We all know that video games are no stranger to divisions, controversy and scandal (thanks for the reminder, Blizzard), but wow, I have seen few topics that generate such one-sided animosity as NFTs. Even with instances of racism and sexual harassment, you can typically find some internet commenters arguing a counterpoint/playing devil’s advocate. With NFT’s, though, you’re hard-pressed to find anyone looking to die on that hill.
Perhaps we’ve finally found the one thing we can all agree on.
3 … 2 … 1 … until the crypto-nft-fanboybase rolls in to defend their pyramid scheme.
Too late, one beat you by an hour.
My biggest problem with NFTs is that most of it is crap “art”.
Worth remembering that the art isn’t the NFT. The URL leading to that page is the NFT. They could change what art is on that page and you’d still own the same NFT.
Crypto bro’s always think everybody just doesn’t understand this crap, no, we know a Ponzi Scheme when we see one.
So… y’all still using dollars they literally type characters on a keyboard and make more of then, or nah?
Which is the perfect description of a Cryptocurrency. Like, literally.
No, I don’t use dollar. The currency in my country is called euro.
he is referring to the concept of FIAT money and how more money is created by the push of a button, does not really matter what your currency is called. 🙂 Basically the old concept of money and banks, where you take your savings to a bank, they deposit that money and loan out some of that money in order to earn money is gone. Nowadays banks “create” money digitally, they loan that out to you, you pay the interest and when the loan is paid off, the “created” money is deleted. What remains are the interest you paid for… Read more »
Banks do not create money digitally. It’s not simply created, it’s created (or destroyed) by changing the overnight lending rate from the Fed.
Um, no. That’s not the case, because governments aren’t the only ones changing the amount of money in circulation. Some banks have had the ability to basically create money on the fly by issuing loans without the security.
Further, the Fed (US Federal Reserve) probably doesn’t in fact drive money supply around the world in any direct way as other countries have other mechanisms and institutions.
Yeah I meant in the US. Banks can only lend money up to a percentage of the amount they have as capital under US policy. The security the lender has has nothing to do with it.
banks do not create money, ever. the only time anything close to what youre thinking of is debt, negative money. the interest you earn on things is paid for by the bank through the loans it offers others. Person A puts $10 in. Person B gets a loan for that $10, pays interest of $10 on it. Bank pays Person A $5 and pockets $5 for itself. stupid simplified, but you get the point. at no point was money magically generated. in fact the only magically generated money is cryptocurrencies. where does it come from? oh mining. but mining what?… Read more »
history lesson for you. none fiat currency was tried by the holy roman empire and is what lead to its collapse as they could not pay their troops. none fiat is not safer its literally betting on the future and hoping you have cash later.
if you going to do that buy stocks, go to vegas or buy a house. all are smarter gambles.
You must be incredibly historically ignorant if you think that the only time in history that a non-fiat currency has been tried was the HRE. History lesson for you: The United States only came off the gold standard in 1971! For the vast majority of civilisation, currencies have not been fiat. Fiat currency is the experiment, not commodity-backed currency.
Nah we’ve all seen Line Goes Up. We know it was created by people salty about the housing nonsense in 2008, and they wanted control instead of the banks. You wanted to be the boot instead of be under the boot.
Say the line, coiner!
“You don’t understand”
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!
Well i use Euro. But yeah. Cause i’d rather trust an economical system where economists actually try to keep things stabilized even if the results can be mixed at times. Than an economical system dreamt up by a alleged computer scientist after a economic scare that is utterly terrifying in how it oversimplifies how the world works and is destined to cause far more harm than good. It is so bizarre. The crypto-community sallivates at the idea of fiat collapse for their benefit, but never consider the possibility of their own collapse. Of what happens in the real possibility they… Read more »
And Crypto seems to be popular with drug kingpins, human traffickers, rogue states, etc. Some will whitewash this by saying ‘its just a technology and you can’t blame the technology’ but that’s why our banking systems in any reasonable countries have a lot of additional requirements, oversight, reporting and serious penalties if they violate those rules.
And that’s even ignoring the environmental damage that cryptocurrency minors are causing (and NFTs are even more ridiculous).
Cash is also popular with pretty much all the same crowd and is more difficult to track than most crypto.
For all the rules we do have about financial transactions, there’s rarely any teeth behind the enforcement for anyone who has a significant amount of money — note the distinct lack of prosecutions as a result of the Panama Papers.
I’m not sure where this “Common Knowlage” that criminals are gung ho for crypto has come from. Yes it is unregulated and alows for moveing vast sums of money around to different currencies but it also leaves a transaction trail you cant erase. You really dont want to be leaveing a money trail behind you that anyone could follow if your running a criminal empire. The last thing you want is illicit money being used for a crypto purchase and then money from that crypto wallet being deposited in a bank account tied to you. Even if they are into… Read more »
a note to this is the very recent hit where they tracked some stolen currency through what was thought to be an impossibly complex chain and grabbed the thieves when they tried to use it.
honestly id back the system of crypto being used for traditional money if it wasnt so damn exhausting. the system needs to be better then apartments full of graphics cards providing the local heating needs.
As with most services — whether it be crypto, credit cards, or even a paper registry of deeds for real estate — if no one pays the cost to keep things running, the system falls apart.
IMO, the biggest innovation of crypto is making “paying for the system” inherent in “using the system” — most crypto projects are just distributed databases where everyone using it pays a small amount of overhead on each transaction to keep the system running.
The value of the dollar is tied to several things not the least of which is the understanding that the US is a reliable payor.
The value of crypto is tied to Elon Musk tweets more than anything else.
No, it’s tied to scarcity, the same as US currency was prior to 1971. You did know that the US dollar used to be backed by gold, not a fiat currency, right?
Dude, money is a ponzi scheme too. We already know. But it’s also the only ponzi scheme that’s ever worked. Perhaps because it was the first.
In other words we don’t need Money2.0 because we already have the original Money, which let’s face it, is the exact same thing as Money2.0 but with a less cool sounding name.
It’s scammy. But is it much more scammy than an artist going “Here’s an art print. $50. Unless you want the limited edition signed art print, each individually numbered, which is $500.” ?
Yes. Cause they keep stealing art to make nfts and then stalling around on taking anything down until after it sells.
Sure, that’s totally scammy. But so are people taking other people’s art and throwing it up as their own on TeePublic or the like. That doesn’t make all art on a T-shirt bad.
The problem there is the theft, not the medium.
An oil painting (usually) doesn’t take a dozen tons of coal and the sexual enslavement of 3 girls.
Now I want a superhero comic series featuring a soft-spoken oil painter fighting human trafficking. Public Broadcasting artist by day, crimefighter by night. Something something “beat the devil out of it.”
Art on a t-shirt isn’t bad (when not stolen) because I pay money and I get a nice t-shirt to wear in exchange. NFTs are all bad because I pay money and I get a useless token on a blockchain that points to a URL of the image that can be renamed, moved, or deleted on the server and then I have a token on a blockchain that points to a 404 error. And don’t even start with the so-called “benefits” of NFTs, things “you’ll be able to do” with them, because every supposed benefit every coiner has tried to… Read more »
I had an interesting discussion with some artists and computer programmers (intersection: we all worked at software company that, among many things, did games). The discussion revolved around what the value of art is (and this included tangible and NFT style art products). For collecting purposes, rarity, uniqueness, the creator’s perceived value, and what the market says are all factors in a monetary value. So having an original painting or other art work that has not been copied and that is from someone who the art world considers significant leads to a high valuation in the monetary sense. But considered… Read more »
The experience is multiplied by the belief of an objects originality to most of the population. Like seeing an original in a museum, a print of it in a home, or a photo from your cellphone, all are the same object but they all deliver a different experience. Nevermind the “original in a museum” is most likely a copy too. Experience is not tradeable but originality is.
I have been an art collector in the past (until I ran out of wall and storage space, not owning Hearst Castle). I purchased pieces that inspired me, and that I kept finding myself returning to in shows. The “value” is in the beauty and inspiration of a piece, not in its rarity, nor even in my ownership of it. The idea of a Picasso or Modigliani or Whelan skyrocketing in value because of hype, and people wanting to own something rare that other people say is valuable… bleah. I have a couple of relatively inexpensive Whelan prints, and their… Read more »
Yes
With your specific hypothetical I’m presented with the option of art with or without signature+numbering, and prices for each. If I feel that the signature and number is worth 450$ to me, then I can make that decision, and then I will have that physical print with signature that I can frame and keep as safe as my other possessions.
The crypto alternative is spending thousands of dollars to have a url that says I own the art at the end of a link that can and will become a dead link
Yes, yes it is. Since one is a scam and the other is not. The art print is a REAL object. You actually have the thing. Its actually a unique object. And there is millennia of law and precedent behind it. NFTs are complete bullshit. You don’t actual have anything. Its a bunch of questionably legal claims for completely copyable and non unique objects. All built on a massively wasteful resource drain of a system that is highly volatile and pretty much designed to benefit a small handful of people at everyone else’s expense. TL;DR: Crypto is a literal ponzi… Read more »
Don’t confuse NFTs, which are a total scam, with cryptocurrencies, which are not.
Sellers can always set any price they want for their products. In the case of an art, getting a physical thing is the point. Spending more for a signature can be worth it for some people. I paid a little extra when I bought the Dr. McNinja Omnibus and got a little drawing of a pterodactyl with a monocle. Silly thing to throw money at, but it makes me smile.
NFTs (and crypto in general) are the male version of MLMs pretty much. 😛
Hey, where is Ctrl+Alt+Del 3.0?
Delayed. Until after… um… midterm elections? Maybe?
At least until April 1 2023.
I was going to comment how that’s so far away.. then I realized that 2023 is actually next year.
More likely April 1 2024.
Cad Comics are released on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Next year April 1 is on a Saturday, while 2024 it is on a monday.
Solomon Grundy, sad on a monday
(Sorry couldn’t resist?)
I want my ghostbuster histories!!
This is it. Blue shirt is Ethan, red head is Lucas. Surprise!
And now, a conclusive list of people who will tell you you should get into cryptocurrency:
That is the whole list.
Also time travelers.
I feel that’s a fairly small demographic. Unless you mean the all of us that are travelling sequentially forward in time.
But I think you meant the ‘time hopping’ folks who can step back to the past with knowledge of the present to profit from.
I feel like that demographic would have approximately the same population as humans who have stood naked on the surface of the sun.
How do you think I got this sick tan?
In other news, never trust anyone recommending a thing if they DON’T have their money where their mouth is. “Hey, y’all should jump off this bridge” sounds way better from someone who literally just jumped off the bridge and is loving the results.
When you have a product whose near-sole purpose is to be invested in, it basically starts looking like a scam. Show me a person who’s not interested in crypto simply to ‘make money,’ who’s not interested in the hype of “maybe the value will spike and I’ll make a profit on my investment,” but instead just interested in using it as a currency – and I’ll show you someone who’s trying to buy questionably legal stuff on the dark web. Cryptocurrency just feels like the Beanie Babies of the 2020s. Except when the value of your room full of Beanie… Read more »
I don’t get the downvotes on this site. I often see posts that have a bunch of downvotes and I can’t think of a reason why. Can anyone explain why this post has so many downvotes?
Am I just not understanding this post? it seemed kinda funny to me
Defending a universally reviled technology tends to get you reviled.
He was defending cryptocurrency which destroys the environment and supports human trafficking, etc.
The downvotes are literally explained by the big ol’ comic back at the very top of the page.
While their comment may seem reasonable under no other context, understand that this is a conversation about Crpytocurrency and NFTs, two systems that pretty much rely on popularity to benefit from. Someone recommending the NFT/CC they own directly benefits them, often at the expense of the people they just convinced to buy in.
So yes, that comment may make sense, but in this case the people who ‘have their money where their mouth is’ are conmen.
If only that wasn’t what pyramid, MLM and Ponzi schemes along with somewhat less serious stuff like fake-reviews, sponsorships and the likes counted on that notion in order to work.
The influence of one “putting their money where their mouth is” has greatly diminished over the years as increasingly more are showing inclination to rather trust one who projects genuine knowledge on a subject, than who smacked money to prove their conviction.
Which doesn’t bode well for crypto as there are more Skeptics showing genuine knowledge on the stuff and nuance at play than there are Supporters who do so…
The problem particularly with Crypto is: There is a built in incentive to suck people in to drive valuation and then dump and run. So the ‘I invested in it and am loving it’ is like saying ‘I want you to get into it so I can take a profit’.
“loving the results” does not sound credible when they are desperate to lure more people into the scheme in an effort to get their investments pay off. NFT:s are worthless, and you only get value from them by hooking in someone else to buy it off of you. It’s a carbon copy of a ponzi-scheme.
Not 100% true. For some of the NFTs that have been created as art can (for some) provide an experience which has some value. It is not necessarily required to have a piece of art (own it) to experience something useful from seeing it. It is not necessary to have the original necessarily; An experience can be had by seeing a copy. But as a collectable, I totally agree with you. And just making a quick NFT does not really gaurantee it is ‘art’ (What is ‘art’ is a consensus decision of enough people and maybe some ‘art experts’ so… Read more »
But, seeing a copy can be done completely without the ponzi-scheme NFTs behind it…
You got it half right. Let me fix it for you.
“Don’t trust anyone recommending something they don’t have their money in. Also, don’t trust anyone recommending anything in which they can troll others, give false information, or recommend things they know are bad ideas but enjoy the idea of seeing suckers climb aboard. And don’t assume that someone being invested in something means their recommendation is safe or useful either. Especially if that thing benefits from new people jumping in to drive value so the recommender can do a selloff to a great profit.”
Well shit, I guess we should never do anything then.
It’s a good metaphor. The person, who is currently falling from the bridge and proclaims, they are loving it, doesn’t sound like the most trustworthy source to follow 😉
I mean, to be fair, that’s almost the definition of the group that would tell you that you should get into it. I don’t know why someone would tell you that you should get into it if they weren’t invested in it themselves. Arguing that isn’t the case is kind of like saying there are people that go: “Dude, you should watch this anime!” “What’s it like?” “I dunno, I’ve never seen it”
And a conclusive list of people who say you should use government money:
Do you really think that you make any sense? Like someone who thinks cryptocurrency is a good thing is supposed to not invest in it because you think that they shouldn’t?
Or load your game with annoying, out of place politics. Or destroy existing fan favorite characters or gameplay features. Or just go cheap on the production and release with game breaking bugs. Or crap on any paying customers who dare voice any criticism as though they did something wrong.
You can make a list all day of real world examples.
You totally missed the point of the comic and post. All your examples would always have white knights defending the company, programmers, etc.
NFT’s are UNIVERSALLY derided.
No, I understood the comic. I just listed some other things that have been happening. Not sure why that deserves such a spergfest fest of downvotes.
Because you didn’t actually provide context to which category you were adding examples to, and since most people will implicitly filter an etcetera into the list of “things companies actually do that they will get defended for”, the assumption then becomes that anyone who randomly lists more examples is intending it to be added to the second list of “things that everyone will hate you for” Coupling onto that, the way you formatted your comment. “or” is not generally at the start of a sentence or capitalized, and in doing so people will read emphasis on it, and since each… Read more »
The point was to list things that next to nobody will defend. You listed a bunch of things that plenty of people defend. All the downvotes you got are our way of being the guy in panel two saying “no, that’s not enough”
You obviously did not understand the comic
You’d achieve more damage by releasing “Torture your ex not-a-simulation Simulator”, “Threaten public or political figures Simulator” or any other dark shite sane people would never do.
Wanna bet that there would be white knight front defending those? I bet 1000dollars for, how much you gonna bet against?
Are you kidding? “Threaten public or political figures Simulator” sounds like a blast. Gangsters was an amazing game.
Cryptos creation these days is literally (as in, genuinely, really, honestly, not the modern usage) the type of “industry” that was the bad guy in ’90s cartoons. Not the regular guy at home trying to mine a buck after his hours – the complete power plants dedicated to server farms to “mine” absolutely nothing in return for some nebulous form of worth. There’re whole facilities built with power plants JUST for mining crypto – whole factories whole only purpose it is to waste energy as much as possible to create as much of the right chaotic data as possible. It’s… Read more »
You’re thinking of Bitcoin and older cryptos where you have to mine to get a newly minted coin. Newer cryptos are far more environmentally friendly and require staking for rewards. Many of the new coins are actually carbon negative and you cannot mine them.
They’re still a Ponzi Scheme though.
Hahaha there you are! I knew one of you “environmentally friendly coins!” people would show up.
Too bad the most popular coins are still huge energy hogs that still get mined. Your alleged “carbon negative” coins don’t matter when most people are using the power devouring Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Ethereum is soon switching to Proof of Stake (the environmentally friendly alternative to Proof of Work), and I’ve seen predictions that Bitcoin will eventually switch as well.
now that’s toxic
People who think crypto is destroying the environment have literally never looked up how much power is used by the legacy banking system, with OR without the stupid oil-wars they’re conducting to defend dollar-supremacy.
Or they did and found out, that Crypto is actually using more energy than the WHOLE finance sector of the world combined, while havibg only a tiny fraction of users and transactions.
Multiple things can be bad at the same time.
Yeah… No. The sheer amount of compute power needed to mine any big crypto eventually gets to a point of unsustainable critical mass, where modern day hardware simply cannot keep up. Which leads to more of that hardware being needed, which leads to scalpers gobbling up said hardware and trying to resell for a profit because their mining rig isn’t keeping the lights on, which leads to (you guessed it) magnitudes more power used by a not even very good mining rig vs. the greater part of most hardware in any DC or held privately.
The “legacy” banking system uses more energy, but serves billions of people. Crypto uses far more energy per person using it, and it has far fewer real world uses. Crypto is easily worse for the environment overall than banking.
Crypto isn’t even handling 1/10th of the traffic the US alone sees in credit-card transactions and it is already struggling with keeping its s*** together in regards of fees, energy use and storage space requirements. Yeah you can try to call it a “legacy” system. But the existing system is handing obscene amounts of transactions per day without breaking a single sweat, is in use by majority of humanity and even at its worst in energy is undoubtedly still more efficient so long as the crypto world still has PoW blockchains in operation which have a computational efficiency so low… Read more »
With crypto being popular with rogue states, autocrats, dictators, the dark web, drug kingpins and human traffickers, and the use of the cryptocurrency to support those activities and those leaders that also drive wars (oil or otherwise)…. so not only does crypto play an even greater enrivonmental hazard, but also it can be a destabilizer and an enabler for many problematic leaders, nations, and activities.
So yeah, it deserves all the disrespect it gets.
The sheer ignorance of people responding to pyrodice knows no bounds. Bitcoin and Ethereum, for example, are ‘old’ cryptos that, yes, use more energy than general legacy banking. However, there are newer cryptos that are actually… carbon negative. Algorand, Hedera, for instance.
Nobody uses those coins. Everyone’s still using the “old” coins like bitcoin and ethereum.
Your loss is my gain. BTC and ETH have large market caps but they are most definitely being migrated towards the 3rd generation coins which now have billions of dollars in market cap. Hedera is a coin that has partnership across many US corporations including Google and IBM. Algorand was developed by Silvo Micali who is a professor at MIT and the recipient of the Turing award for his research in cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs. Finally, with Joe Biden delving into digital currency for the US dollar, Algorand and Hedera are one of the only two newer cryptos that are… Read more »
Your profile pic looks exactly like Id think a person adamantly defending this would look like.
Buying up emissions rights (as Hedera does it) isn’t actual carbon negative though. It just means they’re storing their pollution under someone else’s name.
In a crude analogy, it’s like claiming you don’t use gas because you’re paying your neighbor to let you drive around in his otherwise unused car.
Hedera consumes 0.0001 kWh per transaction. For the sake of comparison Visa is 0.001 and Bitcoin is over 800. That is as carbon negative as you’re going to get, and quite frankly, much better than the current traditional banking system.
this is like saying burning the amazon is ok as its less bad than nuking canada…. NEITHER are good options.
“We’d still have the racists and misogynists” *adds NFTS* “Why has nothing changed?”
Ah yes the “Anyone I don’t like does all the evil things” argument, classic
Except if I don’t like them because they do evil things. And if you don’t like them because they do evil things, supporting the tools that are frequently used by those evil things is hard to justify. And before you try the canard that ‘banks are involved in X, Y, Z’, most banks are heavily tracked and the pressure for the ones that aren’t to help deal with money laundering, human trafficking, and other odious actvities is much higher now than it was even 10 years ago. Many of those ‘grey’ banks are either getting santioned or are choosing to… Read more »
Bonus… People will report the game to Valve, and they should ban them from sale in line with their anti-crypto policy. Thanks Gabe!
Or… You are now a crypto-game, criminals will target you and hack your accounts and steal all your money. Over 69 Billion dollars worldwide has been stolen from crypto accounts and the top 10 financial heists of all time, most of them are now crypto thefts in the last 5 years. (its insane)
Yeah, game company’s payment platforms seem to be very vulnerable to effective hacking. The Cypto aspect makes moving the money far simpler than the occasional bank hack does. Moving large amounts in the banking world is getting harder, not easier, but cryptocurrencies tend to be very easy to steal.
I’m probably crazy, but I took this as a challenge, and got me spiraling out of control researching NFTs for over an hour at 2:30 AM, looking for SOME positive application, instead of, you know, going to sleep like a rational person.
Couldn’t find anything.
If you haven’t seen it yet/aren’t a fan, check out the latest COVID special from South Park. It has some really valid, and fucking hilarious, commentary on the whole NFT scam.
One way they could be used positively would be allowing the resale/transfer of game/expansion licenses, if the game/expansion licenses were NFTs.
But if a company wanted to do that, they could just allow it without using NFTs, and they clearly don’t.
Bingo.
NFTs solve nothing. Everything they can supposedly solve can be already done with current technology and with lesser environmental impact.
That’s the issue of NFTs. Any useful technology was created as a solution to some problem. NFTs were created as one-off proof of concept, but people latched on it and now are desperately searching for problems for which NFTs are the supposed solution.
That’s literally it. Any application that I hear about that sounds remotely positive, always ends up as, “but this is totally possible today, and is actually done today, and doesn’t require NFTs.” I keep hearing about “Oh, you can take the things you’ve earned in one game, and bring them to another game, and isn’t that great?” And I’m like, OK, first – you can already do that. I could’ve taken my very first Blastoise that I got from Pokemon Blue back in 1996, juggled him back and forth between versions, and currently have him living happily in Pokemon Home… Read more »
Add in the rate at which companies kill development teams (or they fall part), small companies are bought up and then a good title becomes a money farm for an investor… that’s also a reason longevity fails.
There is nothing in NFTs that didn’t exist before, really. And the cost is high so it’s a bad choice.
I know this is mostly nitpicking, but it’s not actually possible for a Blastoise from the 1996 Blue version to make it into Pokemon Home. There was no way to transfer/trade Pokemon from the Gameboy to the Gameboy Advance, so the oldest game that can transfer to Home is Ruby/Sapphire. The only version of Red/Blue that has a method to get to Pokemon Home is the virtual console version on 3DS.
Shh! I was counting on nobody remembering that little bit! Come on, 98% of the CAD demographic have to be primarily XBox/PlayStation/PC, right?
You must be a parent.
Because only a parent would say going to sleep before 3 am is rational.
What really is sleep? You can get an infinite amount of it when you are dead…
Guilty as charged.
This is the only thing you need to watch.
Pure genius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP6Cm1TDlNE
I’m a fan of crypto for payment in general, but NFTs as they are being utilized today are hype-driven pointless nonsense (especially the art, which by definition is copied all over with the blockchain, so the “ownership” means nothing). NFTs make little to no sense for digital items. By definition, there’s already a system that controls the ownership of the item – whatever platform is already hosting it. Introducing NFTs just adds another layer of complexity that doesn’t do anything but complicate matters. In theory, they could be used for deeds and titling, but those are heavily regulated industries and… Read more »
Real estate.
At present, the process of keeping track of property records can be pretty convoluted.
Being able to trace who owns and who has claims against a piece of property over time in a standard way would be a huge improvement over the current hodgepodge of electronic + paper records systems that we have now.
With the current processes, it can be up to 2 weeks to do a title search.
And you think that it would be impossible to design a database that would store that information without NFTs?
Whoever thought monetizing hyperlinks (as that is what an NFT actually is) is an absolute idiot.
An incredibly rich idiot, as the world is full of gullible ones.
I can’t wait until these crash and burn. But for now, this travesty to gaming shall continue.
No doubt. Any dev I see trying to sell NFT’s is an instant hard pass from me. I will not endorse them, I will not buy any of their games, even if it means I miss out on potentially enjoyable content, because I won’t feed the greed. Lots of other fish in the studio sea, I’d rather take the loss than be part of some Ponzi Scheme.
Oh no Tim, now the coiners are going to come tell you about how many energy efficient coins there are. Even though nobody uses said energy efficient coins and the two most popular coins are still Bitcoin and Ethereum, which still use more energy than many small countries. And before anyone brings up the alleged switch of Ethereum from proof of work to proof of stake, they’ve been promising and delaying that for years now. I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then it’s still using loads of energy for mining and will continue to be called out for… Read more »
And proof of stake just amplifies the inherent pyramid scheme effect of coins. All coins start with an initial pool of coins in the hands of its creators [e.g. Satoshi] / a group of initial hype men, who are then trying to make everyone else agree it has value so they can cash out for millions / billions. Proof of stake just gives a ‘legit’ way for them to continue profiting infinitely.
Yep. Proof of stake scales really badly (that’s why it’s used only by small chains), but the biggest issue is the 51% problem. Once a person or an organised group owns 51% of the validators, they can validate or invalidate any transaction they want. Basically they get control of the whole chain. Proof of work has the 51% problem too, but there it can be reversed by increasing the mining power outside of the 51% which tips the balance back. PoS cannot be reversed that way because any new mining power (even outside the 51%) still gets validated by the… Read more »
Seems likely this is about Storybook Brawl…
Close to unanimous. Though the thing noted is those “defending” are only defending the tech itself, not the game and mostly just try to paint others as crazy for not recognizing the ownership utopia it will usher in along, “how dare you not support devs” and your typical bro-handbook copy-past stuff. So their motives are rather questionable…
OK, let’s say Steam puts an NFT up for auction. With this NFT the holder has unlimited access to any and all Steam property for ever. You purchase the NFT with whatever currency you use. When you one day get tired of playing, you auction the NFT. Isn’t that worth something?
If such a thing ever happened, it didn’t happen because of the NFT. It happened because Steam chose to completely change their Subscriber Agreement and be A-OK if people basically sold their Steam accounts to other people. Which people do today, ironically; it’s just that Steam will lock an account immediately if they learn it’s happened.
Why on earth a site like Steam, which *lives* on selling digital games to people for dirt cheap, would allow NFTs and essentially *create a used game market* to compete with themselves, is beyond me. It’s not going to happen.
And if it was going to happen, Valve wouldn’t use NFTs. They’d just add games to the Steam Marketplace. You know, that big ol’ store and trading center for digital items they’ve had for years that doesn’t use and doesn’t need NFTs to work.
But it’s only the one NFT. There would never be another. And part of the code included in the NFT sends 5% back to Steam each time it’s sold. I’m not aware of any other technology that allows you to accomplish that without involving a bank and a lawyer.
You do know Steam takes a cut of sales on their marketplace, right?
It’s not ‘technology’ that’s holding this back, it’s legality, policy, and licensing agreements. Look, if Steam, or whoever else, WANTED to do this, the tech side is simple be simple. They OWN the data on your Steam account, after all. All Steam IS is an elaborate system for managing licenses and downloads. If they want to give you an option to transfer your license to another user, they can *do* that, and request a fee to do so. It’s basically what Nintendo did when transferring Wii games to Wii U – because there wasn’t an ‘account’ system there, not really;… Read more »
I think Valve probably could create a special one-off Steam account with all games past and future included on it, transferable and all that. As some kind of special promotion or whatever? I doubt that it would make financial sense to do so, and they definitely wouldn’t need anything remotely NFT to do so, but given the size of their operation it wouldn’t break the bank.
And Valve has banks and lawyers. Why would they not just use them?
This theoretical example could be done by Valve without having to make use of blockchain tech and could be done more efficiently and with less environmental impact as well.
This is the thing about NFTs, they’re pointless. Every use case I’ve seen for why we should use NFTs is just an inefficient use of money and electricity and could be done cheaper and more efficiently in other ways. NFTs are just really expensive receipts that happen to also be massively damaging to the environment.
There is exactly ONE actual “use case” for Crypto/NFT’s where using them instead of just…money…makes sense;
They are an EXCELLENT vehicle for money-laundering. The entire enterprise is likely to remain somewhat viable because it will be propped up by bad actors using it to launder money from illegal enterprises.
So congrats cryptobros you’re devotion will be a book to drug, arms, and human traffickers. Not to mention the CSAM folks.
Yeah. And some very recent European law proposal tries to limit crypto because of money laundering and other illegal activities. Yet the crypto community doesn’t want to see that and instead calls for harassment of any EU Congressman who are in favor of that. Really nice of them…
What exactly is happening on Blender there, Tim? Or did you happen across it on the Blender page?
NFTs are terrible for the environment.
But… so are computers in general. If you leave your PC on all the time, you’ll have a carbon footprint 70x larger than making one NFT. Putting it to sleep helps a lot, but doesn’t eliminate this, as they continue to draw power.
That’s like saying, “Guns are dangerous, but so are pins, so make sure you take out all the pins in a fresh dress shirt before you put it on.” Per an estimate by independent researchers, a single NFT piece has a carbon emission footprint of about 211 kilograms, equivalent to flying for two hours, driving about a thousand kilometers in a petrol car, or using a laptop for three years. Creating a digital art piece takes a negligible amount of energy. It is the following blockchain-linked activities like minting, bidding, and ownership transfer that guzzle the lion’s share of that… Read more »
Oh, I did look it up. It’s a flaw of that particular cryptocurrency.
It’d be very possible to use a variant NFT that uses a different crypto with a negligible footprint.
Currently, NFTs are totally inefficient, but it is exaggerated slightly. IIRC the figures cited refer to a worst-case scenario, which was several times worse than the average NFT. It’s probably closer to using a laptop for a year. Or… a desktop for four months.
(Excluding manufacturing costs of all the parts, mining costs for the rare eath metals, the server farms running the internet, etc.)
Good thing I shut it off every day before going to work and again before going to bed. ? BTW, If you leave your PC on all the time, you’ll have a carbon footprint 70x larger than making one NFT. Citation needed. Where’s the numbers? And which PC are we comparing to? My gaming PC or my parent’s “we use Chrome to go online and pay bills sometimes” PC? There’s all different manner of PC components out there, some far more energy efficient than others. Not that it matters too much, if you don’t force your system to run at… Read more »
So many flaws with this argument. In order to make the crypto you ALSO have to use the PC, so any damage the PC does, crypto ALSO does PLUS the damage crypto does. “If you leave your PC on all the time”, so worst case scenario for a PC is (by your claim) worse than the base case for crypto. PC’s have benefits, NFTs don’t Your 70x larger claim is both dubious and even if true in a narrow sense, completely misleading since you aren’t comparing things like total impact, cost per unit, etc. Basically nuance and circumstances matter and… Read more »
Though I recognize NFTs as a stupid concept, I don’t understand all the hate they’re generating lately. I just ignore them. There are even digital artists that think it could be a viable way to sell an original when there’s no physical original to sell (like an illustration made with a Cintiq instead of paper). Does anyone care to explain to my curious mind?
See my quote above in response to DJWG.
Because they are massively wasteful and eco-unfriendly, make money laundering and other illegal activities a lot easier, provide yet another avenue for people with limited techno-knowledge to be scammed, etc.
Basically they have a laundry list of downsides and pretty much zero upsides.
There are people defending NFTs in games, but those are not gamers. Those are the crypto bros who just want to see their grift spread out. They have no logical arguments. Everything they say goes against they way people like to play their games or even against the ways games are made. And ultimately, they cannot answer the question – “Why would the companies use NFTs to implement feature X, when they can do it already with current technology but chose not to?”. Cross game content exists, item marketplaces exist and selling of DLCs is totally possible with current technology.… Read more »
Was there a specific game or event that triggered this joke, or is this just something that more people see nowadays? I haven’t heard of a game that is using NFTs, but I don’t play lots of computer games so I’m out of the loop on most stuff like this.
There’s been a lot of concerted effort lately to stoke the gamer rage against NFT use, and between the early scams that we can all see (pixel art worth thousands) and a little nudging to make sure we all talk about it there’s been a resounding roar of fuck NFTs from basically everyone. The why of it gets into economics and politics, the supremacy of the current elite and their dependence upon the current centralized financial network. For what it is worth, there are developers working on practical integration of NFTs into gaming spaces and I think most people are… Read more »
No there aren’t, because there are no practical integrations of NFTs. Nothing an NFT can do isn’t already achievable by existing, better, more efficient technology.
Do I need to google “crypto” and “nft” or is it just one time thing and I will never see those words again?
Oh if only…
What rock have you been living under? And can I join you? It sounds lovely under there.
Just working as a lawyer 10 hours a day, slacking off rest of the time playing video games, not making a mistake of starting a family/relationship, not using social media because it involves other people.
Why the question?
If crypto destroys the environment, so does gaming.
I’m just going to leave this here, in case you want to know NFTs are good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP6Cm1TDlNE
(j/k. they’re not.)
I prefer fungible tokens.
There’s definitely a penis joke in there somewhere
WAAAAAAHHHHHH – *snif* I want my graphics card!
Does this apply for countries too?
The UK, now with NFTs : https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/04/04/1923223/uks-big-crypto-push-includes-minting-its-own-nft
“Arguing a counterpoint/playing Devil’s advocate,” are WAY beyond the capabilities of most of the people that defend prejudice and abuse.
For the most part, the best they can manage are fallacies, bias, evasion, mockery, affirmations and ignorance treated as fscts, attacks… You know, toxic irrationality trying to pass as argumenting.
*peers down into the comments section* blimey…. looks like this is one thing we CAN’T agree on!
Let me preface this with “I don’t like NFT’s either and just think it’s hype” I don’t get why game companies that already has micro-transactions want to NFT crap. However, looking at Steam and their stuff you can buy (like bananas I think?) for real money, it makes sense to NFT it and be able to trade off platform? And if you look at a franchise as a whole, with a huge IP, if they bring in skins or whatever that you buy through a micro-transaction anyway within a game, why not make it an NFT instead and incorporate that… Read more »
I have no interest in ‘art’ NFT’s. My interest is in getting the tech better implemented/debugged and used for something worthwhile. Maybe cut out all the BS in real estate and be able to have the ‘deed’ as an NFT to turn real estate transactions into simple transactions. No title searching, no signing 50+ pages of documents at a ‘closing’, etc. Or maybe usage rights for public vehicles… you ‘buy’ the usage right for vehicle xxx and ‘sell’ that usage right when you’ve finished your ride. I’m sure there will be better usage cases than what I can come up… Read more »
It would be hard to come up with worse use cases. Not a single one of those problems is helped at all by adding in NFTs.
So true, anything that holds any kind of NFT to be play for me is as if where radioactive and will not like to even know about it (except to avoid it)