How a 10-Second Video Clip Sold For $6.6 Million (reuters.com) 47
In October 2020, Miami-based art collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile spent almost $67,000 on a 10-second video artwork that he could have watched for free online. Last week, he sold it for $6.6 million. Reuters reports: The video by digital artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, was authenticated by blockchain, which serves as a digital signature to certify who owns it and that it is the original work. It's a new type of digital asset - known as a non-fungible token (NFT) - that has exploded in popularity during the pandemic as enthusiasts and investors scramble to spend enormous sums of money on items that only exist online. Blockchain technology allows the items to be publicly authenticated as one-of-a-kind, unlike traditional online objects which can be endlessly reproduced. The computer-generated video sold by Rodriguez-Fraile shows what appears to be a giant Donald Trump collapsed on the ground, his body covered in slogans, in an otherwise idyllic setting.
I am reminded of... (Score:1)
Re: I am reminded of... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: I am reminded of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Third possibility is that the money is moving around just to convince other people ('marks') that there's something to this bit of idiocy.
Re: I am reminded of... (Score:1)
Transferring money while avoiding laws? (Score:2, Interesting)
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So if I wanted to convert $6.6M BTC into something else, I'd buy art? Then who's to say I could sell the art for that value in USD? Plus then the seller would have to pay sales tax.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't worry it's just good old greed. Roman gov debasing coins, tulip mania, blockchain... same ol' stuff
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Is humanity going for gold in the Retarded Olympics?
You are looking at it wrong.
If the $6.6M were invested in gold or diamonds, the environmental destruction would have been much worse.
If invested in real estate, it would push up values and rental prices, making houses less affordable.
If invested in the stock market, it would contribute to the bubble.
NFTs may be stupid, but perhaps the alternative investments are even stupider.
Re:Fuck me dead (Score:5, Informative)
If the $6.6M were invested in gold or diamonds, the environmental destruction would have been much worse.
Really? Because I have a friend who is a production manager at a gold mine. The company pulls out a couple Mil per day of gold out of the ground and you wouldn't even know the mine is there. 3 days production is nothing.
If invested in real estate, it would push up values and rental prices, making houses less affordable.
Funny because I also know a couple of people who own $3M houses. No destruction there either, in fact the property taxes alone paid for a lot of socialised services.
If invested in the stock market, it would contribute to the bubble.
Ok you've gone full retard now.
NFTs may be stupid, but perhaps the alternative investments are even stupider.
Only if you have no brain.
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Neither destruction is likely. "Investing in gold" is not normally mining new gold, which is a limited resource. It's trading in a limited resource, which is why it's valuable. And the price of diamonds is extraordinarily monopoly mandated, rather than reflecting that diamonds can be synthesized.
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>If the $6.6M were invested in gold or diamonds, the environmental destruction would have been much worse.
The energy cost is destructive enough.
>If invested in real estate, it would push up values and rental prices, making houses less affordable.
How do we know it isn't.
>If invested in the stock market, it would contribute to the bubble.
The stock market, if anything is self-correcting. It will tolerate an asset bubble only as long as the companies fundamentals are in sync.
>NFTs may be stupid, but
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Re: Fuck me dead (Score:2)
People pay millions for original paintings but won't do the same for comparable forgeries. How is this different?
Great stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
It's cool how in a few short years the internet has gone from "information wants to be free, man!" to reinventing copyright from scratch except now it kills the planet with a pointless blockchain at the same time.
Re:Great stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
now it kills the planet with a pointless blockchain at the same time.
Cryptocurrency mining is done with an environmentally destructive proof of work. But that is not the only way to operate a blockchain. NFTs can be generated with minimal power consumption, either as a side effect of mining, or on their own blockchain.
Funds transfer (Score:1)
Time to arrest Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile (Score:4, Interesting)
Another fake website claiming fake millions (Score:1)
AKA "money laundering." (Score:2)
NFT = how drug cartels can "wash" money from one location to another.
Look I Have A Receipt (Score:1)
Hope he has a backup (Score:5, Funny)
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Would the backup be considered a forgery, though?
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A friend of mine many years ago did lithographs, of which I purchased his every AP. At that time (college) I got them for like $20 each. The series #s are now worth maybe $100, the APs maybe $500.
What about the artist? (Score:1)
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When did that ever happen? Many many well known artists died penniless.
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So you think you can do that? (Score:2)
So you probably think you can shit-stain a cocktail napkin and do that too? Maybe you think that I think I can sell this Slashdot post as an NFT at double that price? That's not impossible, but it's highly improbable.
When you dig in to the story, you discover that Beeple has been doing online art since 2009--posting pieces every day as something called just that, Every Day. So he's built a reputation as an artist. When you google around you see his stuff and it's pretty interesting looking.
So while it
pissing in the well, or maybe lipstick on a pig (Score:2)
It seems like a futile attempt to try and capitalize off of the hyperinflational meme economy; give it a while and people will have hard drives full of blockchain-certified Wojaks that are worth - *unsurprised gasp* - absolutely zilch. It's like painting a burning house to try and increase its insurance value.
So...how does this work? (Score:3)
There aren't many details in TFA, so I'm thinking aloud here. They've registered something in a blockchain. They have to identify the artwork, so that's going to be a hash value. But you can make bit-perfect copies, so that doesn't prevent duplication. That means that they are probably also registering the current owner's name in the blockchain along with the hash value. "Fred Jones owns artwork with hash 0x23AC.
That transaction is what you are actually paying for. That means that you are placing a lot of trust in the reputation and security of whoever manages the blockchain (in this case, Opensea). One serious security breach, and that blockchain will be so much digital trash.
Do the people paying $millions for these artworks have any idea what is really going on? It seems unlikely...
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TFA and the interview with Christies does not do much to explain the valuation, but I bet the people paying $millions know a lot about the authentication and transaction technology in use. My guess is that a lot of the value is in it being one of the first artworks linked to a blockchain, if it indeed is. Media art is a whole genre, video artists have been around a long time back to CRTs. I am not up to date about why this artwork is worth so much but evidently the hard linking of the definition of its exis
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Another view. (Score:1)
He could also have the fully lossless uncompressed version of the video, with maximum bitrate and color gamut. Those type of files are large compared to a broadcast or even a Blu-ray version.
Best description I've seen so far (Score:2)
I got this from a screenshot I saw on Twitter, and the original source is something called 'Today in Tabs [todayintabs.com]'?
If you’re like any normal meat human, you’ve often found yourself looking at a cartoon online and wondering: “how fungible is this?” The hot acronym in the art-tabs world right now is “NFT,” which stands for “non-fungible token,” which is a way to burn cash and fossil fuels to create a number that no one else is allowed to own, and then use that number to point to a work of art that is infinitely reproducible. Think of it like buying a very finely-wrought platinum nameplate that says “I OWN THIS” and then attaching it to the ocean. Also the nameplate is just a number. Obviously this is being hailed as the future of art collecting."
Also good is cryptoart.wtf, where it tells you what the ecological cost of various stupid art pieces is. This one was apparently 49 years worth of electricity based on an average EU resident, or 1000 hours of flying. http://cryptoart.wtf/#address=... [cryptoart.wtf]
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Thanks for that cryptoart.wtf link. +5 Informative.
You have to click on the section on the left of the page titled "The ecological cost of using the blockchain:" to get to the researcher's accompanying medium article [medium.com] detailing what these transactions actually cost in terms of energy expended. Really mind blowing.
could NFTs become "killer app" of blockchain? (Score:2)
until NFTs, cryptocurrencies had zero intrinsic value, instead representing expectations of some people that one day they will hold real value at best, and scammy speculations at worst, because you can't actually do anything with them.
however now there is a chance that Ether becomes THE native currency that buys you NFTs, and with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] around, we have a good chance of getting an internationally accepted actual industry standard for these things. so in the case the actual value o