The developer behind the NFT project, 'Evil Ape,' suddenly disappeared along with its Twitter account, website, and $2.7 million. https://t.co/EM7cnTOyfA
— VICE (@VICE) October 5, 2021
You knew he was an Evil Ape when you gave him your money... Per Kotaku:
… More than 4,000 NFTs in the “Evolved Apes” offering have been sold since they first went on sale a week ago, according to Vice. Their “origin” comes from several hideous JPGs, which are already a rip-off of the more successful “Bored Ape” series. NFT creator Evil Ape promises not only would buyers receive a “unique NFT trapped inside a lawless land” but also cash giveaways, and an accompanying fighting video game to go along with the useless, ugly-ass images.
Then, surprise! On Friday Evil Ape bailed, shutting down the Evolved Apes website and taking its Twitter account with them. They also vanished with the $2.7 million they’d raised by selling idiots a jpg that looks like someone ordered a Gorillaz poster on Wish…
Please note here that the artist behind the images, literally the only person who did any real work involved in the NFT, was not paid. And that despite everything that has happened, hundreds of sales have taken place since the move (over $50,000 worth), each one netting Evil Ape 4% in royalties…
NFTs are so monumentally absurd it beggars belief.
There are many NFT blockchains.
So you could "own" an NFT on one and someone else could "own" *that exact same NFT* on another.
Who's to say what's correct? There's no central NFT authority.
— Michael Paulauski (@mike10010100) October 6, 2021
Also, the article referring to schmucks who bought URLs pointing to JPEGs as "investors" is really humoring them in a way that I think is unnecessary.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) October 6, 2021
But spinning money out of hope & algorithms is a recognized form of religious belief now, and social norms require we treat its believers as something more than dupes for the most amoral among them. From an illuminating thread:
Lets finally talk about how NFTs are a giant scam. (1/) ?
— Stephen Diehl (@smdiehl) October 6, 2021
First let’s talk about what the NFT market actually is. Unlike buying bonds, equities, real estate, or actual art you’re not buying something with any tangible existence, rights or utility. You’re buying an expensive entry in someone else’s database. (2/)
There is one comparable market to NFTs: The Star Naming Market.
Back in the 90s some entrepreneurs found you could convince the public to buy “rights” to name yet-unnamed stars after their loved ones by selling entries in an unofficial register…
(3/)
…
Thing with star registries is they’re not unique and don’t actually convey ownership. The entire grift is in convincing other people that it has meaning. The value of naming is a star is precisely how much bullshit your loved one is willing to buy in this enterprise (5/)
…
NFTs are the evolution of this grift in a more convoluted form. Instead of allegedly buying a star, you’re allegedly buying a JPEG from an artist. Except you’re not buying the image, you’re buying a digitally signed URL to the image. (7/)Except now instead of buying your digital star with dollars there’s a second leg to the scam. You have to purchase the star by exchanging your dollars for some weird token whose value fluctuates on some secondary market. (8/)
…
The core of the NFT grift is outsourcing the marketing for this artificially scare registrar to artists who are forced to pay large sums of money upfront to list URLs to their artwork in the hopes of recovering their lost costs. (10/)
Artists are like hamsters in a wheel that powers a giant casino for crypto bros to gamble on these signed URLs in the hopes that they can flip their purchase around to greater and greater fools for a profit. (11/) https://t.co/GavyASrdhZ
— Stephen Diehl (@smdiehl) October 6, 2021
Much more at the link.
Lmao NFTs are like framing the receipt for the purchase of the right to say "I own this Funko Pop".
Unless you *really* like the look of said receipt (maybe it's a super fancy certificate and is in itself beautiful art!), there's not much inherent value in an NFT. https://t.co/fqzzOruEbq
— Michael Paulauski (@mike10010100) October 6, 2021
Starboard Tack
Tulip bulbs made more sense. At least they grew flowers.
Chetan Murthy
An interesting take on the entire NFT scene:
https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2021/06/the-nfts-aura-or-why-is-nft-art-so-ugly.html
https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2021/07/the-nft-rube-goldberg-machine-or-why-is.html
This isn’t at all positive about NFTs, and the writer is pretty clear about that. But the writer approaches the NFT scene from the POV of “is it art?” And …. well, it’s great, really great, really, really really GREAT! They’re clearly completely unimpressed, but they’re also a decent writer, so they make the experience of shitting all over the entire scene a real joy.
I really enjoyed the reads.
James E Powell
What can you say about people who fall for this stuff?
Poe Larity
I bet you laughed about Bitcoin. You just don’t get it (like .com)!
As there is apparently some balloon-a-versary soon, SNL dropped Radioheads 2000 appearance on the uintertubes. Well worth watching unless you’re a normie. With a brass band… because why the f**k not?
debbie
Link.
SpaceUnit
It would be so wrong to not take these fools’ money
ETA: Just as it would be wrong to not point and laugh.
Anne Laurie
The classic formulation went: Overeducated for their intelligence.
Smart enough to learn the magic words; not smart enough to understand the difference between ‘magic’ and ‘practical’.
Baud
That’s how I’d like to disappear from Balloon Juice.
NotMax
“Eggz-cellent.”
–
Montgomery BurnsCharles Ponzi.
Omnes Omnibus
@Starboard Tack:
And you could eat them if needed.
Baud
I wonder how much I could get for an NFT of Ivermectin?
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: you surely already know this little gem: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/
debbie
@Poe Larity:
Couldn’t they get a work table for the guy on the right?
Matt McIrvin
I don’t really get the appeal of Funko Pops either, you’d have to ask my daughter, but at least you have a physical tchotchke you can put on your mantelpiece. I could see how people who liked to look at them would want to decorate their rooms with them.
Here, the act of ownership doesn’t really get you anything that anyone couldn’t have. Nobody’s keeping anyone from looking at the JPEGs, as far as I can tell.
SpaceUnit
@Matt McIrvin:
I get the appeal of Funko Pops . . . sort of.
But if I found one of those ugly-ass ape images on my computer, tablet or phone I’d pay to have it removed.
daryljfontaine
@Poe Larity: Awesome. Really want the Idioteque performance from the same show now.
D
Mike in NC
Not to be confused with the evil ape that lives at Mar-a-Lago.
Rusty
When you buy an NFT you get nothing. Nothing. Anyone can still download the digital art. The creator retains the copyright. It’s a ridiculous bragging right at best, but really anyone could claim they own the NFT. And it burns computer power to is bad for the environment. Ridiculous.
HumboldtBlue
I don’t understand any of this shit, thank goodness there’s a full sports slate.
dr. bloor
@Baud: Is MAGA swag an acceptable form of payment?
Aaron Rodgers Mustache
@Starboard Tack: or green bay packers stock.
raven
@HumboldtBlue: No fucking kiddin! What was Stafford doing????
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin:
That two-parter appraising NFTs via “is it art?” makes the (I think quite cutting) observation that the NFT grifters start from the position that immense amounts of art are never physically in the possession of their owners: they reside in places like Switzerland’s Geneva Free Port (second link). So really, it’s all just an
“investment”speculation dodge. From which these grifters conclude “if they can get away with that, why can’t I?”For the reality-based, it’s ridiculous on so many levels. I mean, would I want a reproduction of the Mona Lisa in my house? Sure, why not? If I can’t tell it from the original, why wouldn’t I want it? The only people who’d want the original, are those who assign value to owning “the real thing”. But if the real thing is indistinguishable from a copy, why would anybody *else* care about the difference. Well, only if you think that the original has more resale value than a knock-off. And hence, we’re back to “speculation”.
SpaceUnit
@Chetan Murthy:
Actually, I think we’re just back to “stupid”.
Poe Larity
I missed the Cowboy Bebop Netflix intro.
Ah, one can hope, but live action so many fails.
Chetan Murthy
@SpaceUnit: (1) Yes, the latecomers to NFTs are definitely *stupid*
(2) but I think the people who started it off: they’re classic grifters (only updated for the information age)
Then again, that is (as I’m sure you agree) the case for all the cryptocurrency proponents.
raven
We were at a “kickoff” event for the dog parade and there was a couple there who were at the vet when they brought Artemis in. They are still shaken by how bad she was and SO happy to see her now. Did our hearts good.
HumboldtBlue
@raven:
No clue but I do know those Seattle unis are an abomination.
raven
@HumboldtBlue: And the cheerleaders have em too!
Keith P.
People getting ripped off via the Internet is news now?
SpaceUnit
@Chetan Murthy:
I do agree.
Yeah, I’ll raise a glass to these grifters. And their victims aren’t widows and orphans . . . they’re mostly morons with too much money. It would be foolish to allow them to keep it.
HumboldtBlue
@raven:
They do, at least there is far less uniform on the cheerleaders.
dr. bloor
@HumboldtBlue:
A distant second to Eduardo Rodriguez’s start tonight.
Chetan Murthy
@SpaceUnit:
We will end up holding the bag, b/c the Fed will not allow the banks to fail when these bets eventually go pear-shaped. So sadly, it’ll be widows, orphans, and retirees who pay for this.
Fuck me.
HumboldtBlue
@dr. bloor:
Good point, Betty’s happy, however.
SpaceUnit
@Chetan Murthy:
I admit that I had not considered this. But are mainstream banks and financial institutions really getting involved with this nonsense?
I think it’s just a lot of fringe hipster money-boys. Fuck them.
Chetan Murthy
@SpaceUnit:
I don’t follow this shit closely [why would I, or you, or any of us?] but I trust my friend a lot when it comes to carefully-evidenced, carefully-reasoned conclusions. And I’ll quote from a recent email to me about this:
Again, he’s not a proponent: it’s just another trade to him.
Another Scott
ICYMI, …
Yup.
Seems like a pretty big deal, no? Maybe someone at FTFNYT will release a book about it in 2023 or so…
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: BTW, that was part of a reply to a question about China banning crypto. He was pretty blase’ about that: thought it was good for a 15% dip (buying oppty! (seriously)) and not much more.
zhena gogolia
@raven: That’s great.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: Made me look…
Treasury.gov:
It’s something, anyway.
And probably another reason why so many of the MotU-types are against the RB. [eta] But this is in the BIF??! Hmm…
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
@SpaceUnit:
No worries. As Alan Greenspan assured us, banksters would never get involved with reckless risks for profit.
SpaceUnit
@Chetan Murthy:
I’ll admit that Bitcoin has been given too much leash, and that it’s not so terribly different from NFT’s.
And yet, NFT’s still seem like they’re just bait for all the would-be Martin Shkreli’s of the world. Re-examine those digital images we’re talking about. This is clearly a clown’s game.
Mary G
I bought a bunch of rare-ish succulents on Etsy this week and almost all the vendors day they.accept bitcoin and.other crytocurrencys. Seems crazy to me
Tony Gerace
A while ago I asked my Millennial son how on earth people can be stupid enough to fall for such an obvious scam. His theory is that the “market” for this nonsense is kept afloat by trust fund kids who have more money than they know what to do with. Sounds plausible.
Jess
Mario Cattelan already did a better version of this with “Comedian.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8sB25IL4o&t=2s
Ken
Look, it’s easy to mock the people who sent their ready cash and (probably) credit card and Social Security numbers to a web-based company with “Evil” in the name, in exchange for a string of bits in a Mongolian server farm somewhere that gave them sole ownership of an image that’s freely downloadable from giphy. But when you… but if… but…
There’s really not a “but”, is there?
SpaceUnit
@Tony Gerace:
Amen.
Uncle Omar
Off Topic Alert! I just saw on the Internet that AT &T is funding OAN. Of course the suits at AT&T deny it. Since this is from the Guardian no one in the mainstream will follow up.
Benw
I still think we should sell Balloon Juice NFTs. People can bid, not for the actual commenter, but for the concept of that commenters presence on BJ. Couldn’t we get millions for the online concept of Baud, Kay, Omnes, etc? It’s worth a shot
delk
@Poe Larity: wow. I saw the 2001 tour. Was so cool to hear those tunes live.
Walker
@Rusty: NFTs have exactly one use. Magic the Gathering cards (and their like). Anyone could print and replicate a MTG card. But to play in an official tournament, you must have possession of an unforged card. Because tournaments have prize money this drives the cost of rare cards in collectible card games. So NFTs are an attempt to bring that paper phenomenon to the digital space.
Now you might wonder why this requires NFTs. Why not have a central server for authentication?Because players want to buy and sell these cards, and Wizards (Hasbro) would never support a website where these could be bought and sold for real money. Wizards has gone out of its way to pretend that the secondary market of Magic does not exist. That is because if they were to acknowledge (much less support) a secondary market, then there would be a strong argument that Magic is gambling and Wizards would need to be financially regulated. The lawyers at Wizards will not allow that.
So NFTs are an attempt to replicate what exists in the paper space. A game where you need authenticated tokens to play, but one in which the manufacturer is unwilling to support a secondary market.
This is literally the only application of NFTs that make sense to me. And ultimately, like everything else in crypto, is just an excuse to get around financial regulation.
cain
I keep thinking that if we take the union of Trump supporters, ivermectin lovers and NFT purchasers that there will likely not be much overlap.
NotMax
@Uncle Omar
Discussed a bit within a thread yesterday. Link to the original Reuters report.
NotMax
Topically, it’s a scheme just begging for abuse.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: Since I just bought a car I was reading about cars a bit, and one article was about how many of those astronomically expensive high-performance supercars never get driven at all, because absurdly low mileage is a part of their value. They’re too valuable to drive. They get bought by people who just hide them away in garages just to own them, or sometimes put them on static display. In many cases, they’re not people who have the skills to drive the cars without killing themselves anyway, because these cars are completely absurd vehicles to drive out on the road.
Of course, for a car, fetishizing low mileage is kind of a problem, because a car that sits still for too long destroys itself by not moving (as I know all too well from pandemic experience). So sometimes these people are careful to run the engine for a few minutes a week. And sometimes they’re not. One zillionaire bought one new and built it into his living room.
Sure Lurkalot
@raven: Match made!
Ken
“What, never?”
“No, never!”
“What, never?”
“With noticeably rare exceptions!”
— “I am the Chairman of the Fed Re-serve”, HMS Fed Reserve
Another Scott
I didn’t notice this at the time.
(That’s Manchin behind Schumer.)
(The GQPers are pouting because Schumer was so very mean to them after the debt ceiling vote.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Peale
Randy Arozarena should just take the regular season off each year and play in October.
Hoppie
@Walker: Many years ago I started spending money I barely had to buy original sf/fantasy art. Not prints, originals. Only things I wanted to look at. It’s now a very respectable collection, but I wanted stuff I WANTED TO LOOK AT, and it serves its purpose. Our son will do well when he sells it off, but I love LOOKING at it. Also knowing other folks may have prints but I HAVE the original. Venality is not a crime.
Anyone who buys “art” for any other reason is a speculator or a fool.
NotMax
@raven
Perhaps something you’ll want to keep an eye out for later on this month.
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin:
I think it was AL who told the story of going into Williams-Sonoma to buy a $200 copper pot, with hard-saved money (or maybe gift money), and the clerk asking her “Please tell me you’re buying this to actually use“, b/c the previous customers had bought an entire set of copper pots and paid for unremovable varnish: they’d planned to hang on the wall of their too-twee-for-decency remodeled kitchen.
ArchTeryx
@Poe Larity: They gave off a serious Devo vibe in that appearance.
Peale
@Chetan Murthy: real zillionaires can afford to hire a scullery maid to remove patinas. Real zillionaires do not dabble in automatic dishwashers.
I bet their silverware is made from tin and spray paint.
HumboldtBlue
@Peale:
He’s fun to watch.
Hoppie
@Peale: Real zillionaires on the empty-v…
Chetan Murthy
@Peale: Now that I go to search for, I can’t find AL’s comment about this. I could *swear* it was her, on this blog, with a candlestick. Could. Swear.
swbarnes2
RaflW
Is the scam even a heist?
I know very little about NFT ‘art’, but my sense of this is that people bought some really, really expensive tickets to a gallery opening, and then the gallery shut after opening night. Crime? Probably not. Fools bought useless crap? Probably.
Feathers
Something missing from the discussion is that so much of tech companies today is just grift. Uber has been losing millions of dollars a day, while destroying industries that provided working class jobs. Amazon has been a Wall Street darling since it began. It’s sales side has never made a profit. Amazon’s money is made via the AWS web services hosting. Meanwhile, malls are dead, bookstores are dying, so many profitable companies gone. So whatever you may say about the NFT/crypto dudes, they are trodding a well worn path.
On Funkos. Every time I find myself wanting to buy a Funko, I remember that it’s never just one Funko. There will always be a cuter one next season. The one I really want will always be one I didn’t buy. Even if I started a collective.
SpaceUnit
@swbarnes2:
Yeah. It’s not my thing, but I get it. It’s cool.
Another Scott
@Another Scott:
Short video clip. He might have just been wiping his face.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@daryljfontaine:
Here you go: Radiohead, “Idioteque.”
RaflW
@Poe Larity: Pretty darn sure I watched that live at the time. Thank you for pointing this out!!
@Steeplejack: OMG, yes
And holy hell, the lyrics. “Both sides!”
Another Scott
@Feathers: Walmart was killing retail before Amazon (and it’s still vastly bigger at retail than Amazon). Retail has always been cut-throat.
Remember Montgomery Ward? JCPenney? Sears?
Malls have always been boom-and-bust. Macy’s and Federated bought out a bunch of older regional department stores/mall anchors long before Amazon got huge.
Business is change, and always has been.
If it wasn’t Amazon, it would have been something else – the advantages of the web and not being tied to fickle retail locations are too compelling.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: The “Your comment is awaiting moderation” monster is out and about again.
(sigh)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@raven:
That’s cool.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Misspelled my e-mail address – one comment and one trashable follow-up in the dungeon.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
phdesmond
@Jess:
amazing!
Kent
Talking Points Memo discussed this. Consensus seems to be that it was business leverage against extortion by Fox News. Fox News was extorting AT&T and other cable providers with really high subscription rates because they were the *ONLY* conservative news show and could charge what they wanted because all the cable providers needed Fox News in order to have a “balanced” lineup. AT&T said…wanna bet?
Craig
@Chetan Murthy: there’s a good discussion of that theme in Ken Perenyi’s book Caveat Emptor. He made a career forging famous paintings and fooling experts from Sotheby’s.
Burnspbesq
I think I’ll stick to Beanie Babies.
Chetan Murthy
@Craig: I’ve read that with 3d-printers, you can get much, much closer to indistinguishable (by eye). Looking forward to the day. I wouldn’t mind having some reproductions of Titians.
Viva BrisVegas
So Hard Right Fox News + Center Right everybody else = Balance?
ColoradoGuy
Funny, I haven’t seen a Noam Chomsky channel on my cable lineup, or even FreeSpeechTV.
Ivan X
Believe it or don’t, but there is a brick and mortar NFT shop the next block over from me in NYC.
WaterGirl
@Benw: Except the rest of us would sue you because you consider the rest of us not worthy. :-)
Wsfnyc
Here goes, I’m a long time bjer, very sporadic commenter, but I read every post. And I’m a big nft trader. Ask me anything!
Another Scott
(via IamHappyToast)
Cheers,
Scott.