It's even worse. You didn't buy the picture of a monkey, you bought a link which may if you are lucky still resolve to some server somewhere which hosts a picture of a monkey.
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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That's technically not true for all NFTs, it's possible for the data (in this case a monkey jpg) to be stored on-chain.
And just to be clear, I'm not saying this to defend NFTs
It can be, but IIRC in the case of the Bored Ape Yacht Club ones it wasn't. I think.
Maybe someone who was smart enough to buy one can chime in and let us know the mechanics.
Apparently the apes are stored on IPFS, which is a distributed file storage system. As long as one copy exists, you can prove that copy is correct against the chain. Anyone can host a copy.
I thought they were plain HTTP as well!
Source: https://etherscan.io/address/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18a936f13d#readContract#F6
Even better, I just checked it's hash on IPFS, it just points to a directory containing all possible bored apes...yours is just whichever the NFT meta data says is yours. What a joke LMAO
You might be confusing the base URL with the token URL?
For example, for token 5972: https://dweb.link/ipfs/QmeSjSinHpPnmXmspMjwiXyN6zS4E9zccariGR3jxcaWtq/5972
That points to:
https://bafybeigj6rjkhwoohilugp4necbo5o3ptzl2ny2drex7blwyrygn2y34be.ipfs.dweb.link/
Ahhh, you are correct. I still maintain that it is a joke, however haha
Oh god, I know... I assume you're probably talking about NFTs as a whole, but even as someone in the space, these dumb tokens give us all a bad name...
There are actually useful NFTs! Like you can get an NFT name like example.eth (like a domain), and use it instead of an address in most Ethereum software. That's so much better than stupid apes...
edit: also, I really appreciate the acknowledgement; people can be really, uh, hostile.
edit: also, I really appreciate the acknowledgement; people can be really, uh, hostile.
No worries! Gotta admit when you're wrong so you can grow as a person :)
And yeah, I'm absolutely sure there are many positive uses of NFTs, storing different varieties of data within a distributed blockchain. It's the speculative part that is just absolutely insane.
To be fair, that's basically how any deed to a piece of land works too. But at least when you buy land, you can live on it while the government is still solvent (which will be most of us' entire lives.)
I don't know man......have you seen the news today? Kind of seems like trump is speedrunning the demise of the united states.
Unless you live somewhere else besides the united states. In which case we're probably about to abduct all the world leaders. Collect them like pogs, ya know? Do you remember pogs? Well they're back. In world leader form.
I was hoping the tired overused simpsons references would stay on reddit
I have my problems with NFTs, sure, but this argument is dumb.
You didn't actually get a dollar, you got a piece of fabric/plastic that points to a dollar.
Who the hell cares? If everyone agrees that your paper bill or NFT represents something, then it represents something.
If the server hosting the image goes down, guess what? You still have the thing you bought. If you go to the Wayback Machine or whatever, you can still find the picture. That's ignoring the fact that it's possible to create NFTs that don't rely on an external server at all.
That's a fair sight better than most other digital assets.
If everyone agrees that your paper bill or NFT represents something
Yeah thats a really big if.
When you buy an nft, you but a number (and since you can't own a number, you buy nothing).
The fact that you got scammed because some people told you that this number gives you ownership of anything is meaningless.
With your example of a dollar, it would be as if you were given monopoly money and you were going around thinking that you're rich. Sure, if you find people that fell in the same scam, they might accept your fake money as payment, but that's the extent of it. It's basically a group of deluded people who imagine that they have something of value while they simply have a meaningless paper.
That is also why you can easily print monopoly money, but not real money. One has a value, the other doesn't.
When you buy an nft, you but a number
When you buy an NFT, a storage slot in the contract's (contract == dumb Ethereum nomenclature for a program running on the blockchain) is set to your account's address.
This is very similar to how any traditional database works, so nothing new here.
(and since you can't own a number, you buy nothing).
A counterexample: This sentence is encoded as a number. I own the copyright for it. Someone could buy the copyright for it.
Unless you're arguing the semantics of ownership? Like you can't own a number because you don't have exclusive use of it? If that's your point, I'd generally agree. In the case of an NFT, you have exclusive use of that abstract "thing" represented on that particular chain.
The fact that you got scammed because some people told you that this number gives you ownership of anything is meaningless.
If I can exchange my number for something else I want, or it has some intrinsic value to me, it's hard to argue it's meaningless. I have a few NFTs simply because I want them, and couldn't care less about whether anyone else finds meaning in them.
With your example of a dollar, it would be as if you were given monopoly money and you were going around thinking that you're rich. Sure, if you find people that fell in the same scam, they might accept your fake money as payment, but that's the extent of it. It's basically a group of deluded people who imagine that they have something of value while they simply have a meaningless paper.
How do you think regular currency works? Everyone believes in the value of a dollar, so that dollar has value. Imagine you were trapped on a barren island with a stranger. You have a hundred dollar bill, and they have a box of rations. Suddenly your dollars are rather meaningless, no? *
That is also why you can easily print monopoly money, but not real money. One has a value, the other doesn't.
Have you tried printing cryptocurrency? That's kinda its whole raison d'etre.
*: hopefully they share out of the goodness of their heart!
In the case of an NFT, you have exclusive use of that abstract "thing" represented on that particular chain.
But you don’t. Everyone can download the picture of ‘your’ ape and use it. You can claim to own the copyright on it due to some blockchain mumbo jumbo and try to sue someone who uses ‘your’ property but do you realistically think you’re going to get very far with that lawsuit?
How do you think regular currency works? Everyone believes in the value of a dollar, so that dollar has value
Yeah, but that’s the point isn’t it? No one believes in the value of an NFT except for a small number of delusional tech bro’s, so that NFT has no actual value.
But you don’t. Everyone can download the picture of ‘your’ ape and use it. You can claim to own the copyright on it due to some blockchain mumbo jumbo and try to sue someone who uses ‘your’ property but do you realistically think you’re going to get very far with that lawsuit?
This is the "right click save" argument.
Sure, you can save a copy of it, but that's hardly the point.
Anyone can print their own Magic the Gathering trading card or fake bank note. A counterfeiter, ideally, cannot prove their copies are legitimate because of the security measures in those objects.
The blockchain, in this analogy, is closest to those security measures.
Someone who has simply copied the image cannot prove ownership of the token.
An NFT itself cannot be copied, which is the whole advantage over just a PNG/JPEG on a webserver.
I mentioned in an another comment that the copyright sometimes, but not usually, accompanies the NFT. This is a whole other can of worms, and I am not qualified to discuss it beyond that.
No one believes in the value of an NFT except for a small number of delusional tech bro’s, so that NFT has no actual value
If you're talking specifically about art NFTs, I fully agree with you. They're as useful as beanie babies.
If you're talking about crypto as a whole... Coinbase alone has millions of customers, so not exactly a small number. (source via Wikipedia)
I thought all the nft bros had transformed into ai bros. What a rare sighting.
I wouldn't say I'm a crypto bro, but I've been interested in it from a tech point of view for a long time. I much preferred when no one knew cryptocurrencies existed 🤣
The U.S. government does not agree. They only own the art (copyright wise) is if the contract explicitly says so.
You're right! The copyright can be transferred separately from the token, just like a trading card (eg. Magic the Gathering) can be bought and sold separately from the art.
Why were they all monkeys?
I mean he's right. That kid is real dumb.
NFTs were big when I went to prison. Don't hear anything about it afterwards.
Prison must've been good for something I guess.
BTC would work here, too.
Depends when really, there have been a few periods of time where buying/mining bitcoin turned out to be a pretty lucrative for anyone involved at the time. I mined some on my laptop about 15 years ago and ended up buying some steam games with it a few years later. Multiply that up to people who actually invested seriously, they made several times their investment.
NFTs? Basically all were scams and no one was ever going to make money apart from the scammer.
(Also nobody take this to mean BTC is a good investment today, if you're buying it today expecting exponential growth and not to potentially lose your investment entirely, you're being very silly)
Bitcoin operates the same as NFTs. Similar to an NFT, a bitcoin alone doesn't have any value on it's own. Someone made lots of money both on NFTs and bitcoin by selling it to someone else for more money than they paid for it.
It's really no different.
I thought it was worth way less than the current price most of the time?
Worth is based on what people will pay for it, and tons of people are buying it high because they think it's an investment. I'm just curious how long until people become bag holders.
Except that he could have made millions there easily. No matter when you bought them, the absolute maximum you lost now is 25 %.