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Remember when NFTs sold for millions of dollars? 95% of the digital collectibles are now probably worthless. (markets.businessinsider.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Remember when NFTs sold for millions of dollars? 95% of the digital collectibles are now probably worthless.::NFTs had a huge bull run two years ago, with billions of dollars per month in trading volume, but now most have crashed to zero, a study found.

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[–] 211 points 3 years ago (23 children)

correction... always were worthless.

It's always been a con game.

Their so-called "value" was always determined by the ability of the person shilling it to make up bullshit. Literally the definition of a "confidence" game. Same problem as crypto in general. It's only has value if you have confidence in the person shilling it. The moment that person loses the confidence of their marks, the entire thing crumbles to nothing because it isn't backed by any real tangible assets.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    akshuallllyyyyyyyy, monetary value of anything is derivative to someone else's willingness to purchase the item

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  • [–] 32 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    You can use this logic to explain away any other ponzi scheme too.

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  • [–] 17 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    It's not really logic, and I don't think it's defending anything, it's just the definition of monetary worth.

    For better or for worse, stuff is always as valuable as people consider it to be. Which may be related to how useful that stuff is, but often is not.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Sure, but some systems are way more stable since they are established and have the general trust of a lot of people. And others simply don't have that wide ranging trust and as such aren't stable.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago*

    untrue.

    Real currency is backed by assets. that used to be the "gold standard", but has become more ephemeral since the end of the first world war.

    A government issued currency is backed by that government's infrastructure, taxes, tariffs, etc... basically how powerful that government is on the world stage.

    in contrast, crypto is backed by nothing more than how persuasive the creator is because the creator doesn't need any assets to create a crypto currency in the first place.

    Heck, in one case, some techbro created a crypto currency, and convinced a bunch of people that it would be stable because he was backing it with ANOTHER crypto currency he literally created for that only purpose.

    And people FELL FOR IT!

    When something can be created out of thin air with no assets needed but a GPU, it's inherently worthless.

    It's utter insanity.

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  • [+] -22 points 3 years ago (11 children)

    So like art. No tangible assets, but the value is derived by the highest bidder.

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  • [+] 37 points 3 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Not even photoshopped, that would be too much effort. Nah, the most infamous NFTs are a few different elements (different mouths, eyes, accessories, etc) and then a whole bunch of permutations generated from those elements. For a technology with a supposed selling point of scarcity, you'd think they'd try to make the art special instead of procedurally-generated trash, but of course the real purposes were scams and money laundering.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 years ago

    The thing with art is that even if the art itself is completely worthless, the materials used are not.

    You can sell a "worthless" painting to be used as firewood.

    Same with digital assets, they can be sold to be used as templates or even to train an AI.

    But a location in some useless database (which is essentially what an NFT is) does not.

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  • [+] -23 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

    Sounds a lot like the banking system today lol.

    Edit: Idk why all yall turds down voted me. The u.s. dollar is literally not backed by any physical asset..... look up fiat money and do research on the dollar.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago

    Yes it is. It's backed by the US's economic power on the world stage. That's how economies function.

    Crypto can be created or of thin air by literally any tech bro with a GPU. By definition that is literally worthless

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