Its not worth a single cent in reality
If you weren’t using them to launder money for a criminal enterprise, then you were doing them wrong.
…
doing them wrongfalling for a scam.
Who could have thought it?
The whole NFT thing was one giant pump and dump.
I purchased a really cheap NFT domain that I can link my cryptocurrency wallet address to so that instead of having to type out the 90 character string and get it right, you can type out a human readable domain. Other than that small use case, I’ve never had any other reason for it. But hey, it’s kind of cool. And I don’t see why not keep it since I already have it. And as I said, it wasn’t that expensive anyway.
As with everything crypto this was a huge scam. Besides the obvious profiting from gullable idiots, the other use case is to illegally funnel money.
Not absolutely everything in crypto is a scam, though 99% of it is, and I will definitely agree with you there. But there is 1% that is actually trying to do something useful, and you’ve got to be able to find that 1% and not throw it out with the bath water.
I’d wager even the 1% is the stereotypical “solution in search of a problem”. Seems to be a reoccurring theme as of late in the tech industry.
the 1% is the one the people who say “well, sure, 99% is a scam, but theres a legit 1% thats totally real!”
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
In case anybody sees this and doesn’t know the context, this is the note that was published in the Genesis block of the Bitcoin blockchain, Satoshi wanted to engrave forever the fact that at this time the chancellor was on the brink of second bailout for banks. It was a call-out against the fiat system, and it’s one of the best call-outs in history. and will be there forever more.
If you happen to have an original copy of this newspaper, it is a genuine artifact, and you can make absolute tons of money on it. No bullshit.
Based on this headline and the fact that Satoshi mentioned digital cash in the white paper as much as he did, you can clearly tell that he was frustrated with the fiat system and all the excesses that came with it and wanted to create a whole different system that was out of the hands of governments and corporations. He came close to succeeding but didn’t quite finish the job because he couldn’t figure out a way to add privacy into his ledger, which makes the entire thing completely transparent to law enforcement and government crooks.
However, on April 13th, 2014, the final puzzle piece was added with the launch of Monero, which has a fully private blockchain that does not have sender, receiver, or amounts being shown.
If you ever happen to read this comment, Satoshi, thank you for your great work. We will be forever in debt to you.
Ethereum has the potential to carry real world assets on its chain. Why does an share of stock have to go through a clearing house when it could be an L2 on ethereum? A company having a total of 1 million shares is no different from a L2 coin having a total number of 1 million coins. They can even be fractional too.
Literally every cryptocurrency supports this. But if the real world assets can be seized with a court order, then what’s the point of a blockchain and not just a legally compliant database?
but like, man, like… its totally new, like, and like, totally amazing man. you just, like, cant comprehend, man!
The true libertarians and anarchists in the room would call out the fact that they are attempting to build a world where governments don’t run courts because governments don’t exist and that all courts would be arbitration courts and decentralized and run by the community. If I have a problem with you, I tell my arbitrator about it, and my arbitrator tells you that I have a problem with you. If you don’t like my arbitrator, then you choose your own arbitrator, and if I don’t like the arbitrator you choose, then the arbitrators choose a third party arbitrator that they both agree on, and we agree to be bound by what that arbitrator says.
Edit: If you are willing to watch a 22 minute video, this might be of interest to you.
The silver lining is that after the obligatory exploitation by grifters, every new technology of this caliber finally gets a more positive use in our lifes. Maybe somewhat naive, but I think we (ie. our societies) have payed ~50% of the tuition fee as far as crypto is concerned. So hopefully we’ll be able to absorb the tech in our collective lives soon.
Ps: Different topic, but using the same metaphor for AI, I’m afraid we’re just at the begin of its initial fallout.
I think the rise of Monero over Bitcoin is a very positive sign. Since it has privacy, the government absolutely cannot stand the fact that it exists, and therefore, institutions don’t want to touch it. This means the “number go up”, “to the moon”, and “compliance”, shmucks are all driven away in horror and you are left with the real core who want to see a better money in a digital world. If that sounds interesting, you might want to listen to “darknet Market Maximalism” a manifesto by xenu. You can listen to the audio version of it on YouTube.
Edit: I’ll save you the trouble. Here’s the link directly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ogNg20rGTU
Everyone comment how much did they lose on NFTs.
I will start: $0.
Also I made: 0$
Damn, I lost twice as much as you did.
I found value in shitting on people buying them. $0 monetary gain, but at least $10 in schadenfreude.
I trolled people by setting their NFT as my avatar in the chat rooms they were in. Im going to value that at $100.
Best use of an NFT I’ve ever heard of!
I’ve been watching a lot of Antiques Roadshow clips and I imagined one of the appraisers doing a valuation of your shenanigans.
“You bought this magnificent piece sillyness when and for how much?”
“oh I just copypasted it to my profile for no money at all”
“Well that was very good deal indeed, because on in todays money the entertainment value alone is in the hundreds of pounds.”
Better hope they don’t sue you for copyright infringement.
/s
Putting a dollar figure on your schadenfreude? Do you want a block chain based “prediction market” for schadenfreude? That’s how you get a block chain based “prediction market” for schadenfreude.
Yes, as long as I’m on the receiving end of the pump and dump. In the end, I’ll only be taking money from people that clearly have too much. I’ll donate some to some good charity so it’s not a bad thing
I actually got a free NFT in some kind of sweepstakes. It’s probably worth negative money now.
It did get me 3 free drinks at a music festival so there’s like +50 bucks in value right there.
I actually made money from NOT putting any of my investment money in NFTs and instead putting it somewhere else.
Then again, from the very start the NFT mania looked like a more obvious and dumb version of the Tulip Bulb mania, so I can hardly claim great wisdom from not having put a cent in it.
$0
Isn’t it pretty obvious this was 99% a money laundering scheme?
That’s easy to say with the benefit of hindsight in 2026. However, back in 2021, it was easy to say without the benefit of hindsight.
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
I think it was even easier to say in 2021, because more people knew about it and the scam was even more obvious. Now, in 2026, most people’s hindsight doesn’t go back that far, it was quickly forgotten as it should be, and people are like “huh? NFT?”
The only good thing out of NFTs was that I learned what fungible means.
Nah, A large portion of it was idiots attempting to lose money as quickly as possible.
Who could have predicted this? Literally impossible without hindsight and that’s the revisionist history I’m sticking to.
Dramatic? I found this an entertaining example of dumbness 🍿🍿🍿
For sure. This is comedy, not drama.
This was never anything aside from a scam designed to separate the tech illiterate from their money.
A grand is still 1000 dollars too high a price for these things.
I’ll see your grand and say 950 is still too high.
Under a grand. Is there anyone really stupid enough to think this is still worth anything at all?
I would actually pay like $100 to say I own the EFT some moron paid millions of dollars for. I’ve bought dumber things. I paid real money for a 100 trillion dollar zimbabwe bill that is completely worthless. Great for cocaine! I’ve also paid hundreds of dollars for 1 night of cocaine, dozens of times, and have nothing to show for any of them.
Pro tip: don’t do cocaine while you still can choose.
Great advice, but I’ve been doing cocaine rarely for decades. Think I’ll be right thanks.
The dude literally has a 100 trillion dollars, it’s fine
Tell that to Whitney Houston.
Yeah i was thinking that the other day when they were talking about an 11 million dollar EFT now valued at 100 USD.
I was like, shit, I’d pay 100 USD for that one.
T’would be funny if this kind of demand drove the prices back up. Not to money laundering levels, but like to like $180 or something.
Plus imagine if another bubble came and some donkey was willing to pay a ton for it again for some dumb reason.
A 100 dollar meme like that would be worth it IMO.
feels akin to my GME shares, I just wanted to be included in the fun LOL.
BRB gonna go buy all the rump coins from the bag holders.
You can just say you did that without having to pay the money, the only thing you’d be missing is a website (that probably won’t be around much longer) confirming you did that. That’s kinda why NFTs didn’t work.
Pro tip: lie to the people around you about stupid stuff.
The real LPT is always in the comments.
The existence of people stupid enough to pay for them is what makes NFTs worth something in the first place
What? You mean digital art that infinitely reproducible, can’t actually be owned, WASN’T the next big thing? Oh jeez. I hope the metaverse succeeds and if not then AI surely will RIGHT?!?!
Hey but this cryptographic key says that I own it because I paid made up currency units for it or something
Hey but that made up currency I worked for by burning electricity, I mean MINING it.
Hey, but the recent changes means I earned that made up currency by proving I own more than you!
OH! It’s an epeen thing! Got you! All the rich win. Congrats to them.
My favorite thing is there are certain NFTs that are viruses that as soon as you do ANYTHING with them, they go and transfer all of the contents of your wallet to another wallet. Even deleting them triggers this action. So if you have unknown NFTs in your wallet you can’t touch them lest they trigger this virus.
How could this not be the future of commerce?
WHAT?!? I’ve never heard of that! That’s nefarious! WOW!
I got it from a Folding Ideas video (the problem with nfts one)
But here’s a link actually detailing it https://www.gate.com/learn/articles/beware-of-unexpected-nfts-and-assets-in-your-wallet-they-could-steal-all-your-funds/7682
Edit: for those that haven’t seen the video it’s worth the 2 hour watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
I remember playing with Stable Diffusion in 2022, and thinking “Oh. That’s the end of NFTs.”
NFT art was stupid to begin with, of course, but SD was such a blatent, extreme inverse of the “artifical digital scarcity” angle. If I wanted a shitty, albeit “unique” and deterministically reproducible digital image, I could just make it in 30 seconds on a desktop. If I wanted a certain look, I could use img2img or eventually controlnet and all sorts of augmentations.
Yes, junky AI was junky AI, but ironically it was the antithesis of everything NFTs stood for. Instead of “digital information is worth commodifying at great expense,” it was “digital information is basically free.” And I still find it amusing that Tech Bros and con artists jumped from one ship to the other so quickly, or somehow have feet in both.
AI wasn’t the NFT killer, right click > saveas killed it at the very moment of conception.
Digital scarcity is a complete joke.
Sure you can copy the image, but you can’t have the same machine-readable hash indicating ownership in my private system!
