1607

I think this is a pretty clear sign that there are people with way too much money on their hands and that the top-tier tax rate needs to be raised way, way up.

1608

Maybe I’m too old to get it but NFTs remind me of the entire beanie baby craze.

I suppose a print may be a good way to view an NFT since we all know that social contracts to make only one are only reliably worth the paper they are written on. Companies and estates are not going to care for the legacy of the artists.

1609

This would make sense except for the fact people are selling (and others buying) NFTs from artwork they did not create.

This is basically fraud, except that it might not be enforceable by law if the seller does not claim he’s the creator of the work.

In such a market the creation of extra tokens by the author seems moot.

1610

Someone said it further up, but NFT’s must be a sensational vehicle for money laundering at the moment.

1611

And very soon after art market participants were brought within the scope of anti-money laundering regulations. Funny that.

1612

Even with regulations, aside from the usual customer due diligence it may be a challenge to question the bona fide of the transactions given that the value of these NFTs are basically whatever you want to pay for them. I guess it’s good to start somewhere though.

1613

Same for art in general, which is why money launderers love it. NFTs are a cherry on top.

1614

Fair point I guess. Art and collectibles are subject to very arbitrary valuation.

edit: that said, by making these digital goods, it can change hands that much faster. Volume and transaction sizes will dwarf physical art.

1615

My new favorite Twitter account has some things to say

1616

Oh this account is delightful, thank you!

1617

Hahahaha

Model and actress Emily Ratajkowski is selling a link representing a composite image that features a photograph of herself in front of a print by another artist that contains a photo (of herself) taken by (presumably) yet another artist. In other words, she is selling an NFT.

1618

Good quote from the article:

1619

So does anyone here know anything about zedrun? They were talking about virtual horse racing games on the radio today. They didn’t mentor the name but zed.run was the first one that popped up. I tried reading thru it, but…

You buy some nft based horse and then race it. For money. But the Getting Started info starts mentioning metamask wallets, email wallets, ethereum and my mind started getting mushy. I mean o sort of get the idea and it sound cool if possibly addicting. But then the whole crypto shit gets tossed out and I get lost.

So does anyone have experience with this? And is the crypto part just a way for them to get paid and payout wins? Not sure if this is the best place for this but it’s got all the buzzwords the skateboard kids use today and this thread has the most crypto info.

1620

Well, the fact that it’s NFT-based means it’s already crypto-oriented (most NFTs are in the form of tokens on the Ethereum blockchain). But I’m sure it also helps them end run around gambling laws and taxes, not to mention money-laundering rules.

1621

Looks like paypal is offering $25 in rewards bucks if you are selected, all you have to do is buy $25 in cryptocurrency. I accepted the offer but haven’t bought anything yet.

Wasn’t sure where to put this, but free digital currency is priced right imho.

1622

Bitcoin and all crypto needs to be taken offline and made illegal.

1623

What’s the relationship? If a ransom demands dollars, should cash be abolished?

1624

Yeah Ransomware was a thing before Bitcoin was worth squat. They previous directed you to use gift cards and money lending agencies (and Amscott).

1625

But that was for small time personal ransomware. These big corporate attacks involve demands for serious money that would be impractical in gift cards. The existence of cryptocurrency has helped to enable these big attacks.

1626

I believe you may have the causation wrong there. It’s modern powerful and highly interconnected IT solutions that create a viable attack surface for a mass ransomware attack. In ways that wouldn’t have worked 15-20 years ago when the corporate data centers were a different animal. Back then a major server trying to RSA encrypt its own storage would have consumed such significant CPU and I/O resources that everyone would have noticed something was amiss and intervened immediately. Nowadays a computer consuming the power to RSA encrypt it’s own hard drive is hardly noticeable, and besides all the disk storage is encrypted anyway. Thus a ransomware attack can go completely unnoticed until the ransomware has spread all throughout an infected network.

I think cryptocurrency is stupid, and possibly makes this stuff a little easier than instructing the party being ransomed to wire money to some third world bank, but it didn’t cause any of this. It would be happening regardless.