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...

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.

Inflation wasn't 500% in the last 4 years. Get real. It was 10% or so overall. Slight difference.

Yeah definitely sell before Biden gets elected. Think about how much money you would have made off that trade if you did that last time--when Bitcoin went up 500% during Biden's presidency.

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).

Blockchain is absolutely not used by Microsoft, IBM and many others. Some of those companies sold tools to help companies try to build blockchain solutions, but no company has ever built a certified solution with those tools. There was a lot of hype created by Bitcoin, but it was just hype. But with billions of dollars in market cap for Bitcoin, companies blindly signed up for the hype even if it made no technical sense.

There are no documented design wins for blockchain outside of popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. None. Zero. Nada. I have asked for this high and low. I created a whole topic here on this forum months ago, and have asked for proof in many other places as well.

And why is that? Because blockchain has only one clear value-add, which is evading government access to transactions. No established corporation can possibly have this problem by definition. "Enterprise blockchain" is like "vegetarian filet mignon". It makes absolutely no sense.

And by blockchain I mean the software architecture outlined in the original Bitcoin whitepaper, and the technology that thousands of other cryptocurrencies are based on. It is a technology designed to achieve effective governance of a data source (in this case, a ledger) through a popular vote of participants in a network instead a single entity that can be subjected to a government subpoena.

If you aren't trying to avoid a government subpoena, blockchain is an absolutely pointless waste of time.

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.

I'd usually dismiss outlandish claims like this, but staging a false-flag terrorist attack killing Russia innocents is literally how Putin rose to power...

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?

And if it needs help from the courts to enforce, then it's absolutely idiotic to use... blockchain[/i] in this transaction. The whole point of blockchain is to remove the government from the equation.


Can you give any evidence to your claims here? How does an NFT give an artist a new way to sell their works that they didn't have before? In either case, the artist must create a usage contract for their work, and they must sign their own name to that, as well as that of the counterparty--just like they would do without the NFT being involved. So why have an NFT in the mix at all? What value does it add?


Can you explain how it will grow? What it will grow into? What they are evolving into? Any specifics?

Yes, in war, mistakes are made. And sometimes military targets are intentionally placed in civilian locations for this exact reason. And you cannot trust absolutely any information that comes from Russia in any case.

And yes, there's absolutely no denying this was an ISIS attack. The US knew they would attack and warned Russia. Then ISIS proved their culpability. While blaming Ukraine on this is typical propaganda from Russia, this is particularly... ridiculous propaganda, even for them.

What? What are you talking about?

With an NFT you can fake ownership easier than ever before since a private key proves you are the owner of nothing whatsoever.

What proves you own the Mona Lisa is government documents saying you own the Mona Lisa. And not "some private key" owns the Mona Lisa, but some actual human person owns it.

Imagine somebody sells you a house using an NFT. Then somebody else moves in "your" house and calls the police telling them to throw you out of their house. Now you have to sue the person who sold you this NFT... except there's nobody to sue since you can't take a private key to court.

In short, buying tangible goods as an NFT is always a scam. Don't do it .

I completely get that, and clearly the value of blockchain anything is based almost entirely on its brand name perception since the practical use is so limited. And there are billion dollar brands in the world like "Gucci" and "Real Madrid" and "Bitcoin" that make whatever object you place that brand on valuable just because the brand.

But NFTs are different because they usually pretend to be something they aren't. The reason is because insofar as you are selling a non-tangible item (e.g. a digital asset), then the only potential worth is the copyright protection on that item, which is buried in the contract for the NFT.

In other words, most people think they are buying a JPEG of a Monkey when buying an NFT that nobody else can buy but unless it's specified in the contract, the one who sold it to you could make one million more JPEGs just like it and sell them as a one-off.

And even if the contract for the NFT covers this, you have absolutely no recourse in enforcing your contract because there's no known counterparty to sue with the NFT itself. (And if there is one, then... why did you bother with an NFT in the first place since you could have just signed a plain old contract between two parties?)

So yes, value is subjective, but NFTs don't even guarantee you that subjective value.

Why would you care about something being decentralized if you are using your real name and identity? That defeats the whole purpose of blockchain, which is to resist government oversight into transactions.

And while "tamper proof" is physical impossibility, systems that are "tamper resistant" depend on the implementation, and blockchain doesn't help that problem one way or another, except perhaps to make the system somewhat more complex, adding to the risk of hacking.


What use cases? What business models?

NFTs aren't altcoins though, they are completely different. Altcoins can potentially have value, whereas NFTs, in my opinion, don't serve any actual purpose (I started this thread hoping that somebody would disagree but so far no takers ).

I suspect that most people actually do not know what they are getting with an NFT, because of your description here which is actually... misleading--even though I suspect that's what many people think of when they think of an NFT.

But yes, copyrights. You know who would need to go to court to bring damages in a copyright lawsuit? Actual human beings. A private key can't take another private key to court. A known person can't take a private key to court. A private key can't take a known person to court. It takes two known parties with real identities to go to court, and without the help of a functioning court system, the concept of "copyrights" is completely meaningless.

And if you have a contract between two known entities, then why especially do you need blockchain anywhere in this mix?

So my question here, put another way, is this:

Do NFTs have any valid reason to exist?

I agree with you here, and personally I don't like to write off anything that has captured the interest of so many people in the world as a "scam".

Clearly NFTs are doing something people find useful, and my theory is that the buying and selling of contracts on the internet is a useful thing, even if:

1. Many or even most NFTs are scams.

2. Specifically using blockchain or not to do it doesn't make any difference to the product.

3. Blockchain-based NFTs will go extinct soon, replaced by plain old written contracts with known counterparties, now that NFTs have introduced everybody to the idea of buying and selling contracts*.

I personally like to drill down and learn more about a phenomenon rather than just dismissing it as a "scam". I'm not saying there's anything wrong if you do, but I'm just a geek when it comes to this stuff .


(* Of course I have the same view of Bitcoin and digital currency. )

I struggled with the proper placement of this topic. This is clearly a Bitcoin-related (blockchain-related) topic, and I think belongs on Bitcointalk.org, generally speaking.

But there's no dedicated area of NFTs on this website, or something that would seem to cover that topic in a general way.

And NFTs are definitely not like altcoins in terms of their usefulness and issues. I think that would be the wrong place for the topic.

Hence I placed this topic in the "general discussion" area, e.g. this one.

I bet it either never sees the light of day unless they change the technology.

Or they use it with extremely low volume, making it no different than using any other asset that banks use.

Bitcoin transactions can cost up to $30 US dollars. Bitcoin is absolutely not free to use.

It's the very opposite of free, actually.

When it comes to blockchain-based NFTs, I'm trying to answer one question: why?

What is the actual added value of an NFT versus a plain old contract between two known entities as is done in traditional digital content marketplaces?

You might say that the difference is that the transaction can be done anonymously, but since NFTs are essentially legal contracts, and contracts require known identities to hold up in court, then it would seem as though an NFT itself doesn't add any value, since you need to add identity to the contract anyhow, at which point there's no added value to using an NFT.

What am I missing here? Why use an NFT when the NFT, by itself, is technically worthless, and a valid transaction without the blockchain aspect of the transaction is the same as the value with it?

In other words, couldn't you just enter into the same contract the NFT specifies with the real names of the parties, and accomplish the same thing, but without the added complexity of the blockchain stuff?

Can somebody who knows the NFT business tell me what I am missing?