Comment by aboodman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aboodman | Hacker News Reader

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> Once Jack has been shown to be willing to oversell himself just to make a quick buck, it will immediately devalue everything associated with him, including the original NFT. You're buying into the quality/credibility/longevity of the creator here, and once it's shown he's a shill there's not much reason to value any of his original "work" highly.

To be clear I don't personally see any value at all in an NFT that doesn't have legal IP rights attached. I think we agree that far.

However:

> it will immediately devalue everything associated with him, including the original NFT

It might. Kind of hard to theorize as to what the result would be. The reason I'm hesitant to jump to that conclusion is because of the timestampy nature of blockchains. It's not as if the market is suddenly flooded with forgeries and nobody can tell what's real. It's baked into the blockchain which one was first. In fact you might argue it would not be possible (economically) for Jack to do this in the first place since nobody would buy the second instance.

Another comparison here to make is like signed copies / limited editions. People buy signed copies of albums, artworks, etc., even though forgeries are rampant. Are NFTs like signed copies?

If the value of a signed copy is mostly performative, then NFTs alone maybe should not have value (because nobody can really see that you own one). If the value of a signed copy is personal, then maybe it does.

I don't personally see any value in owning an NFT, but it's not cut and dry to me that nobody else will or should.

The analogy I use with NFT art is not with physical items but with banking. The token is just another form of credit issued by the artist. The relationship to the specific work is knowingly tenuous and entails intermediaries - and in this respect, it's still a tech demo - but the financial asset itself has meaning relative to the credit of the artist, given that the wallet that minted will itself have a persistent identity.

Recognition for previous work creates expectations for new work, even if the work itself is lost. Art has always operated that way.

But there are details that need sorting out. A proprietary URL link - or an IPFS link only hosted by one node - is too flimsy for long-term collectables. Use value is sorely needed to really flesh out the function of the tokens. Again, as it is, we have tech demos with some eyewatering valuations.

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