NFTs
What's all the buzz about?
Friday Talks
Side effects of this talk may include:
- a feeling of disappointment
🔥🔥🔥
🔥🔥
I don't know how to bitcoin...
What's an NFT?
Non-Fungible Token
What's a "fungible" though?
Fungibility is about
Interchangeability*
*dictionaries may disagree.
it works for this talk's purpose, so bear with me
same as
Money is fungible
Money is fungible
same as
Many other assets are fungible
Non-fungible assets are not interchangeable
(debatable)👆
Sidenote:
Fungibility can also be subjective
Non-fungible assets are not interchangeable
In quick technical terms:
| BTC Wallet | Balance |
|---|---|
| Naps | 5 |
| Jorge | 3 |
| Martinho | -2 |
Fungible token ledger
Map<Account, Balance>| Cryptokitty | Balance |
|---|---|
| #1 | Naps |
| #2 | Jorge |
| #3 | Martinho |
Non-fungible token ledger
Map<TokenID, Account>Map<Account, Balance>Map<TokenID, Account>This is the only difference
(sorry to disappoint you)
Crypto NFTs are not at all a breakthrough
They're certificates of ownership.
Signed & transacted via blockchain.
(2018 called. They want their idea back)
The current bubble
“[the United Nations 1967 Outer Space Treaty] does not bar individuals from claiming sovereignty over the Moon. So, he wrote a polite letter to the United Nations informing them that he owned the Moon and started selling plots of land on it.
Since 1980 he has sold over 16 billion acres of lunar real estate to over seven million individuals in 197 different countries through his company Lunar Embassy and made millions of dollars. He once sold a country-sized plot of lunar land, 2.66 million acres of lunar land, for $250,000.”
Selling the moon
So, this is just you telling me NFTs are not interesting?
Nope.
Why should I care then?
Tradeability
Like eBay, but without the eBay
Provable Scarcity
Provable Ownership
Provable <whatever>
Programmability
Less exciting
(aka: more plausible)
use cases:
Tickets (limited supply; resellable; provable ownership)
In-game assets (e.g.: cryptokitties)
Copyright checks / Proof of Existence
Digital Scarcity (e.g.: a better DNS protocol)
A real life use-case, all right...
from 2012:
Varoufakis was hired by Valve as its economist-in-residence. He oversaw the virtual economies in Valve games, and was allowed to experiment with the online markets.
Varoufakis referred to the role as "an economist's paradise" in a post on the official Valve blog.
What did he do there?
Hats. He sold virtual hats
The point is:
There's proven interest and potential for open, peer-to-peer markets,
without the bias a crypto buzzword
But also is:
Selling a digital hat is very different from selling a reference to a real-life object.
NFTs
What's all the buzz about?
2021 Edition
Friday Talks
NFTs & other crypto buzzwords
By Miguel Palhas
