Quote from: ConcordeSST on Today at 04:52:05 PM

Quote from: BookofNick on Today at 03:05:24 PM

There's so much positive commentary on NFTs here, so I'll offer a contrary opinion...

NFTs are currently extremely overhyped and even more extremely overvalued.

First off, NFT = Non-Fungible Token. One of the largest value props of Bitcoin is that it's fungible. One sat is worth just as much as the next sat, and the network doesn't discriminate. With NFTs, you're creating tokens which each have a distinctive, subjective value, rather than a more widely agreed upon objective value, determined from multiple global exchanges.

Nothing wrong with subjective value. To some degree, most value is subjective, but I feel like people are investing in these non-fungible tokens as if they were fungible.

The value of holding a token which is tied to some other object, whether it be physical or digital, makes very little sense to me. Okay, so you're the owner of this particular digital image because you hold the private keys to a digital token linked in some way to the image. What does that do to you? What extra satisfaction is there for the key holder?

Compare this to an original painting that one has physical possession of. The painting itself has value over a digital image of the painting for several reasons - it's a physical object, and more about the painting can be appreciated because of the nuances that can't be replicated with a digital scan - the feel and visual texture of the medium, how it looks at different light angles, etc. This I can understand. But the digital image is something so cheap with modern technology that it is indefinitely replicable for a cost that is very near zero.

Disclaimer - I bought a bunch of rare pepes back in 2017 because it was novel and fun, and a good network stress test. Though why people are willing to trade large amounts of real BTC for these digital tokens is beyond me. In pre Bitcoin world, it would be like trading a bar of gold for Pokemon cards - sure, you might get lucky, and get some valuable card you can pass off to someone else, but fundamentally it's trading real wealth for more subjective, imaginary value. Part of me feels bad when I sell a Pepe card for BTC. And I would never be buying Pepes at these prices.

NFTs may have a place in the collector's world. But this initial hype doesn't correlate to the "value" offered by corresponding digital tokens. From my perspective, this is a giant money grab from both artists and speculators looking for another way to cash in from noobs caught up in the current crypto hype cycle.

That being said, I'm all about the free market, and other people's choices are ultimately none of my business. The above is me thinking aloud and voicing my opinion. Happy to hear from people as to why NFTs give them value, or other arguments as to what justifies the current hype.

I think you're allowing the genuine examples of hype and overvalued NFTs to cloud your view of the use cases that go far beyond digital art. There are indeed many overhyped projects and those are the ones that make headlines because people love to hear how someone paid a million dollars for a jpeg. These are the NFTs that offer no utility beyond a digital flex of wealth as one's profile pic. My unsolicited advice would be to make sure that the noise doesn't prevent you from missing the true value here. In my personal opinion, the value of NFTs is not so much in digital art (with art being so subjective, it's nearly impossible to say what the value should be), but rather in the realm of online gaming and access to unique events or clubs. To see this, one needs to look no further than what is already happening in gaming with people purchasing downloadable content (DLC) like skins, mods, digital items, etc for use in-game. This is happening right now to the tune of millions of dollars being spent in fiat currency. Now imagine what happens if you make that content as an NFT instead and remove all barriers to the free and open cross-border exchange of these items on the blockchain. Also, consider that there are a multitude of projects today that already use the NFTs as keys or tickets basically to access special content or events that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Additional use-cases I see are news organizations using them to digitally sign a video as authentic in an era of deep fakes being rampantly spread. A photographer could use an NFT as a digital receipt to allow the holder to possess commercial reuse rights to that image. There are many many more likely use-cases that I am not even considering. NFT art is simply the tip of the iceberg. Personally, I think that yes there will be a bubble pop for NFTs as art similar to what happened with the dot com bubble pop in the late 90s. But what happened after that pop? Did the Internet go away? Nope, instead, when people looked away the development continued behind the scenes until the world was ready for the ideas that people had a bit too early in the 90s. I see the same thing happening for NFTs.

The fungible vs non-fungible point you make is valid. In the NFT space, you need to realize that the market is highly illiquid compared to the trade of fungible tokens as a result of their uniqueness. That doesn't mean they aren't an incredible opportunity for massive gains, just invest accordingly per your risk tolerance and understand that most NFT projects are like investing in a new startup company so do your due diligence as with any investment.

My kids and I have been having some fun messing around on zed.run and somehow we've become a racehorse owner/breeders in the metaverse lol. Maybe this will be generational wealth along with a small gallery of early original NFT pieces of art (not punks or apes lol) that the kids have created and maybe just a bit of family history on the blockchain. Here's a series my boy and his buddy have created: =LegionOfCrypto]https://opensea.io/assets?search[query]=LegionOfCrypto - feel free to leave the kids a little like/love!