The Sotheby’s auction house has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by investors who regret buying Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that sold for highly inflated prices during the NFT craze in 2021.

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      You’re vastly overestimating the reasoning ability of prospective NFT buyers.

      They couldn’t accurately identify a picture. Instead of concluding “I can just copy and paste this”, they overrode their common sense to convince themselves that a digital picture of a monkey was unique. Unerringly, truly, exceptionally unique. A digital monkey picture.

      It’s pretty great. NFT dimbulbs are the flat earthers of crypto.

      • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        NFTs remind me a lot of the international star registry.

        You’re paying someone a lot for them to record some unofficial bragging rights in some unofficial database that literally no normal person cares about.

      • dx1@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The bet a lot of people made was basically, since we can have a market of these random things, and they are actually non-replicable at the actual ERC721 assignment level (I know you can copy and paste the actual pictures), that those ownership assignments just become part of the greater pool of “currency”, with some having greater value than other.

        They will probably retain some value indefinitely, in the same way Beanie Babies have managed to hold on to some value even today. It’s of course just not even close to the peak bubble value, because a lot of people were behaving irrationally purchasing them with the whole fear-of-missing-out attitude, driving the price up further, vicious cycle.

      • Reliant1087@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It would be cool if each buyer has a unique hash and elements of the art are AI generated (like the background or texture) using some chaotic process with the hash as the seed, so that everyone gets a unique version. I would pay maybe a couple of bucks for something like that.

        • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          That is a good idea, having a dynamically generated portion of the art dependent on a hash. That would actually be an NFT then, haha.

          I still don’t think I would pay a couple bucks for one, but I like your idea.

          Shoot. Maybe I’d sell them for a couple bucks? Let’s get on this.

          • Reliant1087@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            That’s the spirit 🤣 The challenge is building a team with both technical and artistic know-how to build something like this.

            • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              From what I’ve learned about online digital currency, we only need one exceptional department, and that is marketing.

      • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I wasn’t into NFTs, but I did crypto for a bit when it was spiking just because I could. Don’t underestimate greater fool theory. Plenty of people who bought either of these “assets” realize that they’re only worth what you can sell them for and just flipped them during the initial bubble. The problem with that being that every asset that gets flipped results in some poor butthole holding the bag when the bubble pops. THAT is usually the true believer, the guy who honestly thought that he was just gonna keep this picture of a monkey in a hat and watch the value go up and up and up until he retired.

    • dinckel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Collective delusion of people who still think they’re holding onto something worth anything

    • flucksy_bango@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yup!

      My vinyl collection is “worth” $50k. I just have to find someone deluded enough to believe me and buy it.

      In reality it’s worth ~$1k because they’re old and play music instead of being ugly pictures of monkeys.

    • TurtleJoe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Presumably they’re still useful for money laundering. Makes sense to keep some kind of price floor.