the idea of using NFT for bitcointalk could be that it would look like bitcointalk is endorsing NFT technology. So maybe using the name bitcointalk in this could be somehow avoided? I don't know, just an idea.

Just to answer the question and the title of this thread , i wouldnt react in any way about bitcointalk nfts i guess .
Because i have not a single NFT or something like that and i dont want a NFT , for sure if theymos will be decide to make some i would think about.
But for now i guess its nothing that would help Bitcointalk or the community , it would be only another thing that someone makes profit from it.
Just my 2 cents here on that.

It's not even that for me. I just think there's been opinions which have been sort of standardised, if that makes any sense. It's become socially acceptable in a sense to absolutely dog on any sort of altcoin, including NFT's whenever possible. I've gotten that impression for a while, and while I don't necessarily blame people for having that opinion, I'm pretty sure it's become just a saying, without the user actually finding it out for themselves. I think the right term would be herd mentality, and following social norms, which this forum definitely does have, as does literally every place you look. I've followed social norms, as well as you, and others. There's nothing wrong with this, but it does frustrate those that aren't following them at that time. The thing is, we need pioneers in this world to generate any sort of new technology or success. 

Of course, the altcoin scene is pretty wild, and there's a lot of crap out there which is why I do understand why it has the reputation that it does. However, that doesn't mean everything is crap. There's a few examples which I'm sure a few people could give that are actually fairly exciting. For example, I'm quite interested in the mimble wimble technology which I actually think could potentially be a good implementation. Grin obviously stirred up a storm when it was announced, partly due to theymos announcing grin was accepted for certain things on the forum, but some of that was also genuine interest.

So, while NFTs are definitely the fad right now, some users don't realise they've actually technically been part of our lives for some years now, they just haven't been labelled or introduced to them like NFTs. I do think a lot of NFT implementations are crap, but that's the same as crap implementations of altcoins. There is, and will always be interesting ideas which are being tested, which Bitcoin doesn't have.

Which is an important point to make. Although, everything that's been successful will have people jumping on the bandwagon, and trying to make their own version in an attempt to make a lot of money. I think there's a saying "failure of your own success". Technically, Bitcoin has been copied a million times by now, and while a lot of users will roll their eyes at a new up, and coming altcoin it's because they're attempting to create the success of Bitcoin, in their own way. Obviously, most are copies or just badly implemented, but there are the exceptions.

I would ask again: WHY?!
Then I'll encourage them to read bitcoin paper (again). It is a good experience for people to understand why bitcoin is successful.
Also in that paper the purpose of bitcoin is clearly explained and the problems it solves are clearly outlined. Learn from that style and try explaining what problem a "bitcointalk NFT" solves and what purpose it has.

Until then I react the same by shaking my head in disappointment for seeing the same fundraising scheme over and over.

You can't complain about receiving the same respond for creating the same exact topic!

Arweave  (https://www.arweave.org/)is IMO the best decentralized file storage solution currently available. There is a long history of failed attempts, going all the way back to Maidsafe which technically started before Bitcoin and still isn't finished. Also included are Storj, under construction since 2014, and Filecoin, which relies on IPFS.

The idea behind Arweave originally was to be a permanent backup solution for website archives, kind of like the Wayback Machine, but decentralized, in that anyone can be part of the network by contributing storage space. They are then rewarded with AR token, which is required by uploaders to upload website data, or any file. I am using it specifically to host JSON files containing token metadata.


This place has institutionalized the behavioral conditioning of shitposting leading to rewards. Nobody needs to bother learning anything new or challenge their preconceptions with incoming information when they can just make a post off the top of their head and get paid, like this one:


Dude didn't take one second to attempt to understand how my project works or what I'm attempting to accomplish, as such his post is not worth responding to.

It's funny how you hid behind someone else and avoided answering my questions but still proved me right.

It is 29 years later and nobody is "collecting" tokens because they like them or they solve any real issue in the real world or think they are "fascinating cryptographic art".
People "buy" tokens as speculators because they are trying to make a profit like gamblers making a bet (something that can be done using literary anything else).

Even one of the first replies your own topic in Digital goods receives was how can that token be "traded"!

P.S. There is a good reason why every other idea and projects (including Hal's) that existed long before Bitcoin failed but Bitcoin was the only one that succeeded.

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Edit: I didn't realize that OP is looking for an echo chamber where everyone praises the token he is trying to sell. I'll try to keep that in mind in the future.
In any case I started an experiment here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5413837.0) which may interest some of you about the point I raised here.

Again, this is totally ignorant nonsense, written purely for the sake of upping your weekly shitpost count. I'd say you were trolling if you weren't getting paid to do it -- its quite obvious that's your motivation behind writing anything on this forum.

Are you familiar with the idea of a collectible? I don't care about your personal take on their innate value -- that is absolutely irrelevant to this discussion. Just a simple acknowledgement that collectibles and collectors exist would be enough, but you really needn't bother. You are utterly misguided and wrong in more ways than your ego could possibly let you realize, ergo there's no reason to waste any more time with you.

Something sets apart BTC's NFT market from Ethereum's: It's not full of spam and eggs (yet).

So while this place is calm like 2000s-era Twitter, I ordered some NFTs from you.  :)

I'd hate to see that community devolve into something like OpenSea's gallery which is full of 99% pickpocketers (which are almost completely unmoderated BTW) and %1 actual collectors. It draws some strange parallels with social media.

A friend of mine made good money from NFT, still he is making. According to him they list on secondary market, they buy it then again they buy it. It's actually moving it from one address to another address. This way they create a demand for the specific NFT before someone else buy it from them. I don't know how exactly it works but that's what I was able to understand from the conversation. My head is too full to understand NFT. But the concept of collection is a good idea however I never looked deep at it to understand them correctly.

Regarding bitcointalk nfts, since I have zero knowledge, I will follow others instead of giving any input.

That sounds a lot like wash trading on exchanges. Grey area, but nobody's getting ripped off at least.

Thanks.

It also draws parallels with early Bitcoin scams (scam exchanges, investment schemes, casinos, dice games, etc.) and the altcoin market where 99% is simply speculative investments... Stories of scams and ludicrous returns tend to dominate any sort of news coverage and resulting conversation because they stick in the craw of the human psyche.

However, that doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. A lot of innovation is quietly taking place in this space on daily basis, led by projects trying to distinguish themselves from the noise by providing something unique that hasn't been done before, whether it is in terms of aesthetics, community or utility.

No need to lie about it: a lot of NFTs worth $$ now are gonna go to zero. They won't be able to retain the social momentum required to keep new buyers interested as the market expands and attention gets diverted to an ever-expanding array of new projects.

However, that's not what my Forum NFTs are trying to do... They are meant to be uniquely-crafted, personalizing mementos that you can use to either identify your forum profile on the blockchain or trade with others and collect.

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Yeah that's called "wash trading"  :D its a common practice... an underhanded one but pretty easy to identify if you can read a block explorer. Nearly every crypto ever to be listed has done this with exchange bots for years.

That sounds like privacy disaster. Analytic company could download whole blockchain (which used by the NFT) and analyze the data to find out how much asset you have or your personal taste, then sold it to government or advertising company. It's totally different case if they zero-knowledge proof cryptography, but i never see any NFT which use such cryptography.

This post is too broad to answer meaningfully... I don't know what aspect of my previous post you are referring to. At the very least, the assumptions you are making about how these things are actually being developed and implemented are too broad.

This is a tactic adopted by nocoiners to discredit bitcoin: put forth "what if the sky falls"-type hypotheticals based on an incomplete understanding of the subject at hand.

Certainly every blockchain has potential privacy issues; to think the people who are actually basing their careers around building new products on it haven't considered this aspect is not giving them enough credit.

All NFTs are built on top of blockchains.

Its possible that identity-based tokens will be put in a new wallet containing nothing else from a master distribution wallet. A signature is required by the wallet owner to show proof of ownership, and nothing else is required, no other further input or output transactions. In that way the owner could potentially remain anonymous, depending on what the signature is needed for.

OK, so my knee-jerk reaction would be something you don't want, nutildah, but the idea above isn't a bad one.  The problem is I've developed a bias against NFTs to the extent that bile starts defying gravity and makes its way from my gallbladder and nearly through my epiglottis whenever I see or hear anything about them.  And why?  It's because of all the videos I've watched about them and the irrational valuation put on 99.999% of them.  If these were treated like trading cards back in the 1950s like you said, with people trading them amongst themselves out of passion for the NFTs themselves and not like trading cards from the 1980s-now, then I'd support this.

But given my bias and everything I've learned about NFTs, I want no part of these or any other ones.  Speaking for myself, I don't need some sort of recognition on bitcoin's blockchain that will be forgotten about years if not months from now.  Yeah, it'll be there for all time, but if there aren't any eyeballs pointed at it, then it holds no value to me.  Hell, even if they were I still don't care.  These are just not something for me.

Bitcoin is a store of value, for one.  NFTs are retarded digital art being pumped and dumped by even more retarded retards, and I'm surprised the hype has been sustained for as long as it has.  For another thing, bitcoin and NFTs are just....different.  Fundamentally so.  In their purpose, their function, and their future prospects.

I generally don't have a positive opinion of NFTs. At least not based on the things I have seen so far. A use case I find interesting is in gaming, but I am not drawn to any blockchain-based game. I can understand that people like digital collectibles. That's their interest and hobbies. If they want to trade physical or digital cards, fine by me. Why would that bother me? Personally, it's not for me.

Do I want a unique NFT of my profile? No.
Would I stop you in trying to get one yourself? No.
Do I think there is a great future for NFTs? No.   

I am open-minded and I welcome you to change my opinion. It's not going to be easy to convince me that I need a digital kitty or monkey in my life though. I can also live without buying custom Nike sneakers (something I saw recently).

Show us the benefits without calling those who don't like NFTs idiots in one way or the other.     

Call me old-fashioned, but I don't have nor need an identity on a blockchain.

I'm not buying it (pun intended).

Bitcoin solves a real world problem. NFTs, to me, are similar to altcoins, ICOs, DeFi, Forks and all other money grabbing things created to make the creator rich. Check some random ICOs from 2017, see how many are still around. I expect NFTs to have the same faith 5 years from now. And I expect to have seen at least a few new massive money grabbing schemes that promise they are going to disrupt something. Until they disappear with the money, of course.

This is what I think of when someone mentions NFTs:
https://loyce.club/other/NFT.jpg

In general, I believe anything that can be done without a blockchain should be done without a blockchain. That includes digital items in games, and it includes forums.

Well, that's the thing, there is indeed a lot of this going on. A good example is the Rare Pepe community, along with some other classic bitcoin NFT collections. Its fun to collect Rare Pepes. It just is. A lot of them are massively expensive or hard to get, but every once in a while I score a decent buy. The best way to get them is through trades with other collectors. There is a booming, good-spirited community of NFT collectors -- like I said, they just don't make a lot of noise and they don't make for riveting content.


Actually games was one of the great use cases I forgot about. There's some decent blockchain games in the works where in-game items owned by players are all NFTs. There's been a disconnect between videogame developer talent, blockchain talent, and marketing talent, where if one element is skewed too much the game fails. Most videogames fail, most altcoins fail, and most NFTs will fail as well, its just the nature of business and technological evolution. But that doesn't mean that someday a game won't get the balance right.

Decentraland, for instance, is shaping up to be really cool. I thoroughly enjoy wandering around in there, and they now have a VR-compatible build which is extra cool because it makes for a totally immersive experience.

I always thought Magic the Gathering would be ripe for blockchainization. Its just a matter of coding the game rules and making NFTs of all the cards... they would probably make a killing. I'd buy a pack for sure, so long as it wasn't ludicrously expensive.

There is some comfort in knowing that if you own a game item on-chain, it can never be taken away from you (unless you're hacked, of course) -- but more importantly, the developers can never remove it from your inventory.

Yeah sure, there's been a lot of bad NFT games made so far and some spectacular failures, but pointing to those instances as proof that the whole thing is dumb or useless is a self-serving exercise. Its akin to looking at early failures in solar power or electric vehicles as proof that the technology can never become viable. Bitcoin would have failed had it not been heavily worked upon by a dedicated group of individuals, all united by their passion to see it succeed.


BTW Loyce, not sure if you were aware of this, but everybody who gets married gets a marriage certificate...

I have similar opinion like you about this, but this time NFT hype was much broader so you could even find NBA clubs and other sport teams introducing their won NFTs.
Problem I had was that most of this was build on crap ethereum blockchain, and we saw easy it was for this NFTs to be stolen, if hardware wallet was not used.
I am not sure if anything built on top of Bitcoin blockchain would have similar flaws or not, but let's not forget super high eth transaction fees that made any nft transaction almost impossible for regular people.

That is just modern legal stuff, and I am sure not going to use NFT for that.
Not long ago you didn't need to have any special certificate to prove you are married.
Than again you didn't need a license to ride a horse, or to own a gun, now you almost need a license for breathing and walking.
I don't think that NFT is some revolutionary new thing that will change world in any way, and I sure wont compare with with electric vehicles that is probably causing more harm than people think.
But hey, let's wait few years and will see how many people will actually drive (electric) cars and use NFTs.  :D

Speaking on NFT's in general, what's wrong with the physical representation of everything else?   There is something wrong with the physical representation of how the financial system existed, or still exists, so the digital representation of it through Bitcoin serves a great purpose.

With NFTs, I see more problems with theft and the mis-representation of physical or digital things being taken by others, simply in the name of some form of digital representation, by using NFTs, which is not Bitcoin. It can use it, sure, but it's not Bitcoin.

For this forum's profiles and users -- a digital representation already exists here. Why need to put it on the blockchain? Simply so we say it is on the blockchain?

What problems do most NFTs solve?  There could potentially be some use cases here where a digital representation of something might be useful, IF it can be trusted (maybe a form of voting?) but for the most part everything I've seen comes off as a gimmick.

That said, plenty of people around here fall for gimmicks, support gimmicks, and some of the gimmicks around here have sadly been going on for many years. I won't mention any names, lest I be labelled for libel or something, but you've done a good job on the site. I do wish you the best, I'm just not liking the majority of ideas behind NFTs.

We've veered pretty far off from the main topic and its resulted in me attempting to defend the entirety of the NFT space, which is not really what I intended to do.

To get back to the basics:

My implementation of forum NFTs (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5411112.0) is designed to be a series of personalized collectibles, nothing more or less. I think they are pretty cool because unlike most NFTs, the image is dynamic and changes each time you update your avatar. At the same time their metadata is wholly immutable, and most importantly, tailored to your individual specifications.

At first I thought limiting the total supply to 1 would be a good idea, as that makes them truly non-fungible, but eddie13 pointed out it would be more fun to have higher supplies so that way peeps could trade them with each other (which is achievable in a trustless fashion using the Counterparty DEX). As I mention in the thread, you can even sell them for BTC via Dispenser or wrap them using Emblem Vault and sell them on OpenSea.

Now if your response is "so what, I don't care," that's fine. I guess what I take offense to the most is the idea that "all NFTs are worthless," which is clearly not true as people spend big bucks on them on a daily basis, even in the depths of a bear market.

It's a bit tiring hearing the same takes on collectible tokens since 2014 -- not a whole lot has changed in that regard. It just should be obvious by this point that a serious collector market has emerged (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5406123.0) for some of these things (some, mind you, not all), and its not going away. It will only get bigger as more people enter the crypto space during the next bull market, and accelerate as the world continues its transformation from physical to digital.

If it will bring them profit, they will take part in it. I don't look at sports and NFTs any more differently than selling club merchandise, VIP experiences, club museum tours, etc. It's additional revenue.

That's not really an argument. People spend big money on heroin as well but it doesn't do them any good.
When a piece of unique physical artwork gets sold, you become the sole owner of it (assuming there are no other copies out there). If you hang it in your living room, that's the only place it can be enjoyed. When an NFT gets sold, everyone can still access it, look at it, download it, listen to it...
There is surely a lot of fake trading on these NFT marketplaces meant to give importance to certain pieces and try to trigger a higher price. Sell it to yourself a few times before you find a real buyer who decides to purchase it.

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But I wish you luck with your project! If you are sure that what you are doing has some value, just go for it no matter what other people say. 

OK, guess I'm going back to defending NFTs in their entirety.


Heroin has value to its users and is actually quite expensive compared to most other things by weight. I'm ignoring the moral and other implications of comparing NFTs to heroin, but if people pay money for things it means they see value in them. This does not have to match your personal assessments to be true.


You're describing all art on all mediums: it can be reproduced, photocopied, digitally transferred, counterfeited, forged. I can visit the Louvre and take a picture of the Mona Lisa, or hire a master forger to recreate it for me on canvas. I can make a photocopy of a Mickey Mantle rookie card. I can download Metallica's entire catalog from The Pirate Bay. With a lot of NFTs, the token is the art, and the token itself cannot be duplicated because it is accounted for by the blockchain.


This was already brought up. Yes, wash trading happens, just as it happens with every major cryptocurrency, including bitcoin.