a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by mk
mk  ·  875 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How Four NFT Novices Created a Billion-Dollar Ecosystem of Cartoon Apes

The BAYC had some really nice parties in NYC this week. Lots of performances by musicians I don’t know but everyone else seems to. Everyone is gushing about how fun it was. I wasn’t there. But Apes are not paintings.





kleinbl00  ·  875 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The cheapest BAYC on OpenSea right now is 20ETH. Up until 2017, the initiation fee at Mar El Lago was $100k.

"It's not a thing, it's a lifestyle" is the oldest scam in luxury goods.

mk  ·  875 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Why is it a scam? It's not a very good scam if people enjoy it and have no regrets. BAYC is the first of a kind and has celebrities, etc., so yeah, it's going to be the expensive one. However, the model is going to be replicated and evolved. Most won't support such a market. Reddit accounts are becoming NFTs.

kleinbl00  ·  875 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's a scam because the item transacted is not the item sold. The lifestyle of BAYC is "membership into an elite fraternity of forward-thinkers" which is how everything has been sold since it became illegal to ban women and minorities. "There are concerts" - I mean, I mixed Los Lobos, Sugar Ray and Blues Traveler for anyone willing to cough up 10,000 Marlboro Points to see a "mystery show for Marlboro smokers only". The more oblique the marketing, the less intrinsic value - "Marlboro, for elective cancer" doesn't sell nearly as well as "Marlboro, you're a cowboy."

"Enjoy it and have no regrets?" You're implying that people can't see concerts unless they pony up six figures for an ape gif. What's going to feed that lifestyle? What will BAYC be doing five years from now? What's the revenue model? What's the guarantee? I mixed a number of IPO parties, too - spraypaint the ficus trees gold and hire the Presidents of the USA to play the christmas party so everyone knows how cool our company is, buy our stock.

    Reddit accounts are becoming NFTs.

You think they're gonna go for 20ETH? Again - I'm a big booster of NFTs in general. I think their use cases are boundless. I think their use cases for ART are boundless. But if I had a choice between a bored ape or a Damien Hirst, I'd buy the Hirst and I HATE Damien Hirst.

Crypto peeps made a lot of money by understanding crypto. They think they're going to make more money because they think no one understands art. They do, though - there's a lot of learning, a lot of experience and a lot of tradecraft that is being applied to NFTs and it's going to shake it all out because at the end of the day, the platform is just the platform.

mk  ·  874 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    You think they're gonna go for 20ETH?

No. My point is they will be cheap. But they will be useful, in large part because other platforms will leverage them permissionlessly.

Apes aren't art. Not visual art, anyway.

kleinbl00  ·  874 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You're right - Apes are Cryptopunks plus hype. The whole reason we're beefing is you're arguing that BAYC are "something entirely new" when the value proposition for BAYC, according to you, is basically that of the Porsche Car Club of America, minus Porsche.

Is a Cryptopunk art?

    I see CryptoPunks as an important road sign in human history, and a front-row ticket to history to be made. To me, CryptoPunks indicate a point in time when technology unlocked the arts. Eventually, I’ll pass my CryptoPunk on to my daughter or donate it to a museum. Until then, I’ll look at it as something new that signifies a world on its way.

I do not for a minute question your fundamental assumptions about CryptoPunks. They aren't pretending to be something they're not. Gentle reminder: I'm pretty much always the one arguing NFT normie use cases because bloody hell, you can't buy a Breitling without one and haven't been able to for a couple years now. Something entirely new? That Twitter thread is a clever kid with a newsletter who:

- minted a bunch of NFTs rather than getting on Substack

- sells them instead of using Adsense

- such that they unlock the whole page rather than previews when there's a token in a connected wallet

- and resold on the secondary market

- or burned within a time window for a pro-rated refund

...while BAYC:

    When they sold 500 tangible hats to ape-holders in June, the guys spent days packaging products in Gargamel’s mom’s backyard in Florida. “Immediately, some of them sold for thousands of dollars,” Gargamel exclaims. “It was a $25 hat. We were like, ‘Holy shit, we can be a Web3 streetwear brand. What does that even look like?’ ”

Cryptopunks. Plus hype.

mk  ·  874 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    The whole reason we're beefing is you're arguing that BAYC are "something entirely new" when the value proposition for BAYC, according to you, is basically that of the Porsche Car Club of America, minus Porsche.

I'm not arguing that. But I'll let time make the point. Watch what happens to BAYC over the next 5 years.

We need a RemindMe bot.

user-inactivated  ·  874 days ago  ·  link  ·  

What you posted about using a NFT as a subscription is exactly what I don't get about NFTs - for digital things like a photo that can be used without actually holding the NFT, what's the value in scarcity other than the hope that someone will buy it later for more? And for something like a website subscription, the value comes from the centralized blogger hosting the website and writing new articles, so what's the advantage of the subscription being decentralized?

I get the use of crypto for currency and stock type things, and I kiiiinda get NFTs for art speculation, but everything else seems about as easily done in a centralized way & with less hassle. Everyone here seems legitimately into them, so I'm sure I'm missing something fundamental about what the normie use cases are going to be, but I really don't see them

kleinbl00  ·  874 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Start here.

Edited for simplicity:

    for digital things like a photo that can be used without actually holding the NFT, what's the value in scarcity other than the hope that someone will buy it later for more?

What is the value of owning a baseball card, rather than a copy of a baseball card? What is the value of owning the Mona Lisa, rather than a print of the Mona Lisa?

    And for something like a website subscription, the value comes from the centralized blogger hosting the website and writing new articles, so what's the advantage of the subscription being decentralized?

The fact that the terms of of service are set by the blogger, the access can be bought and sold by the blogger, and that everything between the blogger and his audience has been disintermediated.

    I get the use of crypto for currency and stock type things, and I kiiiinda get NFTs for art speculation, but everything else seems about as easily done in a centralized way & with less hassle.

If you wanna be a bank, you sign onto SWIFT. You pay a $20k setup fee, you pay $1500 a month in licensing, you pay 3% per transaction. Or, according to the Comptroller of the Currency, you sign onto a public blockchain. Right now, staking on Ethereum - which means you're processing transactions and putting up an ante to guarantee your good behavior - pays 6%.

I don't care what business you're in. When an operating expense becomes operating income, things are going to change.