| ▲ | mosura 3 days ago |
| This is really the art as speculation fad coming home to roost. The people actually interested in art as art are now on things like Instagram buying direct from the artists with very little gatekeeping either by art schools or galleries. It would be tempting to see if there is a correlation in when the “legit” art world price going off a cliff and the NFT bubble, because that suckered in a lot of the idiot end of the speculator crowd. |
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| ▲ | Ferret7446 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| The "art as speculation" fad is just a consequence of "inflation is good" economic theory, the same as "real estate as an investment". If you don't let people hold onto cash, they will just find something else to replace it (and of course, it is always the lower classes that have to suffer the secret taxation that is money supply inflation targets). |
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| ▲ | fluoridation 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't think so. Speculative markets would arise even in a 0% inflation economy, for the same reason that casinos would. Speculation isn't about storing value, it's about gambling. You have a stronger point with real estate, but real estate isn't as volatile or speculative, usually. | | |
| ▲ | SchemaLoad 3 days ago | parent [-] | | There would be very little reason to speculate on art. There's no reason to believe that the average painting would continually go up in value. In a zero inflation environment you'd expect the market to average zero growth. Some random pieces blowing up in value if the artist becomes famous later, but most would go nowhere. | | |
| ▲ | fluoridation 3 days ago | parent [-] | | >There's no reason to believe that the average painting would continually go up in value. If I had to guess, on average works of art go down in value, simply because of how much is produced. >Some random pieces blowing up in value if the artist becomes famous later, but most would go nowhere. That's exactly where speculation comes from. It's the same as any form of gambling. On average you're losing money, but every once in a while one lucky guy makes off like a bandit. |
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| ▲ | pjc50 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's only really in the latter half of the 20th century that inflation has actually been held to 0-2% by the active manipulation of interest rates to increase unemployment, and yet everyone acts like inflation is the end of the world. |
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| ▲ | gedy 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's speculation, but tax avoidance too:
https://naturalist.gallery/blogs/journal/understanding-the-f... |
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| ▲ | SJC_Hacker 3 days ago | parent [-] | | And money laundering… don’t forget the money laundering | | |
| ▲ | blitzar 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Personally I bid for the gasps, fainting and eventual standing ovation at the end of the auction along with the knowing nod and smile from someone who says indubitably a lot. |
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| ▲ | mmaunder 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I agree - a lot of art is sold via artists having a relationship with a stable of a few hundred people via insta. Completely bypasses the galleries and is far more compelling for the buyer because they can develop an emotional connection with the creator. Galleries can’t do that without having the artist present and even then they’re overwhelmed and buyers can’t make a connection. So this isn’t necessarily an art thing, it’s a gallery thing. Disintermediation strikes again. |
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| ▲ | 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | relaxing 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | This has nothing to do with the art world the article is talking about. | | |
| ▲ | worthless-trash 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I don't think it has to. The greater art world is abstracted from the value it provides, so much so its obviously seedy. |
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| ▲ | riazrizvi 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| NFTs were about transparency in provenance, using public, tamper-proof records, that replace jurisdictions/authorities with the type of math that enabled cross-border digital payments. Sure there was a spin-off scam industry but there remains a kernel of legitimacy in the concept. |
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| ▲ | fluoridation 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Nah, man. I work in the space and I was there. NFTs were the second attempt on an earlier idea that had already been discarded as pointless: supply chain management. The problem with NFTs was the same as with supply chains; there's no link between the blockchain and IRL, so the blockchain doesn't really add anything, just makes things more complicated. NFTs were therefore a tool to part fools from their money right from the start, because they couldn't be anything else. | | |
| ▲ | gonzobonzo 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I remember IBM making huge claims about using the blockchain for supply chain management. For instance[1]: > A recent pilot by KPMG, Merck, Walmart and IBM using blockchain injects new trust into the system by reducing the time it takes to trace prescription drugs from 16 weeks to just two seconds. It was impressive how many people uncritically took these claims as facts. [1] https://www.ibm.com/solutions/blockchain-supply-chain | | |
| ▲ | throwawayoldie 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | People have a tendency to uncritically take techies' claims as facts. [Stares aggressively in the direction of gen AI.] | |
| ▲ | dreamcompiler 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | A blockchain is the world's slowest database. The idea that a blockchain could speed up anything is laughable. | | |
| ▲ | fluoridation 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Theoretically, if there could be a 1:1 relationship between events in the real world and events on the blockchain, the idea makes sense. If you had two pieces of a machine represented by objects on the blockchain, and when you combined them into a new component that automatically, cryptographically, created a new object on the blockchain, you could track provenance precisely just by having the final assembled product. The problem is that that relationship doesn't exist and is impossible. If someone wants to tamper with a supply chain, all they need to do is tamper with the real world without letting that reflect on the ledger. And that destroys the entire point of the concept. | | |
| ▲ | dreamcompiler 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Not to mention companies don't like sharing their supply chain data because they consider it a competitive advantage. Even if they're required to share it by law, many companies are highly motivated to do the tampering you describe. |
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| ▲ | wbnns 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > A blockchain is the world's slowest database. It's dependent on how performant the underlying protocol is, not all blockchains are the same. |
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| ▲ | UltraSane 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | NFTs make more sense as digital signatures. | | |
| ▲ | ted_dunning 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Digital signatures make a lot more sense as digital signatures. And you can counter-sign the time if you need to prove that. | |
| ▲ | SchemaLoad 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They don't even make sense there. Since you can digitally sign things without blockchains or NFTs. | | |
| ▲ | UltraSane 3 days ago | parent [-] | | The blockchain acts like timestamp proving the digital data existed prior to when the block with the hash was mined. | | |
| ▲ | SchemaLoad 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Sure, it does do that. But I can't think of many scenarios where proving something was signed at least at a certain date is particularly useful. Usually when you are signing something you have two parties involved so you can just write the date on the document and if you lie the other party will call it out. NFTs seem like a solution to a non existent problem. Or a problem you have to search really really hard to find. |
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| ▲ | blitzar 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | pgp keys already took care of that 35 years ago |
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| ▲ | criddell 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | NFTs? They didn’t really solve a problem other than providing something else to gamble with. Nobody bought a low-res pixelated ape image because it stirred something deep in their soul. | | |
| ▲ | kingkawn 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Not the image, the spreadsheet cell next to the image has their name in it | |
| ▲ | melagonster 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | People pay money to join fan clubs for K-pop. If there were some electricity sheet will record their name forever, I'm sure someone would pay their money. |
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| ▲ | chii 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > that replace jurisdictions/authorities without any enforcement with sanctioned violence, this is merely symbolic. It's why so much scam happens with the NFT space. | |
| ▲ | stevage 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | More like 99% scam with a tiny kernel of legitimacy lost in the margins. | |
| ▲ | noman-land 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Non-fungible tokens are not about payment, they are about cryptographic ownership of uniqueness. | | |
| ▲ | mikrl 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | >they are about cryptographic ownership of uniqueness My web browser has a novel and advanced attack on the cryptosystem built into it I have dubbed the right-click-copy-image attack. I’ve even managed to replicate it on my phone. | | | |
| ▲ | dreamcompiler 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Non-fungible tokens are about ownership in the same way those $40 certificates that say a star is named for you are about ownership. Nobody cares about your precious little certificate, but if it makes you happy, buy it. |
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