Official cryptocurrency thread (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Altcoin)

[Jon MW]

An NFT is often called digital art. My own personal opinion which is probably not shared by many is that art is basically a giant scam. A massive rip off. A waste of time. Useless.

So it follows that digital art would be the same. People get ripped of for paintings and sculptures every day. They also sell for ridiculous prices the same as some NFTs have done (bored apes). So what is the difference? I wonder if David McWilliams has any paintings on the wall of his very nice house. And if he considers himself also exploited?

They have a similarity in that their value is basically whatever anyone will pay for it

But actual art is a physical object (the art available to buy is at least)

NFT's don't represent a physical object. They don't represent copyright ownership of the original creation, they don't stop people legally copying and sharing the original creation, they don't stop copyright owners of the creation creating multiple NFT's - all pointing at the same digital object.

I saw someone describe buying an NFT is like buying a url pointing to a website - and you don't even get to own the website, just the url

Even if you pay $100m for a painting - you physically own a painting that you can put on your wall and nobody else can.

This seems a lot different to NFT's

[teddybloat]

An NFT is often called digital art. My own personal opinion which is probably not shared by many is that art is basically a giant scam. A massive rip off. A waste of time. Useless.

So it follows that digital art would be the same. People get ripped of for paintings and sculptures every day. They also sell for ridiculous prices the same as some NFTs have done (bored apes). So what is the difference? I wonder if David McWilliams has any paintings on the wall of his very nice house. And if he considers himself also exploited?

Art is just a hedge against inflation for many people

Nfts are a digital hedge

Bitcoin is digital property, again a way of avoiding inflation eating away your wealth.

[edgascoigne]

NFTs don’t have to be a JPEG.

Rather IMO in their next use case they will be a digital receipt of ownership of a tangible real-world asset.

[Jon MW]

NFTs don’t have to be a JPEG.

Rather IMO in their next use case they will be a digital receipt of ownership of a tangible real-world asset.

The image example was obvious because of the art comparison

And what is the advantage of an NFT receipt compared to - just a receipt?

[Pokerpops]

`````````

I find all this fascinating

One of bitcoins biggest players was on the David McWilliams podcast arguing that bitcoin is a speculative asset rather than a currency, and that labelling it a currency was a mistake from the start


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://open.spotify.com/show/6dzfsIlMVEdKVSfSd1mclr&ved=2ahUKEwjq77fWi6f2AhX6QUEAHe4SBagQFnoFCJIBEAE&usg=AOvVaw1BtFRs0hHbl0PJNM5wXVup

I don’t know who David McWilliams, but he’s right.

"A LOT OF PEOPLE WILL LOSE A LOT OF MONEY" | DAVID MCWILLIAMS ON THE GROWTH OF CRYPTO IN FOOTBALL


https://www.otbsports.com/soccer/a-lot-of-people-will-lose-a-lot-of-money-david-mcwilliams-on-the-growth-of-crypto-in-football-1300995

Lets be honest. British football fans are just sources of income to a football team which uses sentiment and emotion to milk the fan for as much as they can. Whether it is overpriced tickets, overpriced food, overpriced replica shirts, sky sports subscription, memorabilia and all the other tat in the club shop. So yes of course a football team would want to get into NFT as it is another thing to sell to their fans. If fans want to hold a digital NFT, why can't the buy one to show their support in the same way they spend money on other stuff. Is my Birmingham City FC branded bath towel any more legit and valuable than an NFT showing Trevor Francis scoring an amazing goal?

Yes it is.  You can dry yourself on the towel.

[edgascoigne]

NFTs don’t have to be a JPEG.

Rather IMO in their next use case they will be a digital receipt of ownership of a tangible real-world asset.

The image example was obvious because of the art comparison

And what is the advantage of an NFT receipt compared to - just a receipt?

Oh I wasn’t having a dig - I find it fascinating that society (more broadly) has come to conflate “NFT” with “JPEG”.

The digital receipt, effectively, makes the item tradable 24/7 to a global audience without process involvement beyond an exchange/similar listing. Immediate transaction, full log of ownership and history, NFT can be used to capture key information through the item’s life. Information capture can be used to drive improved customer experience / increase monetisation.

The example I’ve given to people is if my golf club operated membership by NFT.

Scan on gates on the way in, automated message to welcome me by name. “Mr Gascoigne we’ve noticed you typically like a bacon roll and a white Americano before you tee off - would you like that today? // We know you’re a terrible golfer who loses lots of balls - would you like a box of Pro V1s marked up for you before you start? We’ve got you booked for a 1040 tee with Steve, John and Dave - their Satnavs show they’re all doing alright but Dave may be a little late - in case that happens we’ve held a 1120 tee for you” etc.

I’m sure plenty of businesses do this already with 101 different systems. I could, however, see a decentralised system effectively consolidating this market.

Eg I go to a DIFFERENT golf club, arrive at the gates, “Mr Gascoigne we know you typically like……”

[Jon MW]

NFTs don’t have to be a JPEG.

Rather IMO in their next use case they will be a digital receipt of ownership of a tangible real-world asset.

The image example was obvious because of the art comparison

And what is the advantage of an NFT receipt compared to - just a receipt?

Oh I wasn’t having a dig - I find it fascinating that society (more broadly) has come to conflate “NFT” with “JPEG”.

The digital receipt, effectively, makes the item tradable 24/7 to a global audience without process involvement beyond an exchange/similar listing. Immediate transaction, full log of ownership and history, NFT can be used to capture key information through the item’s life. Information capture can be used to drive improved customer experience / increase monetisation.

The example I’ve given to people is if my golf club operated membership by NFT.

Scan on gates on the way in, automated message to welcome me by name. “Mr Gascoigne we’ve noticed you typically like a bacon roll and a white Americano before you tee off - would you like that today? // We know you’re a terrible golfer who loses lots of balls - would you like a box of Pro V1s marked up for you before you start? We’ve got you booked for a 1040 tee with Steve, John and Dave - their Satnavs show they’re all doing alright but Dave may be a little late - in case that happens we’ve held a 1120 tee for you” etc.

I’m sure plenty of businesses do this already with 101 different systems. I could, however, see a decentralised system effectively consolidating this market.

Eg I go to a DIFFERENT golf club, arrive at the gates, “Mr Gascoigne we know you typically like……”

While I agree there is a place for blockchain applications - the example - the only good example so far - I've seen is that Olive Oil growers can bottle their olive oil with a chip in the cap with the blockchain transaction encoded on it for sale - that blockchain transaction gets updated whenever it is sold (grower - exporter - wholesaler - retailer - customer) and the chip gets broken if the bottle is opened. That means the end customer can scan the chip and ensure that there has been an unbroken chain from the grower (apparently fake olive oil and adulterated olive oil are a big thing in the high end market).

But

The example you have given - you don't need NFT for that. For the system to pick up on that behaviour you would need to scan, say, a membership card when you went in and bought things (and recorded results? I don't really know how golf works) - you don't need an NFT for that. It could all just be done digitally already - you're effectively just describing what every loyalty card has the potential of doing.

This seems to be the problem with all the best blockchain ideas I've seen, they do work, or they would work if they're just a concept - but they aren't any improvement on existing ways of doing the same thing.

[Pokerpops]

NFTs don’t have to be a JPEG.

Rather IMO in their next use case they will be a digital receipt of ownership of a tangible real-world asset.

The image example was obvious because of the art comparison

And what is the advantage of an NFT receipt compared to - just a receipt?

Oh I wasn’t having a dig - I find it fascinating that society (more broadly) has come to conflate “NFT” with “JPEG”.

The digital receipt, effectively, makes the item tradable 24/7 to a global audience without process involvement beyond an exchange/similar listing. Immediate transaction, full log of ownership and history, NFT can be used to capture key information through the item’s life. Information capture can be used to drive improved customer experience / increase monetisation.

The example I’ve given to people is if my golf club operated membership by NFT.

Scan on gates on the way in, automated message to welcome me by name. “Mr Gascoigne we’ve noticed you typically like a bacon roll and a white Americano before you tee off - would you like that today? // We know you’re a terrible golfer who loses lots of balls - would you like a box of Pro V1s marked up for you before you start? We’ve got you booked for a 1040 tee with Steve, John and Dave - their Satnavs show they’re all doing alright but Dave may be a little late - in case that happens we’ve held a 1120 tee for you” etc.

I’m sure plenty of businesses do this already with 101 different systems. I could, however, see a decentralised system effectively consolidating this market.

Eg I go to a DIFFERENT golf club, arrive at the gates, “Mr Gascoigne we know you typically like……”

That technology exists, and has done for years. BBC R4 did a programme 20yrs ago about MBNA. Ostensibly a credit card company, openly referred to themselves as being in the business of data harvesting and management.
Their phone system would recognise your phone number and route your call to an operator who spoke your language, and who would have the answers to your three most frequent queries displayed on a screen in front of them.
Their systems would obviously record what you spent, but also what you spent it on and where and that part of the record would be far more heavily analysed than the simple monetary actions.

Why do supermarkets want us to have ‘reward’ cards?

Our personal data, what we own, what we spend, what we like and dislike (up to and beyond what we prefer to eat as a pre-golf breakfast) has a clear monetary value to those who want to sell stuff to us. A value which can be measured as some function of our income/capital.

So data has a value - but an image, stored online, of this?

https://youtu.be/liIyb2r7dfo

[vegaslover]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60983561

[Jon MW]

A story very much relating to the previous discussion about NFT's being worth whatever someone will pay for them

NFT of Jack Dorsey's first tweet struggles to sell

Someone bought an NFT of the first tweet for $2.9m and decided to flip it for a profit after one year. They put it up for auction and suggested a guide price of $25m

Even with donating half to charity that would leave them with about $10m profit

Except - as of this article - the highest bid was about $6000 and even with the publicity of stories like this the bid has only gone up to $10k as of when I last looked

The person who owns it may well think this is a valuable asset which "should" appreciate in value - but other people have to think the same way.

The seller has said, "...this NFT is the Mona Lisa of the digital world" - the problem with that analogy is that it is not. It is not art.

If you wanted to have a real world (fungible) equivalent, it's more like a letter sent by someone like Edison.

Something interesting, something fairly unique, something valuable even - but not Mona Lisa valuable

Bonhams
Typed Letter Signed ("Thos A Edison"),
Sold for US$ 956 inc. premium

[EvilPie]

What a rollercoaster BTC investors are having. Dropped below £20k today for the first time since December 2020 and has been in freefall for the last week or so.

Down 20% over 5 days and down 10% today alone.

I've said before I've never understood crypto/BTC and probably never will but I love following its price almost daily.

It peaked just under £50k about 7 months ago and has been crazy volatile ever since.

That 'spike' in December '17 when it first breached $20k looks like a molehill next to the Himalayas on a 5yr graph.

Hope any Blondes invested are doing okay out of it.

[the sicilian]

Lump in ethereum but in for the long run so not overly concerned.. although it’s been a bit dramatic lol