this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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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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[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 183 points 1 year ago (5 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.

[–] Jagermo@feddit.de 28 points 1 year ago

Also money laundering and tax rebate schemes.

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] ram@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

[–] Syndic@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] misterundercoat@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

That's why I trust money issued by a government. Because even if individual politicians are evil and useless, the money is still backed by bombs and bullets a huge amount of infrastructure and tangible assets.

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

[–] orphiebaby@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

This was the comment I came here to make. "They were always worthless."