[Finance] Non Fungible Tokens - NFTs

[Tyrone Biggums]

Anyone looking into NFTs as a lasting investment need to be aware that they’re walking into a completely unregulated Wild West.

Get familiar with the term “rug pull” and read a couple of cautionary tales like these (all from within the last few weeks)

€1.5 million stolen in celeb-backed French NFT rug pull that promised to make a movie called Plush

Around 770 people were convinced to spend a combined almost €1.5 million (~$1.66 million) on NFTs of teddy bears, which sold for around €1,250 each (~$1,380). Buyers were told they would become "co-producers" of the Plush animated film, which would star Kev Adams and other French comedians as...

web3isgoinggreat.com

Co-founders of company best known for Bella Hadid NFTs begin $77 million court battle against each other

Krzysztof Gagacki and Edmond Truong are co-founders of Rebase.gg, some sort of augmented reality app where people go hunting for NFTs. They're best known for helping to create a "Cy-B3lla" NFT collection with model Bella Hadid, which launched in mid-2022. Speaking about skepticism of celebrity...

web3isgoinggreat.com

Just because your favourite scheleb is involved, doesn’t mean it isn’t a good old-fashioned fraud.

and because when they launched there was lots of talk about how NFTs would support the artist:

Goblintown NFT images all changed to an illustrated middle finger in protest about royalties

There has been an ongoing controversy in the NFT world over creator royalties. Although NFTs are often talked up as being good for artists because they enable royalties to be paid even after the initial sale, these payments are rarely enforced by the smart contract and are instead up to...

web3isgoinggreat.com

Movie Studios in the future will cut up iconic films and if someone buys a scene from that movie anytime any media outlet uses that scene you can claim ownership and charge for the right to use it as it is your property. Royalties.

MGM Studios and platform Veve are partnering on a James Bond NFT following last month’s release of “No Time To Die.” Warner Bros. announced the sale of 100,000 “Matrix” NFT collectibles ahead of the December premiere of “The Matrix Resurrections.”

Tarantino also did it.

Quentin Tarantino to Sell Unreleased Pulp Fiction Scenes as NFTs

The seven NFTs will include script excerpts, uncut scenes and exclusive commentary

www.thewrap.com

 

[Barry Izbak]

As usual NSC is like a modern day Encyclopedia Britanica (with added opinion) Thank you.

I've found the Price of Football pod discussing NFTs
13 October 2022

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Money laundering pure and simple. Unregulated markets are for criminals and libertarians.

 

[RandyWanger]

I work in a Web3 consultancy, and a lot of people do not understand it and go down the fear model route of explaining it. Like online shopping is the norm now, Web3, blockchain, and NFTs will be the future.
There is a lot more to it than an expensive digital image in a mobile wallet.

 

[Barry Izbak]

I work in a Web3 consultancy, and a lot of people do not understand it and go down the fear model route of explaining it. Like online shopping is the norm now, Web3, blockchain, and NFTs will be the future.
There is a lot more to it than an expensive digital image in a mobile wallet.

Then the people who do PR and advertising for NFTs are obviously doing a terrible job judging by this poll so far

 

[chickens]

MGM Studios and platform Veve are partnering on a James Bond NFT following last month’s release of “No Time To Die.” Warner Bros. announced the sale of 100,000 “Matrix” NFT collectibles ahead of the December premiere of “The Matrix Resurrections.”

Tarantino also did it.

Quentin Tarantino to Sell Unreleased Pulp Fiction Scenes as NFTs

The seven NFTs will include script excerpts, uncut scenes and exclusive commentary

www.thewrap.com

Well, how long do you trust Tarantino to be a responsible sysadmin for? Or MGM? Once they’ve pocketed your money, running whatever’s hosting NFTs becomes an ongoing cost. I can’t see either being hugely interested after they’ve got paid. Or do you hold it yourself? Are you a cyber security expert? Pen test your own network weekly and keep everything patched?

Quite apart from hosting/holding, are you a copyright expert? Do you surf the world’s media looking for potential copyright breaches? Do you know copyright laws in each jurisdiction around the world? Could you send correctly phrased cease and desist requests? Or do you need to pay someone who does all these things? How would you enforce if they didn’t respond?

Sounds expensive and time-consuming to me.

I’ve shown above how celebrity involvement is no guarantee of probity, the celebrity is just the media figurehead for the project. There’s a bunch of smiling sharks behind them rubbing their hands in anticipation.

I’m sure there are people who will buy into it, but it is absolutely a nonsense for anyone who doesn’t want to make it their life.

 

[beorhthelm]

The original idea behind NFT’s was to make sure content creators were paid for their work - a worthy thing.

NFT’s have been taken over by people who use them for money laundering, there is no financial reason to buy something for any sum of money that doesn’t actually exist.

NFT’s should absolutely be avoided by football clubs, it is bad enough the amount of gambling adverts. The government should step in here and say no.

the concept of NFT is to create a unique, identifiable asset. giving content rights, royalities are extensions upon that, dependent on the smart contract code. you might buy shares or bonds which do not exist, they are just leger entries allowing you a dividend or interest, according to a contract.

saying NFT should be avoided is like saying we shouldn't have Panini stickers. we must not confuse mis-use of something with the core technology.

lets go back to the Crawley example, its a well meaning attempt to open ownership of a club to the whole world. bit of a gimmick, bit of a proof of concept, it's no different from buying a club then listing on the stock market. difference being the crypto-token. the NFT replace shares and blockchain applications replace a stock exchange. as you dont need a lot of regulation to do this it's open to anyone on both sides. the only thing government need to do is step in when false claims are made, promised returns, these are already covered in law.

 

[RandyWanger]

Then the people who do PR and advertising for NFTs are obviously doing a terrible job judging by this poll so far

Going off a NSC Tuesday morning poll is probably not the demographic for information on a unique digital identifier stored in the blockchain.

We were talking to a public figure last week who was worried about AI and deep fake technology after a few very convincing videos and photos appeared of them online in web2. To dumb it down, if it was a web3 environment and the videos were NFTs, the blockchain could be used to prove provenance. Web3 is the future, you don't need to be on board with it, like doing your weekly food shop online, your banking or getting into a football match using a smart phone, you will be using NFTs too.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

I work in a Web3 consultancy, and a lot of people do not understand it and go down the fear model route of explaining it. Like online shopping is the norm now, Web3, blockchain, and NFTs will be the future.
There is a lot more to it than an expensive digital image in a mobile wallet.

Just because something is new that doesn’t automatically make it a good thing. I am an experienced investment professional and have not heard a coherent persuasive argument in favour. I have heard a lot of bullshit around the topic though. Beware of people telling you something is inevitable, particularly if they have a financial interest.

 

[chickens]

the concept of NFT is to create a unique, identifiable asset. giving content rights, royalities are extensions upon that, dependent on the smart contract code. you might buy shares or bonds which do not exist, they are just leger entries allowing you a dividend or interest, according to a contract.

saying NFT should be avoided is like saying we shouldn't have Panini stickers. we must not confuse mis-use of something with the core technology.

lets go back to the Crawley example, its a well meaning attempt to open ownership of a club to the whole world. bit of a gimmick, bit of a proof of concept, it's no different from buying a club then listing on the stock market. difference being the crypto-token. the NFT replace shares and blockchain applications replace a stock exchange. as you dont need a lot of regulation to do this it's open to anyone on both sides. the only thing government need to do is step in when false claims are made, promised returns, these are already covered in law.

And one of the main differences there are that stock markets are regulated (just) and companies have to provide information prior to listing to allow them to be listed. There are rules that mean organisations are suspended and/or delisted if (for example) they stop filing accounts or don’t meet standards of corporate governance.

There’s none of that for NFTs, it’s “come in boys, swimming in large pools of other people’s money is lovely.” They take down the website, abandon the Twitter account and they’re gone.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

My expectation of NFTs is that there will be a lot of disappointed people out there when the servers hosting their NFTs are shut down and they discover they’ve paid a lot of money for a broken web link.

This is all you need to know really

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Money laundering pure and simple.

Well, how long do you trust Tarantino to be a responsible sysadmin for? Or MGM? Once they’ve pocketed your money, running whatever’s hosting NFTs becomes an ongoing cost. I can’t see either being hugely interested after they’ve got paid. Or do you hold it yourself? Are you a cyber security expert? Pen test your own network weekly and keep everything patched?

Quite apart from hosting/holding, are you a copyright expert? Do you surf the world’s media looking for potential copyright breaches? Do you know copyright laws in each jurisdiction around the world? Could you send correctly phrased cease and desist requests? Or do you need to pay someone who does all these things?

Sounds expensive and time-consuming to me.

I’ve shown above how celebrity involvement is no guarantee of probity, the celebrity is just the media figurehead for the project. There’s a bunch of smiling sharks behind them rubbing their hands in anticipation.

I’m sure there are people who will buy into it, but it is absolutely a nonsense for anyone who doesn’t want to make it their life.

These kinds of industries have been around for a long time now.

Photographers have been selling their images to businesses since the dawn of photography as an example.

You seem to be looking at it from the position of some working class battler buying an NFT.

Big business are who will buy a lot of the future NFTs with monetization value. So yes, they have all the resources in the world just as they do now to go after copyright infringements.

Asset digitalization is happening. They will digitalize and tokenize all kinds of things whether the rank and file can understand it or not.

Larry Fink of BlackRock Inc. is on record as promoting such a future. And if you don't know who they are, they are the world's largest asset manager with over 8 trillion in asset management.

 

[Barry Izbak]

Going off a NSC Tuesday morning poll is probably not the demographic for information on a unique digital identifier stored in the blockchain.

No, of course not. But you'd have to agree that NFTs don't have a positive image (based on my research this morning)

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

And one of the main differences there are that stock markets are regulated (just) and companies have to provide information prior to listing to allow them to be listed. There are rules that mean organisations are suspended and/or delisted if (for example) they stop filing accounts or don’t meet standards of corporate governance.

There’s none of that for NFTs, it’s “come in boys, swimming in large pools of other people’s money is lovely.” They take down the website, abandon the Twitter account and they’re gone.

It's like you've never heard of a cold storage wallet.

 

[Wardy's twin]

I know nothing about them and had to look up the definition of the word, i don't understand what's wrong with using plain old normal currency to pay people?

 

[Adders1]

In itself a bright idea

In practice, or what is being peddled, is that a piece of digital artwork is unique (or even a set of crudely designed digital memes) - anyone can copy or screenshot and or replicate that piece of artwork so the system relies on people giving value to the token itself - if everyone participates, then it works. Much like the herd mentalities that boomed and busted many ‘crypto currencies’ which is also a load of bollox.

Agree with the previous poster that it has a lot of potential uses but it’s currently being manipulated by the wrong people.

 

[chickens]

It's like you've never heard of a cold storage wallet.

So you stick it on a USB key and bury it somewhere in the outback? What a brilliant investment. Well, I can certainly see how NFTs are going to save mankind.

And my other points regarding your frankly ludicrous scenario of selling off scenes from iconic films?

 

[beorhthelm]

And one of the main differences there are that stock markets are regulated (just) and companies have to provide information prior to listing to allow them to be listed. There are rules that mean organisations are suspended and/or delisted if (for example) they stop filing accounts or don’t meet standards of corporate governance.

There’s none of that for NFTs, it’s “come in boys, swimming in large pools of other people’s money is lovely.” They take down the website, abandon the Twitter account and they’re gone.

right, so dont invest thousands into something you dont know or understand. there is zero regulation of private companies, you can invest thousands into a Ltd company then they rug. law exists to cover this already.

 

[RandyWanger]

No, of course not. But you'd have to agree that NFTs don't have a positive image (based on my research this morning)

I agree with that, broadly speaking they do not. But neither did the first eComm stores and you can read the binfest on here when we went to a digital season ticket. It's natural for humans to fear what they do not understand.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

I work in a Web3 consultancy, and a lot of people do not understand it and go down the fear model route of explaining it. Like online shopping is the norm now, Web3, blockchain, and NFTs will be the future.
There is a lot more to it than an expensive digital image in a mobile wallet.

Imagine when they hear that in the future gold will be digitalized and traded as gold ore while it's still in the ground. Digital gold!