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 (23 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.

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[–] stormtrooper@sopuli.xyz 115 points 1 year ago

Well I am shocked!

No not actually.

[–] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 97 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Out of the top collections, the most common price for an NFT is now $5-$10.

Still overpriced!

[–] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 47 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm honestly amazed they're worth anything at all.

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 1 year ago (8 children)

We have been attributing a huge value to a metal that's mostly remarkable for being yellow and shinny for millennia, one of the biggest investment bubbles in history was over a flower, and people thought that using a loophole to profit from the arbitrage of international reply coupons was going to last forever. Hell, people paid for fake property titles for land on the Moon and Mars. It's not that surprising that some people think that buying a random number in a distributed database is an investment.

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[–] OldQWERTYbastard@lemmy.world 67 points 1 year ago (5 children)

You mean to tell me that purchasing what is essentially a URL hosted on someone else's server is a poor investment?

Shocked Pikachu Face

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[–] mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 66 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Small correction: Even though some NFTs sold for millions, the NFTs have always been worthless.

[–] Wogi@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They literally provide no value. I don't see how people didn't get that.

It's a link, you bought a link. If the power goes out at the server hosting it, you can't even access it anymore.

If I told you I had a magic box, and for a million dollars you could look inside whenever you wanted, you'd tell me to go fuck myself. But do it on the Internet and it's beanie babies all over again. But at least THOSE were tangible.

[–] III@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Never work in tech, friend. It is an endless parade of buzzwords. Idiots will think it is a revolution, people who put even the smallest amount of effort into understanding it will know it isn't. Sadly, the idiots tend to be the ones making the decisions. So you get to spin your wheels on a fool's errand until their surprisingly lengthy attention span moves to the next buzzword. As the parade continues you just lose more and more faith in humanity.

I wish I had an answer for you other than some people are really fucking stupid.

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[–] Shadywack@lemmy.world 59 points 1 year ago (16 children)

So it was like we thought all along, cool.

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[–] pavnilschanda@lemmy.world 51 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Does anyone else think that NFTs are an allegory/miniature version of how art is easily commodified by capitalism? IIRC, NFTs were there to help finance artists who work on a purely digital medium, but then grifters coopted the NFT space and try to sell sets of same-looking artwork. Complete with "fandoms" and drama, as well.

[–] fubo@lemmy.world 44 points 1 year ago

NFTs are simply a straightforward con, without the financial hullabaloo of cryptocurrency. The con is simple: convince someone that something is valuable when it's not. Selling a brass ring as gold to a mark too naïve to check, has been around as long as there have been gold rings.

[–] aleph@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago

Nah, NFTs were always about the grift first and the art second.

After all, all an NFT token is is a digital receipt which links to an image hosted somewhere off-chain, not the image itself. All the "art" does is help to persuade people that the tokens are actually worth something and hype up the price even further.

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[–] Fish@midwest.social 38 points 1 year ago (3 children)

95% seems a little low. I assume that it's closer to 99.9%.

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[–] soulfirethewolf@lemdro.id 38 points 1 year ago

Maybe now I'll finally be able to buy the ones I want

(There aren't any)

[–] RawrGuthlaf@lemmy.sdf.org 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm sure they were a great way to launder money at the time.

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[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not my Donald Trump trading cards! Nooo!

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[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Started laughing when nfts were introduced, still chuckle today.

It's great. Love it.

Grab the tulips! Grab them!

[–] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I find it fascinating that NFTs were supposed to be a proof-of-ownership technology, but because people are stupid & greedy made pictures to sell with it

[–] SlopppyEngineer@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It always reminds me of those certificates for owning a piece of the moon.

[–] Syndic@feddit.de 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Because it's pretty much the same.

At the very core ownership that isn't recognised by the state is meaningless. So that ape picture? No one really cares about some guy claiming to own it because they have control over the token. As long as it's on the internet everyone can just copy it and there's no authority caring about it one bit since NFT isn't recognised as for example copyright is.

Even when it comes to stuff like items in games, these also are only worth anything as long as the publisher of the game recognises your claim to it! And even if they did recognise it, there's absolutely nothing preventing them from changing their minds later. Simply because they create the game however they like and have 100% control over it's development.

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[–] SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org 29 points 1 year ago
[–] 0Xero0@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

well that surprised no one

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[–] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Oh man. I remember getting downvoted to hell for stating that they were a scam and provided no actual value or true, to technical "non-fungibility".

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[–] answersplease77@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

All those rappers and celebrities with cartoon donkey and monkey profile pics showed how much for sale they are. They will promote poison to you for money

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[–] CAVOK@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Whomever named them NFTs instead of grift cards missed an opportunity.

[–] DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Ponzi schemes have an oversaturation problem like every other one.

[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago

Wowie gee whiz, no one in the universe could have seen that one coming. /s

[–] Polar@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My favourite part of NFT/Crypto is all of the creators that outed themselves by pushing for it, taking sponsorships, etc.

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[–] Saltblue@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

The biggest operation of money laundering in the history of the world.

[–] MargotRobbie@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago

Don't put your reputation on the line to sell links to ugly JPEGs, please.

[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Now? Always were.

[–] lloram239@feddit.de 15 points 1 year ago (9 children)

NFTs are like a ticket roll, they can be quite useful, but that requires having an event or service that those tickets apply to. NFTs so far completely failed to create that. To justify the decentralized nature of NFTs you'd further have to make that ticket apply to multiple different services. That didn't happen either.

Buying your hats in a game with NFTs is pointless as long as those hats only work in that one singular game, centralized services can handle that better. On the other side, if you'd use NFTs to sell the digital games themselves, they could be quite useful and breaks through established online-store monopolies. But that of course would require different online shops to accept the same NFT, e.g. buy NFT for a game on Steam, but download it through EPIC. That's something NFTs could allow, but it would require the whole industry to play along, which due to everybody competing against each other is rather unlikely.

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[–] fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Not dissimilar to money laundering or MLMs.

[–] Wahots@pawb.social 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lol, classic. Where's Ubisoft's NFT collection they were selling so hard last year?

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[–] negativeyoda@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

All my apes, gone

This is even funnier in retrospect

[–] Mojojojo1993@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Mostly used for money laundering

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[–] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"Bull run"

More like Bullshit run. Literally nobody fell for the grift. Celebrities bought into it because it was a pump and dump scheme and they can afford it. There is literally no use case for NFTs and even basic normies saw that.

[–] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

literally nobody fell for the grift

Someone somewhere has an NFT instead of a bunch of money. Even if everyone participating knew this was a very expensive game of hot potato someone had to be holding the potato when the buzzer went off.

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