While I like NFTs as a concept/idea for asserting/proving ownership of assets (particularly digital ones), I'm not a fan of so-called "art" NFTs. IMO, most of them are ugly rubbish that look like they were doodled by a somewhat precocious minor aged in single figures. (I'm not referring to the Picasso family digitising Pablo's artwork or Akiane Kramarik, the girl who has painted her dreams since age four and whose family's business is based on marketing and selling them; their art is amazing. I'm referring to stuff like BAYC and CryptoPunks that, while worth thousands of dollars, has an appeal that's utterly lost on me; I suspect it's just hype. More fartsy than artsy, etc.) I find it to be a huge waste of potential for the idea in general. There are so many more practical and useful applications, other than amateurish cartoons that I could probably draw with a bit of practice with How to Draw Cartoons or something similar and a little editing with GIMP. (It's not bad, though; there are diamonds in the dung heap if you're prepared to dig. At this stage of my life, I'm so down the hierarchy of needs that buying art isn't a priority for me.) Digitising deeds and other records of ownership in order to do away with middlemen and bureaucracy and expedite the process an idea I can back (at least ideologically), for example. Using GUID-/UUID-based (and possibly JWT/SSO?) NFTs that allow some degree of anonymity, instead of government-issue IDs, is another one in that category.
But is it art? I probably don't care.
I'm by no means an established/recognised art critic (at least not in a professional/paid capacity). My criterion for answering that question has been "if I can reproduce it (or think I can), then no". It's perhaps not the right attitude/approach, but it works for me. Yes, I can spoof a Piet Mondrian painting (and so can AI and anyone who constructs programs in the esolang named after him, for that matter). It doesn't mean I don't appreciate/like his work, but I wouldn't call it
The whole "art" thing isn't even guaranteed, possibly not only because it's so subjective, anyway. Ultimately, what you're really buying is metadata. That's all that's being saved on-chain, anyway. Those pictures themselves forever. I suspect that a not-insubstantial number of people buy art (and NFTs) not because it speaks to them on some aesthetic/emotional level, but because they're hoping to hold it for a while and then flip it when the price soars. Things like Masterworks and Trump NFTs do little to counter that suspicion. Maybe (greed) is the appeal of BAYC, CryptoPunks and other "art" NFTs, which strikes me as really shallow a motivation (and this is coming from a poor man who'll do pretty much anything for extra crypto) ...
As for buying digital "land" and "real estate" in Pay-to-earn games, that strikes me as another waste of time and crypto. I can't even afford to buy real-world land, develop it and rent it out to people who're in need of housing and basic services. Why would I do so in some poorly-realised metaverse? Look, I realise there is definitely a market for this crap, somewhere online, but it's most likely populated by inhabitants of First World countries that need to get out and touch grass (not escapist polygons) a lot more. Maybe it's just ahead of its time and niche, I don't know ... Whatever, it requires time and crypto that I don't have, struggling as I am to find work that pays enough to cover my cost of living, let alone gives me disposable income to waste as I see fit. I'm just not going to go there, because I've not seen anything that I feel is worth me throwing my crypto at it.
The Price of Gas
That's not even mentioning gas fees on Ethereum (ETH). That's proven to be a massive disappointment to me too (among other things), merge or not. As it is currently, Ethereum is just a disappointment in general to me, to be honest. Maybe the Shanghai fork/update will fix the issues that it has, but I remain dubious and hope to be proven wrong. It's not the only one, though; Bitcoin (BTC) also has major issues that have largely gone unaddressed. As smart as Vitalik Buterin and Satoshi Nakamoto are, my feeling is that BTC and ETH are prototype iterations that have largely outlived their usefulness and need to bow out, fade into obscurity. Maybe, in the fullness of time, they will. Then again, people still buy and use MS Windows as a general-purpose OS when GNU/Linux is obviously technically superior in many ways. (Windows succeeds not because it is generally better, but because MS pours a lot of money into advertising and marketing, whereas the FOSS community doesn't have that kind of budget/funding and what it does have is mostly focused on development. That's a topic for another time, though.) We have Cardano (ADA), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Nano (XNO), Solana (SOL) and Zilliqa (ZIL), now (not that those aren't without their own set of problems — the tendency of Solana's mainnet to go down like a $5 whore being one of them — but that's the nature of technology for you). Still, the bourgeoisie will buy their kitsch pink flamingo lawn ornaments, much to the ire of the intelligentsia ... (Sadly, I cannot find the blog post that is a scathing commentary on MS Windows and compares it to lawn ornaments for the bourgeoisie, if it even exists any more; all I get in my search results is advertisements for lawn ornaments, content from Microsoft and definitions of "bourgeoisie". I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about that.)
Respect Authoritah!
The other key issue I have is that I distrust authority in general, particularly banks, governments and centralised third parties holding anything of value/worth me when could/should be able/permitted to hold it myself. That's one of the reasons I look for and use DEX sites, but when I can't make an exchange from within/through my wallets. Like being in any faucet's top 100 daily earners, that's unlikely to ever happen for me, if I have my say and things go my way. If anything can truly be staked, then I will do it from my wallets (Atomic and Exodus). Otherwise, I have to be prepared to lose it and forget about it. A lot of it isn't really staking, IMO, more like having a balance in an interest account with a bank. That's a problem for me, since we're just replacing one TradFi system with another and not solving anything.
[the cryptoshpere] the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it ..."
?— Chuck Palahniuk; Fight Club
That's (mostly) just me rambling and ranting, though. (Thank you for taking five minutes out of your day to indulge my soap-box antics.) Maybe I'm just bitter that I missed the window of opportunity to cash in on the bubble of hype, but I think it's more than that. Maybe you agree with me, but I know a lot of people don't. (If you do, though, and want to see more of my not-so-humble opinion, please subscribe. Three hundred people can't be wrong, surely.) To each their own. Whatever you decide to do, make sure you do your research and know the risks first.
Thumbnail image: Photo of a burning Palm tree by Jeffrey Czum on Pexels
