this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Technology

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[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 146 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Gee, if only there was some way to have seen this coming before hand...

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 28 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yup.

Could have put the money in stock instead and they'd likely have made a profit since then.

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 37 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Hell, they could have stuffed it into their mattress and it would have been a better investment lol.

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Inflation can't even lose this much money is such a short time

The first tweet nft sold for $2.9mil and is now "worth" less than $4.

Like it was worth anything at all in the beginning anyways

Edit: Spleling

[–] ooi_vebnq@r.nf 7 points 2 years ago

Beautiful edit.

[–] nothacking@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 years ago

Might a a good idea to buy it, I'm sure it will sell for 10$ with some haggling.

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[–] drolex@sopuli.xyz 98 points 2 years ago

🌍👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 33 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Were they worth anything to begin with?

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

A better question would be, did anyone ever even buy them to begin with?

This means that 79% of all NFT collections – otherwise known as almost 4 out of every 5 – have remained unsold.

That is, most of the NFTs included in the OP statistic were listed for sale by their creators, and never recorded a sale. Another important detail is that even for the ones that did record sales, there's no real way of knowing if those sales were real. You can easily make another crypto wallet and buy an NFT from yourself. For more elaborate wash trading, you can find someone with an established wallet to collude with. There are obvious reasons to do this too; building up a history of increasing sale prices could potentially dupe someone into thinking an NFT is a good investment, or you could launder money by selling an NFT to a 'dirty' wallet you also control.

Probably some portion of the market was "real", but the volume is almost certainly much lower than anyone is reporting. Statistics like what the OP article is quoting are just about totally meaningless.

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[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Hundreds of millions collectively, when people were dumb enough to buy them. The problem is that eventually dumb people ran out of money and the worth plummeted to zero.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Cost vs worth. Their pricetag may vary; but they've been worth nothing since their inception.

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[–] xT1TANx@lemmy.world 28 points 2 years ago (2 children)

They were always worthless

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[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 28 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Just because something is unique doesn’t mean it’s valuable.

Some people are just discovering this.

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 years ago

It's not even that it's unique. It's just one particular system associates you with something. It's basically those star registry scams. Except you're not associated with a star by one particular scam organization. You associated with an image of a cartoon ape by a scam organization! But there's a trendy technology involved so idiots think that makes it somehow legit.

6444&'"_@@¶&5tyj7tfsdyoohoof

Behold my one of a kind unique string of characters. Me I own this tangible property. But lo! For only 0.42069lol "BTC-lts33" (a REAL and stable currency that is NOT speculative AT ALL) I will maintain a CSV on my server (192.168.6.9/wp-admin/test/test2/myPage.php) I will serve you a guaranteed locally unique identifier (starting at "3" (I'm holding on to the other two strings for a rainy day)) that points to the row with this string, so you can show off that YOU are the sole owner of this totally unique investment property.

This server is guaranteed up, with 100.00000% uptime since this morning

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[–] foreverandaday@lemmy.ml 28 points 2 years ago

🔫️ Always have been

[–] watson387@sopuli.xyz 19 points 2 years ago

Of no surprise to anyone.

[–] pleasemakesense@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If value is completely dependent on speculation how the fuck do people expect to make money?

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

Greater fools.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

NFTs were the perfect technology to identify people who didn't understand crypto. The only reason Bitcoin et al. even almost work is that nearly anything can be a medium of exchange... so long as it's fungible. Which is the F theses Ts are N.

But if all you saw was numbers going up, and you don't know what a Ponzi scheme is, yeah sure it makes total sense to buy a genuine commemorative plate of the Brooklyn Bridge. Why's everyone on your case? It must be worth money! It's (a receipt for a link to a picture of) the Brooklyn Bridge!

Fanbros compare stocks, but stocks are slices of a real company. You control one-zillionth of an actual business. If you own enough, that company will do what you say, because you are literally their boss. No amount of "authentic" Brooklyn Bridge tokens will ever mean you get the bridge.

Everything signifying that the exchange was worth your money is a fiction created by the people who took it. That's how scams work.

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[–] davel@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 years ago
[–] Comment105@lemm.ee 15 points 2 years ago

Pumped, dumped, done.

[–] library_napper@monyet.cc 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But it was nice while artists were able to sell to profit from rich people

[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago

Wait. They were actually worth something!?

[–] primalmotion@lemmy.antisocial.ly 11 points 2 years ago

Who would have thought?

[–] absentthereaper@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 2 years ago

But y'know, everyone who rightfully decried those fuckin things were just FUDing, right?

Guess not!

[–] TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago

They always were.

[–] ViewSonik@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

Always have been

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago
[–] randomaccount43543@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

O rly! 🦉

[–] autotldr 6 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Tens of thousands of NFTs that were once deemed the newest rage in tech and dragged in celebrities, artists and even Melania Trump have now been declared virtually worthless.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a form of crypto asset that is used to certify ownership and authenticity of a digital file including an image, video or text.

The report comes nearly two years after the craze for NFTs swept up celebrities and artists alike, with many rushing to purchase NFT collections of the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Matrix avatars.

The drastic downward market shift surrounding such crypto assets “underscores the need for careful due diligence before making any purchases, especially one of high value”, the report said.

Researchers identified 195,699 NFT collections with no apparent owners or market share and found that the energy required to mint the NFTs was comparable to 27,789,258 kWh, resulting in an emission of approximately 16,243 metric tons of CO2.

In order to survive market downturns and have lasting value, NFTs need to be either historically relevant such as first-edition Pokémon cards, true art or provide genuine utility, they said in the report.


The original article contains 650 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] InstallGentoo@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 years ago

Grass is green...

[–] HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

I can imagine being desperate to hit it big, but at least but a lottery ticket or something. That way, the school system (or whatever) gets a few bucks, instead of the fucking Trumps.

[–] AceQuorthon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 years ago

69,795 out of 73,257 NFT collections have a market cap of 0 Ether

LMAO!

[–] HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

It must have been really hard for the underpaid researcher to put this report together while doubling over in laughter.

[–] S_204@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

I hope someone got paid a lot of money for this ground breaking report.

[–] dingleberry@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 years ago

Cryptobois be like

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

Actually their value is completely unchanged. Price and money are made up and do not reflect value.

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