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Oh, it's gonna be so much worse. NFTs mostly just ruined sad crypto bros who were dumb enough to buy a picture of an ape. Companies are investing heavily in generative AI projects without establishing a proper use case or even its basic efficacy. ChatGPTs newest iterations are getting worse; no one has a solution to hallucinations; the energy costs are astronomical; the entire process relies on plagiarism and copyright infringement, and even if you get by all of that, consumers hate it. AI ads are met derision or revulsion, and AI customer service is universally despised.
This isn't like NFTs. It's more like Facebook and VR. Sure, VR has its uses, but investing heavily in unnecessary and unwanted VR tools cost Facebook billions. The difference is that when this bubble bursts, instead of just hitting Facebook, this is going to hit every single tech company.
It so bad and its so pervasive. The only thing I can even equate it to is a forced meme.
Everyone I know shuts off AI features on their software, yet they keep adding it to more and more software. It's like the exact opposite of supply and demand.
My favorite was the security tools with their new AI data protection features. "We scan your data and put it in AI to keep it safe from AI!"
You do realize nfts were capable of so much more than pictures but because that was the lowest effort use case that's what the scammers started with, right?
Of course not, you just like shitting on things other people designate as safe to shit on
yeah if only the scammers could utilize the full potential of nfts lol
Why would they? They found a low energy and resource thing and never bothered looking deeper, just like all of you.
Here are some legit NFT use cases I posted earlier
I have never heard of one realistic and useful plan for NFTs. And I like to be contrarian whenever possible, since I'm kind of a smug prick. Hit me with 'em!
I'm just not sure what utility this has for a traveler. You don't need NFTs to implement transferrable plane tickets, though this does seem to try to ensure that the airline(?) gets a cut of any sales between passengers. It's the same pattern every time with NFTs, the only thing they seem to do is complicate matters while attempting to make a market out of thin air and take a cut of any related transactions.
No major US airline allows passengers to transfer tickets, and I don't think it's because they lack the technology to do so and NFTs would fill the void. If they did do this and it was possible to buy and sell plane tickets on an open blockchain based market, couldn't one just buy all of the tickets for popular flights and sell them at a markup?
You know a guy who first saw the new fangled automobiles once said 'That's all well and good, but where do you attach the horse?'
You don't NEED the internet, or digital transactions, or credit cards, or any of the other dozens of technological advancements in wealth management that have come about since the 50s either but they exist and make everyone's lives easier
Tickets as NFTs are a great idea because it absolutely prevents overbooking. Did you ever even consider that? Can't mint more NFTs than the plane has seats
You know a guy who first saw the new fangled automobiles once said 'That's all well and good, but where do you attach the horse?'
Sure, but this is not a positive argument for your position. This does not mean that everything with doubters is, in fact, good and misunderstood.
Tickets as NFTs are a great idea because it absolutely prevents overbooking. Did you ever even consider that? Can't mint more NFTs than the plane has seats
You can prevent overbooking without blockchain/NFTs. Airlines overbook because they want to, and presumably they would still want to do so if they adopted NFT tickets. There is nothing about using blockchain that would prevent this, they would just mint more NFTs than there are seats for each flight with the hope/expectation that a few ticket holders would not show up.
Sure, but this is not a positive argument for your position.
So now you're just going to discount the time I spent setting you up several use cases?
You can prevent overbooking without blockchain/NFTs. Airlines overbook because they want to,
And the reason for their overbooking, maximum profit, would be achieved seamlessly with a blockchain based ticketing system as there is no human input lag that causes double booking
You keep arguing that there are other ways of doing the things that the programatic nature of NFT contracts offer but NONE of them provide it all in one ridiculously transparent, unfalsifiable open source way that can be literally implemented on every platform
That's why I used the car and the horse example, you are the one saying: "Yes we already have horses already, why do we need a car? And how would a horse even USE a car you silly billy?"
The really sad thing is I'm waiting for a moment of realization from you that it is blatantly clear you are incapable of achieving. Pretending to be open minded is intellectually dishonest
So now you’re just going to discount the time I spent setting you up several use cases?
I didn't thoughtlessly discount anything, I'm just saying that while "some people didn't see how cars could be useful" is true, it does not mean that everything that has doubters is actually a misunderstood wonder. Plenty of things with fervent true believers that have been supposed to change everything were, in fact, duds.
And the reason for their overbooking, maximum profit, would be achieved seamlessly with a blockchain based ticketing system as there is no human input lag that causes double booking
Human input lag is not generally the cause of overbooking. The overbooking is intentional. NFTs have no unique ability to prevent it. This is not a tech problem, and so it cannot be solved by tech. I'm open to the possibility that airline tickets are just a bad example, of course, and it wasn't even an example you presented.
You keep arguing that there are other ways of doing the things that the programatic nature of NFT contracts offer but NONE of them provide it all in one ridiculously transparent, unfalsifiable open source way that can be literally implemented on every platform
This is all rather vague. The benefits are not obvious, so you need to be more specific.
That’s why I used the car and the horse example, you are the one saying: “Yes we already have horses already, why do we need a car? And how would a horse even USE a car you silly billy?”
You might be the one who is saying "the hyperloop will change travel forever!" Everything you're writing seems like vague motivated reasoning presupposing that NFTs are the solution to problems that you don't even seem to understand.
The really sad thing is I’m waiting for a moment of realization from you that it is blatantly clear you are incapable of achieving. Pretending to be open minded is intellectually dishonest
😏
So an airline wants to sell every single possible seat on every plane, but not have too many people on the plane on takeoff because buying off those customers costs money, but plenty of customers cancel last minute so it is inefficient to only hand out just as many tickets as seats. The number is arrived at by sophisticated behavior algorithms that aren't very accurate, but are more accurate than current human estimations
There are also 3rd party sellers that receive segments of ticket and can and do act as brokerages in a grey market that if the idiots in washington understood would be a lot more heavily regulated
What NFTs bring to the game: New classes of tickets: Quantum Tickets. They're not really tickets till you board.
So you have normal seating for the existing classes, 1st to coach that are NFT guaranteed and once you have your ticket you KNOW you will be getting that seat. You can also transfer ownership of this ticket yourself for any reason, automatically and seamlessly through the app
Now we have a pool of quantum travelers that for the savings of a bit on the price, enter a randomized allocation of the remaining unused tickets, late cancellations, and other non-check ins.
ALL seamless, all on the app. From the outside it looks like any other boarding situation but now we have a very good chance every single sold seat will be taken.
Can't do that with existing systems, the methods of transfer are platform locked and even ones that offer API refuse to play with other services.
NFTs make a universal contract language that any business can use to transfer assets automatically and programattically in such a way that CANNOT be falsified
There is literally no other open source, cross platform solution that even comes close to offering 30% of this
interesting, around here we do it with numbered seats. if you give each seat a specific number turns out you can match that with numbered tickets. somehow airlines don't make tickets with numbers that don't match with any seats. insane tech.
How magnificently naive if you think that's how it happens nowadays...
way to miss the point. literally everyone knows that they overbook. that's not because they're not using nfts. it's because they want to overbook. you said nfts would prevent overbooking. I say you can just prevent overbooking by not overbooking. it has nothing to do with nfts.
actually having to pay off extra passengers can get expensive, up to 10k per seat, so even one willing passenger without a seat is a loss, but they accept that possibility based on a curve over time of profit across all flights calculated on historical outcomes. Some flights will be overbooked and they accept that as the cost of making sure that other flights are more filled
The reason they overbook is that there is no human way to seamlessly transfer ticket ownership between pass holders down to the moment of boarding, across all venues and services where the tickets are sold.
NFTs add a platform that is universal, secure, and publicly accessible. No other database offers that
No major US airline allows passengers to transfer tickets
This is because US airlines are legally allowed to sell more seats than they have on a flight. Talk about overcomplication.
couldn't one just buy all of the tickets for popular flights and sell them at a markup?
One could, but there would be a risk of not being able to sell them. Airlines would be taking a cut so they don't mind, and they sell all their seats.
The most be something I don’t understand. Why would I buy flight tickets from a third party? Is there a market for this?
If you book through a travel agency or website, you are already buying 3rd party
NFTs would prevent 3rd parties from overselling flights (this is a big problem actually and is borderline fraud)
The idea is to allow efficient resale of airline seats (and for the airline to take a cut of that secondary market). Also proves to buyers that their flight is nor overbooked.
I'm not sure the fact that NFTs are used by the third worst airline in the world, which the Argentinian government just fined $300K for excessive cancelations, is actually a plus for NFTs.
None of that is the fault of the NFT ticket system.
Yeah, but if your only example of NFTs being useful is that one of the worst airlines in the industry adopted them, that's not a great argument. "Shitty company uses system, so system must be useful," doesn't really track.
Someone has to go first. A low cost airline adopted them to avoid the hassles and inefficiencies of overbooking flights.
There are also lots of B2B uses of NFTs, mainly around supply chain and energy tracking, but I thought a B2C example would resonate better here.
Well, first, I'm very skeptical of the NFTs' ability to resolve overbooking. Overbooking is a choice airlines make to maximize profits. We could force airlines to stop overbooking tomorrow if we wanted, and they could try to prevent losses by making tickets non-refundable or charging extra for refundable tickets (tactics they already use in addition to overbooking). It seems to me the main problem is that capitalism motivates airlines to maximize profits instead of transporting people to their destination. The obvious solution to me is to nationalize the airlines, not create a third-party aftermarket for airline tickets.
Also, the article you shared actually makes no mention of overbooking. I have to assume the solution being suggested by NFT tickets is something along the lines of, "We sell only the amount of tickets on the flight, and while we won't refund your ticket, if you can't make your flight, you're free to sell your ticket to whoever you like."
Seems like a decent enough idea, except that you need to go through the third-party NFT company to sell your ticket, you may lose value on your ticket or even not find a buyer, and you still need to make any changes to your ticket 72 hours in advance, meaning it would be useless in resolving no-shows from flight delays. You also wind up paying a transaction fee to the NFT company and the airline for any changes you make, so really it seems what's being suggested here is that, instead of being able to get a refund on your ticket, you do the job of selling your own ticket on the free-market, and both the ticket company and airline profit from your labor. And again, since this article makes no mention of overbooking, I have to assume Flybondi will continue that practice anyway.
I also have to point out that this article was written by and unnamed, "crypto believer," and self-published in Medium by an NFT company. It's not exactly a great source.
All that being said, I'm sure there are uses for NFTs, just like their are uses for generative AI and VR. My point isn't that they're useless, just that their uses are overstated and create a financial bubble. I can see how generative AI might be useful first-draft copywriting, but it's not capable of replacing a writers room, or even giving accurate search results. VR is great for gaming, but no matter how much money Zuckerberg threw at it, it couldn't do anything for meetings that Zoom didn't do better. I'm not sure what the B2B uses of NFTs are, but I believe you when you tell me they exist; they just couldn't create value for random JPEGs. The NFT collapse bankrupted a bunch of crypto-bros, Zuckerberg's VR investment cost Facebook $60 billion, and the generative AI bubble is going to hit every single tech company and the stock market as a whole.
Overbooking is a choice airlines make to maximize profits. It seems to me the main problem is that capitalism motivates airlines to maximize profits instead of transporting people to their destination.
Agreed. That's why it can only start with low cost airlines outside the US.
Also, the article you shared actually makes no mention of overbooking.
Unfortunately we can only speculate why they chose NFTs over traditional tickets.
I also have to point out that this article was written by and unnamed, "crypto believer," and self-published in Medium by an NFT company. It's not exactly a great source.
Don't shoot the messenger. There are other sources available via Google. And the airline website describes it as ticketing 3.0
My point isn't that they're useless, just that their uses are overstated and create a financial bubble.
Agreed. Monkey pictures were genius marketing but absolutely useless. A porche 911 NFT isn't much better. But real b2b use cases do exist (supplychain, green energy, shipping etc.).
Zuckerberg's VR investment cost Facebook $60 billion.
I think his gamble will pay off for AR. Glasses will be mainstream and will make phones obsolete.
Well, I at least partially agree with most of that. I would say that Flybondi's use of NFT tickets still seems like an excuse to outsource a large portion of their customee services while still taking a 2% cut of any flight changes, with minumal (if any) customer benefit. I remember while ago hearing that concert ticket vendors were experimenting with NFT tickets, and I guess I could see the use case their, but I'd still say that has trade offs with physical tickets, and could best be described as a lateral move. I'd be curious to read any info on how B2B NFTs are used, if you have any links.
I do have disagree on Zuckerberg's VR gamble, though. AR is significantly different than VR, and he went hard on full-blown VR tech. He may be able to adapt it to AR going forward, but that's probably going to be salvaging a loss for at least the short to mid-term. Even if it does give him a strong leg up on AR, that's not really his gambling paying off, that's placing a bad bet and getting lucky anyway.
At the very basic level NFTs programatically enact contract law in a perfectly transparent way that cannot be faked
The use cases for this aren't normally apparent to the average consumer because of habit more than anything. I will give some use cases
A limited access club can mint NFTs for membership, allowing the holders to personally trade their access in a transparent way and provides an encrypted method functionally equivalent to a One Time Pad (One of the most, if not the MOST secure encryption method in existence) so building access can be transferred instantly between rights holders, as well as providing a secure inherent messaging between members
This can also be generalized for apartment access. Need a place to stay? You can purchase the tenant NFT from the current renter, and have access to the property securely within seconds
I use these examples because they are human friendly but the BEST use of NFTs is programatic resource management for automated purchasing systems (which are going to be a FUCKING HUGE THING now that LLMs have got access to the big money), for example:
Lets say a LLM is tasked with constantly sourcing the cheapest source of tin for industrial processes, and that all the tin producers set lots of raw material as NFTs. (In this case it isn't an ideal use as the lots are not unique, but the underlying programatic contract execution doesn't care and treats them as unique) so the LLM calculates shipping and price and automatically buys lots of NFTs to match the need, which ship out from a port halfway around the world that afternoon
Now 2 days into the 12 day shipping time, the LLM notices that there is a sudden need for tin closer to the current ship location than the initial destination and contacts the LLM of the company that posted the tin need, and offers the lots of NFTs on the ship, the other LLM agrees and the contract is made, the ownership of those lots are altered, the shipping manifest of the cargo vessel is updated and the shipping route may or may not be altered based on the judgment of the LLM handling the cargo ship. All of this happens in a matter of seconds. Once the transaction is complete, the original LLM now goes and searches for another source of tin
The biggest benefit of NFTs is reducing the friction of complex logistic changes allowing companies to find advantages that pass too quickly for humans to notice or make best use of in a way that can be legally as binding as any other signed contract in a court of law.
There are other benefits and use cases, some silly and some abstract but NFTs are so much more than a link to an png on a file server somewhere but that's ALL people like you will ever know them for because scammers ruined the name while real devs were still working on useful products.
A limited access club can mint NFTs for membership, allowing the holders to personally trade their access in a transparent way and provides an encrypted method functionally equivalent to a One Time Pad (One of the most, if not the MOST secure encryption method in existence) so building access can be transferred instantly between rights holders, as well as providing a secure inherent messaging between members
You can do this with a database.
This can also be generalized for apartment access. Need a place to stay? You can purchase the tenant NFT from the current renter, and have access to the property securely within seconds
You can do this with a PIN code.
Lets say a LLM is tasked with constantly sourcing the cheapest source of tin for industrial processes, and that all the tin producers set lots of raw material as NFTs. (In this case it isn’t an ideal use as the lots are not unique, but the underlying programatic contract execution doesn’t care and treats them as unique) so the LLM calculates shipping and price and automatically buys lots of NFTs to match the need, which ship out from a port halfway around the world that afternoon
Now 2 days into the 12 day shipping time, the LLM notices that there is a sudden need for tin closer to the current ship location than the initial destination and contacts the LLM of the company that posted the tin need, and offers the lots of NFTs on the ship, the other LLM agrees and the contract is made, the ownership of those lots are altered, the shipping manifest of the cargo vessel is updated and the shipping route may or may not be altered based on the judgment of the LLM handling the cargo ship. All of this happens in a matter of seconds. Once the transaction is complete, the original LLM now goes and searches for another source of tin
You can do this with databases.
The biggest benefit of NFTs is reducing the friction of complex logistic changes allowing companies to find advantages that pass too quickly for humans to notice or make best use of in a way that can be legally as binding as any other signed contract in a court of law.
In any situation where you might be tempted to call an NFT "legally binding", it's not the NFT that's binding, it's a contract, and the NFT is just a proxy for the contract. The NFT adds no value.
You can do this with databases.
Blockchain is a database. One that everyone automatically can access. The advantage is that you don't need an admin console. There is no complex on-board and control of users.
FUCKING THANK YOU!
You can do this with a database.
Yes because blockchain is a database. What it brings that other databases CANNOT is 1) Unfalsifiability baked in to the product at a fundamental level and 2) A universal framework for enacting contracts that are secure enough to use in court as a legally binding document (adobe paid and passed on to the customer a ridiculous cost to make their product compliant with this, for blockchain it is already baked in
You can do this with a PIN code.
A horse will take you to the grocery store too, but the NFT of the apartment also comes with the legal documents that show you are the valid resident unlike just a pin code. This also protects the customer from brokers and services from using illegal subletting as you can only get the 'pin' from the last valid owner, and that access can be traced back to the initial moment the property entered the blockchain. Also in court, discovery is stupidly easy as all transactions are public and secure
You can do this with databases.
Yes and every company has their own database system and almost NONE of them talk to each other and none of them are public ledgers and absolutely none of them operate on consensus polling, meaning trust needs to be established directly, custom APIs need to be crafted for every paired trade instance. Nearly every blockchain comes with that baked in, and has been actively tested and attacked for a decade and a half with zero failure of the underlying blockchain technology.
it’s not the NFT that’s binding, it’s a contract, and the NFT is just a proxy for the contract. The NFT adds no value.
The NFT IS a contract, this is what you are missing, and the value it adds is immense which I have demonstrated thoroughly in counter to every weakass claim you have made and you still adamantly refuse to admit your failures
You are so welded to your meme identity it blinds you to a useful and functional thing
A horse will take you to the grocery store too, but the NFT of the apartment also comes with the legal documents that show you are the valid resident unlike just a pin code. This also protects the customer from brokers and services from using illegal subletting as you can only get the ‘pin’ from the last valid owner, and that access can be traced back to the initial moment the property entered the blockchain. Also in court, discovery is stupidly easy as all transactions are public and secure
Great. You know what, I agree that those are, at least in theory, real advantages.
Question: how much value would this realistically add? When was the last time the Average Joe had a problem with illegal subletting or a complicated discovery process? I know I've never had these problems.
Also, this is all coming with a new attack vector---malicious smart contracts. In a court of law, I can go before a judge and argue that the terms of a contract are unfair, and they're more likely to side with me, a non-sophisticated actor. "Smart contracts" do not give you any such recourse. I don't want to live in a world where cold machine logic overrides human judgement, and I think most ordinary people feel the same way.
The NFT IS a contract
No, it is not. A signed piece of paper is not a contract, either, even though we often refer to it as such metonymically. A contract is a legally-binding agreement. It may be represented and recorded in some form, but it doesn't have to be. There's no formal specification for legal contracts. Lawyers/businesses like written contracts in standard legal language because it helps with reliability and predictability, but nothing says a contract has to look like that. Two parties can meet and agree verbally on some terms, without writing anything down, and that can count as a contract.
Yes, NFTs have this thing called "smart contracts", but the relationship between "smart contracts" and actual legal contracts is not one-to-one: not every smart contract is a legal contract. More importantly, though, if crypto advocates' claims are valid, then it shouldn't matter whether a smart contract is a legal contract. A legal contract has an external enforcement mechanism---namely, the courts. In contrast, a smart contract is supposed to be self-executing. This is the whole point of the "code is law" slogan.
If code is law, then the courts aren't necessary, and it doesn't matter whether an NFT is a legal contract. If code is not law---in other words, if the law is law---then the courts are still the ultimate enforcement mechanism, and the NFT itself is pointless. It could have just been a digital record stored in two databases, and it would have been equally legally binding with much less hassle.
You are so welded to your meme identity it blinds you to a useful and functional thing
In order to prove that crypto is not nearly as useful as crypto advocates have claimed, all I need to do is point to generative AI. I think the value of generative AI in the short term is overblown, but nonetheless, just look at how it's been adopted by basically every tech company in the world just a few years after ChatGPT's release. Now look at how many companies are using crypto in mission-critical contexts more than two decades after Bitcoin was invented. Sure, a few companies hyped crypto adoption in order to pump their stock back when crypto was The Thing, but how much do we hear about all that stuff these days?
Crypto is a solution in search of a problem.
For once it would be nice for crypto bigots to actually have their own ideas instead of parroting ridiculously wrong meme talking points
When was the last time the Average Joe had a problem with illegal subletting or a complicated discovery process?
There are tons of processes that the 'average joe' isn't aware of that affects their life. Illegal subletting drives up rent prices and causes fire hazards (that affects EVERYONE), I have had friends who rented an illegal sublet without realizing it and were thrown out by the original owner.
Illegal subletting is a big enough problem in my state that the state has a literal funded task force to address it. If everyone adopted NFTs as ownership marks, this task force would be largely unneeded.
Also: you are cherry picking like a mofo
The NFT IS a contract
No, it is not.
Yes, it is, as all parties can clearly be identified, the document cannot be altered after creation without the participation of both parties, and is a matter of public historic record.
The PROBLEM is you think that I'm talking about copyright law, which is what 90% of the blog posts on NFT contract legality covers, and I'm not at all but property law.
More importantly, though, if crypto advocates’ claims are valid, then it shouldn’t matter whether a smart contract is a legal contract.
This sentence alone has convinced me you really don't have any clue what you are talking about, and you are just using every meme you know to create a firehose of lies to protect your fragile ego.
Just accept you made the wrong choice about crypto based on some funny memes and zero understanding.
Yeah, I heard about most of the supposed uses in the 10 paragraphs you wrote. Anyway, since none of those came to pass, and instead a bunch or people went bankrupt buying pictures of monkeys, I'd say the usefulness of NFTs has been determined.
You know, when reddit first started, no one minded long replies, in fact they were considered a mark of excellence and understanding. Long, accurate replies were almost always the top comment in non-meme subs.
Then smart phones became popular and every idiot gained access to the web
Suddenly, around 2012, you started seeing comments disparaging long replies as being 'nerdy' or 'tryhard'. On FUCKING reddit, the HOME of the nerds!
It was a real emotional whiplash to me for a place that once welcomed detailed discussion to start mocking users for creating quality reply content
That's when I realized the internet was fucked because of people like you.
You know, when reddit first started, no one minded long replies, in fact they were considered a mark of excellence and understanding.
First of all, thank you for this. It is quite possibly the funniest sentence I've ever read on the internet, and I will be laughing at it for the rest of the day. The gamatical errors really give it an extra layer. Absolute perfection.
Second, quantity isn't quality, especially when it comes to writing. If it was, editor wouldn't be a job. The length of your comment doesn't change the fact that it is mostly pro-NFT arguments I heard in 2023, none of which materialized. Oh, NFTs could give you instant access to an apartment? That's super helpful in a world where lockboxes don't exist!
Finally, despite your assumption, I don't actually think long comments are bad; I just left a very long comment to someone who said something that was actually interesting. You also assumed I was insulting NFTs because I, "just like shitting on things other people designate as safe to shit on." But I actually didn't insult NFTs, I just pointed out that it bankrupted a bunch of crypto-bros. Which isn't an opinion, its just a thing that happened. If you want to know what I actually think of NFTs, I answered that when I replied to the more interesting commenter. You're welcome to go read it instead of making incorrect assumptions.
Anyway, if you don't like the quality of the replies you're getting, maybe consider the quality of the comments you're leaving. Maybe you shouldn't expect someone to listen to you or engage with you in good faith when you start off by insulting them. Maybe the problem is you, not everyone else.
hit every single tech company.
and institutional investors who steward pleb money... so its going hurt real.
Oh yeah, it's gonna be massive. I don't know if this will be as bad as the subprime mortgage crisis, but it's gonna come soon, and with all the tariff instability, it's gonna hit while the economy is already weak. It's gonna suck.