uglynft - Tumblr blog

[uglynft]

NFTs Explained Through a Zoomer's Boomer Mind

I and many others like me who are zoomers with a boomer-like mind when it comes to some technological advances have become aware of NFTs but are not exactly sure what they are. I've seen it become a huge debate all over social media sites like Twitter and Reddit. I've even seen some of my own friends become involved with NFTs whether it's purchasing their own and changing their profile pictures into an NFT they just bought or creating their own NFTs and trying to sell them online for a profit. Being involved in the artist community myself, I've seen a large debate on whether or not NFTs are good or bad. I've decided to delve deep into what NFTs exactly are and whether or not it's good for the artist community.

NFTs stand for "non-fungible tokens". The name doesn't really exactly help. What it basically is is a sort of certificate of authenticity for something online. This means that you have the exclusive unique ownership of that online content. This doesn't exactly mean that there is an inherent value to that NFT, just that you own it. This may be confusing as to why people think this is a bad thing. Basically, NFTs rely on cryptocurrencies which causes carbon emissions which is very bad for the environment. NFTs are relied on cryptocurrencies due to security purposes so there isn't any way around this. It is also a way to be used for tax evasion or money laundering which is a big reason why so many celebrities are getting into this. Blogger Artstyle mentions "When seeing a traditional artwork valued at say $100m, the investor doesn't believe the painting itself is worth anything like that price. They believe its ability to possibly be sold to another investor, who hopes to perform the same greater fool theory scam is worth that price."

As mentioned before, there is no real value to an NFT. People are putting a fake value on it themselves to create artificial scarcity. It also is not actually helping artists which is a lot of people's excuses as to why they're buying NFTs. An artist, Qing Han, was well known for her Japanese anime-inspired artwork based off of the series Cardcaptor Sakura. She, unfortunately, passed away in February 2020. This did not stop strangers online to claim her artwork as theirs and sell it online as NFTs. You would think these blockchains and cryptocurrencies would be able to tell that these people did not have rightful ownership of these artworks. This does not help artists like people claim they do.

After doing my own research, I learned that most people were basically right: NFTs are not good. I've seen a lot of cons more than pros. I believe even the creator of those ugly monkey NFTs ran away with millions of dollars and deleted all traces of him online.

It's very hard to think as to why NFTs would be good for us and for what purpose they could bring. What is preventing people from copying and pasting an image or just simply downloading it? So what if you own some sort of fake crypto certificate that you own a digital piece? Is that physically stopping people from downloading it themselves? Are the police going to arrest me for downloading it? I highly doubt it any time soon.

I would still love to hear differing opinions on NFTs. Do you think it's good? Do you think it's bad? Have you seen any positives from NFTs? Have you owned a hideous monkey NFT profile picture? Let me know.

Thank you for reading.