I’m working on a book on NFTs and how they became the tulip mania of crypto. As of now, the plan is to self-publish on Amazon, hopefully before the bubble explodes like this dead whale.
I’ve finished the outline—which I’ll continue to update in coming weeks—and I’m playing with ideas for a catchy title.
If you have thoughts for a title, send them to me! I need as many ideas as possible. Only one rule: it has to be SEO-friendly, so we need the words “NFT” and “art” in there somewhere. Also, I can add a long subtitle stuffed with keywords, too. Here are a few thoughts:
NFTs: The art of the steal
NFTs: When crypto bros entered the world of high art
Since I’m working on a book about NFTs, I won’t be talking about much else for the next few months. Hence, this newsletter is mostly about NFTs. (I promise I’ll return to talking about Tether when this book is finished.)
My goal: 500 high-quality book words a day, starting today.
Here the news:
BitClout’s content creator tokens are NFTish
I was going to write a big section here on BitClout, the social-media-on-a-blockchain experiment, because I initially thought the project’s creator coins were NFTs, but they’re not really. They are similar to NFTs due to their artificial scarcity and being a way to trade influence. But they are fungible tokens, and it turns out they are HYIPish.
If you want more details on BitClout, I wrote everything up in a separate blog post. Also, note that at least one BitClout investor, Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya, is building a big portfolio of NFTs.
NFTs don’t convey ownership, case in point
NFTs don’t convey ownership of a digital art piece in any form, shape or fashion. You can create an NFT of a piece of art even if you are not the creator. You can also create multiple NFTs of the same digital art.
Where this really becomes a problem is when you mint an NFT, auction it off for an absurd amount of money, and then someone claiming to be the rightful owner of the underlying art steps forward.
This is what happened when an NFT for a virtual house sold on SuperRare for $500,000 worth of ETH. Now the artist and the visualizer—who worked together on the Mars House—have locked horns over the copyright.
Mateo Sanz Pedemonte, a 3D modeler who created the virtual abode for artist Krista Kim, calls the project “a fraud.”
“Krista Kim never owned this project fully,” he said. “I have created the project with my own hands, combined with her direction. I do possess the full intellectual property.” (Dezeen)
People are minting NFTs for the lulz
People are minting NFTs and selling them as a joke.
A New York Times writer minted a column as an NFT and sold it on Foundation to demonstrate the insane amounts of money people are willing to pay for these things. A bidder going by @3fmusic bought the piece for 350 ETH, worth $560,000. (NYT)
Recently, John Cleese put up an NFT of a drawing of the Brooklyn Bridge on OpenSea. The highest bid is now $35,000 by JeffBezosForeskin.
“The world has gone terminally insane,” Cleese told VanityFair, adding that “This all reminds me of Henry David Thoreau, when he said, ‘Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.’”
Author Chuck Tingle put off by NFTs
Chuck Tingle, a self-published writer whose focus is satirical gay porn, looked at the NFT phenomenon and was appalled. He proposed doing a “tingler” as a single reproduction with an NFT, but when he read up on NFTs, he summed up his horrified thoughts in an ebook the same day—now available on Amazon for $2.99.
The title of the book is: “Not Pounded By My Book ‘Pounded In The Butt By My Non-Fungible Tingler That Is Literally This NFT’ Because Of The Current Catastrophic Environmental And Ethical Impact.”
David Gerard wrote up a review of the book. Of course, he had to explain who Tingle is first, because not everybody knows. I sure didn’t, but Tingle is apparently quite popular.
As for Tingle, he thinks NFTs are a “scoundrel plot,” where promoters are “taking money from buds of less means.”
In a separate tweet, he suggested, “instead of trying to support art by buying digital plaques with your name on it that has no meaning or actual connection to the art JUST SUPPORT ARTISTS BY BUYING THEIR ART. NFTs are good example of trying to fix problem that already has had very easy solution for 1000s of years.”
Other newsworthy bits
NFTs are so big and bubblish they’re even featured in an SNL skit. This is a funny skit but sadly it only serves to promote more of the NFT nonsense.
Edmund Schuster, an associate professor of corporate law at the London School of Economics, debated Andrew Steinhold, partner of NFT fund Sfermion. The motion for the debate: “NFTs are dumb.” (The Blockchain Debate)
In a separate debate, David Gerard took on Josh Petty, CEO of startup Twetch. Petty has been experimenting with NFTs for limited edition Twetch hats, which you can buy with BSV tokens. “A crypto token has no intrinsic value,” Gerard argued. “It is a race to the bottom for these things.” (Coingeek)
As I’ve stated, NFTs are simply pointers. And if the thing it points to moves, there’s always a chance down the line that your NFT could point to “ERROR 404!” for the rest of its life.
Verge reporter Jacob Kastrenakes makes a similar point: “NFTs are fundamentally built on trust—trust that a seller won’t screw you over, trust that these tokens magically have value—and that holds true even at the deepest level of the system.”
Is FinCEN aiming for NFTs? FinCEN issued a blue box notice to let art and antiquities traders know they will be held to the same reporting standards as financial institutions. This means that they will have to submit suspicious activity reports, or SARs, for antiquities trade. The question is: Will NFTs be categorized as art? (FinCEN notice, OCCRP)
Do NFT buyers even care about art? Computer scientist Jorge Stolfi thinks not. “If you make an NFT out of your work, its market will be restricted to a few million crypto believers worldwide. And they are mostly not the type of person who appreciates art. The billions who do not care for crypto will not be able to buy it.”
Finally, if you are tired of watching NFTs sell for millions of dollars in crypto and want to see some real art, here’s your chance. The Louvre just put its entire collection online for free.
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Amy Castor 