Stock Market Chat

[Ed209]

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Non-fungible tokens are revolutionising the art world – and art theft

There they question the legitimacy of internet users who turn copyrighted material into NFTs without any control, as there is no governing body that controls NFTs' production.

"MarbleCard isn't the only NFT service that makes it trivial to "tokenise" other people's content. Another, Tokenized Tweets, lets users turn any tweet into a tradable digital asset simply by sending a message on the social network, and artworks posted to the site have been a popular target for tokenisation. "Now people can sell your tweets all without your permission," warned the artist RJ Palmer, whose own images were tokenised without his permission."

"There's no oversight here, and seemingly no understanding of or respect for copyright. The unscrupulous way that it allows artists to be ripped off is maddening."​

Most artists get ripped off anyway. I think more bands will get savvy to this and use NFTs to their advantage so they don't get exploited.

But like with anything, there are good and bad sides. Should we stop using money because it can be used to do bad things? Should we ban the internet because it's a hotbed for piracy and some very evil stuff? Unfortunately, most new technology can be used in a negative way. That's the way the world has always worked.

I don't see the point in turning people's tweets into an NFT. Anyone can copy a person's tweet, for example, by just taking a screenshot and saving it. This can then be spread all over the internet, which happens all the time on deleted tweets. Once something is written in the public domain, it should be assumed that your words cannot be unsaid, because of this fact. Same goes for artwork. People can forge masterpieces, but turning something into an NFT that's not legitimate would have no value. It would be no different to someone taking a copy of your art and fraudulently selling it in the real world. Without provenance, there's no value.

 

[Juan]

Most artists get ripped off anyway. I think more bands will get savvy to this and use NFTs to their advantage so they don't get exploited.

But like with anything, there are good and bad sides. Should we stop using money because it can be used to do bad things? Should we ban the internet because it's a hotbed for piracy and some very evil stuff? Unfortunately, most new technology can be used in a negative way. That's the way the world has always worked.

I don't see the point in turning people's tweets into an NFT. Anyone can copy a person's tweet, for example, by just taking a screenshot and saving it. This can then be spread all over the internet, which happens all the time on deleted tweets. Once something is written in the public domain, it should be assumed that your words cannot be unsaid, because of this fact. Same goes for artwork. People can forge masterpieces, but turning something into an NFT that's not legitimate would have no value. It would be no different to someone taking a copy of your art and fraudulently selling it in the real world. Without provenance, there's no value.

I have an uneasy feeling when I read about new trends like NFTs or Bitcoin, which is... if it is so great, why are they in need of promoting it, marketing it all over the place and telling everyone?

 

[Ed209]

I have an uneasy feeling when I read about new trends like NFTs or Bitcoin, which is... if it is so great, why are they in need of promoting it, marketing it all over the place and telling everyone?

I haven't seen much marketing myself. There are news articles about these things, but there hasn't been much mainstream attention as far as I'm aware until very recently. NFTs have been around for years. Bitcoin has been around since 2008/9 so I wouldn't consider it new.

What fascinates me is how little a lot of people understand about money. Many automatically assume that centralised, government-controlled currencies, are infallible, but throughout history, we can see that there have been numerous occasions where economies have failed. The problems begin when the powers-that-be start debasing their money. The Romans and various medieval kings starting clipping their coins so that they could make more money. This was the first form of inflation, and we know that it never ends well because it has resulted in the end of empires. Fixed currencies are far more stable. When there isn't a debasement you are essentially on the gold standard which is what the Roman economy was like before they became greedy. Unfortunately, history keeps repeating itself. We often find that governments start on the gold standard, but then shift to a fiat currency (which is essentially debasing it). Fiat currencies are worthless as they are not backed by anything, and governments have the power to print as much as they want (or clip coins as much as they want as was done in the past). The problem is that the printing can often get out of control when times get hard, and this can lead to hyperinflation and the collapse of the currency. This has happened over and over again, but it seems nobody learns from past mistakes.

Bitcoin is completely decentralised, so nobody can control it, and it cannot be inflated. This is why a lot of fiat money is flowing into it, from billionaires to the average person on the street. Inflation is already out of control, and this is the reason many large companies are putting part of their treasury into it as well.

It's all based upon a belief. People believe the dollar has a value because the US government tells them it does. It's actually just a piece of paper. It only has a value because enough people believe it does, otherwise, it would default back to being just a piece of paper. Bitcoin is the same. If enough people believe it has a value, then it does. The key difference is that one can be controlled and manipulated, and the other can't.

This doesn't mean that Bitcoin is infallible. Any currency can fail. It's just clear that governments hate it because it takes too much power away from them and puts it back into the hands of the people. There's a lot of propaganda out there.

 

[Juan]

Fiat currencies are worthless as they are not backed by anything, and governments have the power to print as much as they want (or clip coins as much as they want as was done in the past).

That's why American central bankers think their US dollar is the rest of the world's problem. They just print more and oddly foreign governments finance the US by purchasing their debt.

In the US salaries seem to go up and in reality inflation is rampant, the price of housing has gone up like crazy, their stock indexes have gone up to levels never attained before, without any real basis...

So it must be great to go abroad with more and freshly printed US dollars (salaries rising) to buy stuff or invest in another country. The rest of the world went crazy and finances this.

 

[Juan]

Tesla released its first EV in 2009, Toyota will be releasing their first one this year. Tesla is way ahead. Tesla also has been investing a lot in software, such as self driving. The other car makers haven't done this, and they'll need to partner with a company like google in order to do so. And when Google finally goes to market with their tech, they may want to make their own cars, similar to what Apple is planning.

Another pain point for companies like Toyota (at least in the US), is dealerships. These lead to bad car buying experiences. I don't know anyone who likes going to the dealer. You feel like you're getting swindled. When my older half brother bought his first car, he bragged to my dad about getting "ADM". I forget how the sales person phrased it to him, but my dad was quick to point out that ADM stands for "added dealer markup", and was something dealers were required to list when selling a car. Inexperienced car buyers are unlikely to know what an ADM sticker on a car means, and it's just nuts that people have to deal with this kind of crap when buying a car.

Tesla has managed to mostly side-step the dealership process [1], much to their chagrin, but it's still amazing how many states limit direct to consumer sales. Once more of these laws fall, online purchasing will become a lot more popular and the other companies will have their hands tied because they've signed deals with dealerships.

I feel like I'm sounding very pro-Tesla. I'm not a huge Tesla person, but I do hate dealerships and I love that Tesla has mostly found a way around them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_US_dealership_disputes

Apparently Volkswagen's stock market rally is due to their projects for electrical vehicles...

Volkswagen invests 5 times more than Tesla.

 

[Juan]

Disaster strikes as Deliveroo becomes 'worst IPO in London's history'
Short sellers and bad advice both blamed as food delivery app falls more than a quarter on opening day

https://www.ft.com/content/bdf6ac6b-46b5-4f7a-90db-291d7fd2898d

"Deliveroo lost £224m last year in a highly competitive market and warned regulators a year ago that it had come close to bankruptcy."