this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
437 points (95.8% liked)

Technology

34832 readers
1 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 134 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Gee, if only there was some way to have seen this coming before hand...

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yup.

Could have put the money in stock instead and they'd likely have made a profit since then.

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 32 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Hell, they could have stuffed it into their mattress and it would have been a better investment lol.

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Inflation can't even lose this much money is such a short time

The first tweet nft sold for $2.9mil and is now "worth" less than $4.

Like it was worth anything at all in the beginning anyways

Edit: Spleling

[–] ooi_vebnq@r.nf 5 points 2 years ago

Beautiful edit.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] kubica@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago

Actually I didn't have many hopes in humanity when it started to happen. It's a bit comforting, not much though with other things around.

[–] drolex@sopuli.xyz 90 points 2 years ago

🌍👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 31 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Were they worth anything to begin with?

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 years ago

A better question would be, did anyone ever even buy them to begin with?

This means that 79% of all NFT collections – otherwise known as almost 4 out of every 5 – have remained unsold.

That is, most of the NFTs included in the OP statistic were listed for sale by their creators, and never recorded a sale. Another important detail is that even for the ones that did record sales, there's no real way of knowing if those sales were real. You can easily make another crypto wallet and buy an NFT from yourself. For more elaborate wash trading, you can find someone with an established wallet to collude with. There are obvious reasons to do this too; building up a history of increasing sale prices could potentially dupe someone into thinking an NFT is a good investment, or you could launder money by selling an NFT to a 'dirty' wallet you also control.

Probably some portion of the market was "real", but the volume is almost certainly much lower than anyone is reporting. Statistics like what the OP article is quoting are just about totally meaningless.

[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Hundreds of millions collectively, when people were dumb enough to buy them. The problem is that eventually dumb people ran out of money and the worth plummeted to zero.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 27 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Just because something is unique doesn’t mean it’s valuable.

Some people are just discovering this.

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 years ago

It's not even that it's unique. It's just one particular system associates you with something. It's basically those star registry scams. Except you're not associated with a star by one particular scam organization. You associated with an image of a cartoon ape by a scam organization! But there's a trendy technology involved so idiots think that makes it somehow legit.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] foreverandaday@lemmy.ml 25 points 2 years ago

🔫️ Always have been

[–] xT1TANx@lemmy.world 25 points 2 years ago (2 children)

They were always worthless

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] watson387@sopuli.xyz 19 points 2 years ago

Of no surprise to anyone.

[–] pleasemakesense@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If value is completely dependent on speculation how the fuck do people expect to make money?

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 25 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Crypto Booms: "This is the future of money. You can't lose."
Crypto Busts: "I'm just interested in the tech it's not about money."

[–] gndagreborn@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

That is some high grade cope. Highly refined. 99.99% pure cope.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] davel@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 years ago
[–] library_napper@monyet.cc 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But it was nice while artists were able to sell to profit from rich people

[–] roguetrick@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago

To be real, even cryptobros would tell you the vast majority were useless as soon as they were minted.

[–] Comment105@lemm.ee 12 points 2 years ago

Pumped, dumped, done.

[–] primalmotion@lemmy.antisocial.ly 11 points 2 years ago

Who would have thought?

[–] squiblet@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Perhaps they’d have retained value if they had been attached to quality art rather than awful-looking algorithmically generated complete trash.

[–] Dr_Cog@mander.xyz 31 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No, they wouldn't have. Because owning a link to a thing doesn't mean anything, no matter what that thing is. They were only valuable because people didn't understand NFTs and wanted to get rich quick.

[–] squiblet@kbin.social 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The concept of a certificate of authenticity for digital goods that can be traded isn’t inherently terrible.

[–] Dr_Cog@mander.xyz 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The concept isn't, I agree. But it also isn't a useful idea, either. There really doesn't appear to be any benefit to using NFTs in any meaningful application, or at least nobody has pitched one that isn't either a grift or a way to appear "trendy" by reinventing the wheel.

[–] squiblet@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Some established, legitimate artists have been selling NFTs with their originals. But sure, overall, like crypto in general, the field is filled with scammers and get-rich-quick schemes.
I know someone who is a painter who for some reason decided to try selling NFTs a couple of months ago (I pointed out it was a bit late…). The only responses on opensea and Instagram she received were from scammers, trying to pull a “my payment didn’t work, you need to manually approve it” scheme to try to steal her credentials.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Grimpen@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago

The actual infrastructure was horribly inefficient, but that may have improved with ETH's move to proof of stake.

There's other issues, but the idea of using the digital receipt as an "investment" seems fundamentally flawed.

[–] neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

and nothing of value was lost

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

Well a lot of money transferred to grifters that's for sure.

[–] TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago

They always were.

[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago

Wait. They were actually worth something!?

[–] ViewSonik@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

Always have been

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago
[–] randomaccount43543@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

O rly! 🦉

[–] InstallGentoo@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 years ago

Grass is green...

[–] HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

It must have been really hard for the underpaid researcher to put this report together while doubling over in laughter.

[–] AceQuorthon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 years ago

69,795 out of 73,257 NFT collections have a market cap of 0 Ether

LMAO!

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago

Given that they can be generated effectively for free, this is hardly surprising or particularly meaningful. I can generate ten thousand new images with my AI art generator for basically zero cost and I don't expect any would be economically valuable, but that doesn't mean there aren't some images that are valuable.

[–] HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

I can imagine being desperate to hit it big, but at least but a lottery ticket or something. That way, the school system (or whatever) gets a few bucks, instead of the fucking Trumps.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 5 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Tens of thousands of NFTs that were once deemed the newest rage in tech and dragged in celebrities, artists and even Melania Trump have now been declared virtually worthless.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a form of crypto asset that is used to certify ownership and authenticity of a digital file including an image, video or text.

The report comes nearly two years after the craze for NFTs swept up celebrities and artists alike, with many rushing to purchase NFT collections of the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Matrix avatars.

The drastic downward market shift surrounding such crypto assets “underscores the need for careful due diligence before making any purchases, especially one of high value”, the report said.

Researchers identified 195,699 NFT collections with no apparent owners or market share and found that the energy required to mint the NFTs was comparable to 27,789,258 kWh, resulting in an emission of approximately 16,243 metric tons of CO2.

In order to survive market downturns and have lasting value, NFTs need to be either historically relevant such as first-edition Pokémon cards, true art or provide genuine utility, they said in the report.


The original article contains 650 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

load more comments
view more: next ›