Being “fungible” means that something is functionally equivalent with something else.
For example even though every dollar bill is unique (they have unique serial numbers), they are all fungible. If you deposit $100 in the bank, then withdraw $100 later, you are not getting the same bills, maybe not even the same denominations, but you don’t care because it doesn’t matter.
In the digital world copies are cheap and perfect. There is literally no way to tell a copy of an image from “the original”. So in the digital world all copies of something are fungible, and originals don’t meaningfully exist.
NFTs try to introduce artificial scarcity to the digital space by creating a distinction between “the original” of something and the copies, by introducing a sort of chain of custody tracking system.
Just want to add to that, NFTs aren’t inherently about artificial scarcity, they could also be used to track ownership of rights or real life items without a central authority that everybody needs to trust.
Of course, cryptobros immediately went to pushing them as an investment scheme, and the actual implementations are slow, inefficient, and downright expensive to use. I don’t think anybody has managed to make NFTs actually useful, but I imagine the original creators weren’t looking to create… Whatever this is.
An NFT is essentially a number tied to another number in a block chain that establishes ownership.
It provides a history of who owns it to. It’s very useful when validating contracts and preventing fraud. Somehow it got turned into little graphics exchanged for money and I still don’t understand how that happened.
So, for instance, since the owners of the NFTs know that the wallet is compromised, the recipients of the NFTs after this point in the block chain are recipients of stolen goods. So anyone tracing the validity of an NFT knows that these are now all worthless.
It provides a history of who owns it to. It’s very useful when validating contracts and preventing fraud.
So useful in fact that no company in existence that I know of uses it.
Don’t know of a single bank, fortune 500 or any financial institution that uses it.
Wonder why.
So, for instance, since the owners of the NFTs know that the wallet is compromised, the recipients of the NFTs after this point in the block chain are recipients of stolen goods. So anyone tracing the validity of an NFT knows that these are now all worthless.
Yeah, I dont think you can go from worthless to worthless.
Yes, plenty of ways, but none that didn’t have flaws. The idea behind it is that it leveraged a publicly viewable history.
Something like a Title Search for a home purchase would be done looking at the token’s history. It’s also not a database so there’s no way to edit it after the transaction has been performed.
In the instance of equities exchange it can also be used to prove who has and historically had ownership. In the care of, say, a broker, no one actually owns the stocks, the broker does and gives you an IOU for the stock. This means they can do whatever they want with the stock while it shouldn’t be touched since it’s yours.
There’s nothing there that can’t be done with a standard, public database. What’s lacking is the political will to modernize these systems. NFTs don’t solve that.
I brought up Ticketmaster because it’s a common thing to bring up for NFT replacement. A dumb thing to bring up, because while everyone hates Ticketmaster, people don’t understand why venues are beholden to them and how NFTs won’t solve that.
For classical databases there is always someone with root access, who could modify whatever they want.
In practice, for important stuff, there is a good chance enough people were observing to make a case based on witnesses, but it isn’t exactly ideal.
You don’t often get banks running with your money or some storage facility selling your stuff illegally, but it could happen. And that is enough for some (paranoid) people. Maybe some day there might even be applications that would not otherwise be feasible due to fear of scams.
There is a usecase for crypto currencies, so why not the highly related NFTs where the only difference is that the stuff you own is a unique thing (like a title) instead of a bunch of non-unique things (like currency).
The best part is that for 99% of NFTs, that graphic isn’t stored on the blockchain. It’s just a standard internet URL. So you are relying on the TLD to be alive in ICANN, the TLD to be registered to the same party that originally sold the NFTs, the DNS servers the TLD uses to be registered and function as expected, and finally the servers that are privately owned by somebody else to be hosting the stupid graphic at the URL the NFT is registered to.
NFTs, as implemented on a block chain are a unique number. A URL to that transaction can be generated, but a URL itself does not establish anything.the NFT needs to be in your block chain wallet. “Not your keys, not your wallet, not your crypto” applies here as well.
Which is why the whole graphic -> nft thing didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Great. You own the number assigned to a graphic. You own that graphic. You can still copy the pixels of that graphic too.
What do you mean, I shook my magic 8-ball and it clearly said I was correct in valuing my stick figure at 50b USD. I was completely bankrupted when my kid ripped my paper in half
What if we took the art market, where prices can be whatever, so it’s really easy to launder money. Then we let people easily set up multiple accounts for wash trading. And we supported currencies held in stupidly large amounts by people who can’t legally use them for anything useful.
I’m not convinced the author of this meme knows what “fungible” means
Mushrooms. Is it mushrooms?
Of course it means that you can funge them.
Me neither. Please explain. Something with mushrooms, surely.
Being “fungible” means that something is functionally equivalent with something else.
For example even though every dollar bill is unique (they have unique serial numbers), they are all fungible. If you deposit $100 in the bank, then withdraw $100 later, you are not getting the same bills, maybe not even the same denominations, but you don’t care because it doesn’t matter.
In the digital world copies are cheap and perfect. There is literally no way to tell a copy of an image from “the original”. So in the digital world all copies of something are fungible, and originals don’t meaningfully exist.
NFTs try to introduce artificial scarcity to the digital space by creating a distinction between “the original” of something and the copies, by introducing a sort of chain of custody tracking system.
Just want to add to that, NFTs aren’t inherently about artificial scarcity, they could also be used to track ownership of rights or real life items without a central authority that everybody needs to trust.
Of course, cryptobros immediately went to pushing them as an investment scheme, and the actual implementations are slow, inefficient, and downright expensive to use. I don’t think anybody has managed to make NFTs actually useful, but I imagine the original creators weren’t looking to create… Whatever this is.
Something that is fungible is not unique.
An NFT is essentially a number tied to another number in a block chain that establishes ownership.
It provides a history of who owns it to. It’s very useful when validating contracts and preventing fraud. Somehow it got turned into little graphics exchanged for money and I still don’t understand how that happened.
So, for instance, since the owners of the NFTs know that the wallet is compromised, the recipients of the NFTs after this point in the block chain are recipients of stolen goods. So anyone tracing the validity of an NFT knows that these are now all worthless.
So useful in fact that no company in existence that I know of uses it.
Don’t know of a single bank, fortune 500 or any financial institution that uses it.
Wonder why.
Yeah, I dont think you can go from worthless to worthless.
I mean, they were worthless before…
Worthless on their own, yes. It’s very valuable as a technology in terms of trackability and transparency, and establishing ownership.
Tied to a graphic? That’s just stupid and anyone who spent money on them deserved what they got.
We had ways to do trackability, transparency, and establishing ownership before NFTs came along. They solve nothing.
Please, for the love of fuck, don’t say Ticketmaster. That argument is the worst.
Yes, plenty of ways, but none that didn’t have flaws. The idea behind it is that it leveraged a publicly viewable history.
Something like a Title Search for a home purchase would be done looking at the token’s history. It’s also not a database so there’s no way to edit it after the transaction has been performed.
In the instance of equities exchange it can also be used to prove who has and historically had ownership. In the care of, say, a broker, no one actually owns the stocks, the broker does and gives you an IOU for the stock. This means they can do whatever they want with the stock while it shouldn’t be touched since it’s yours.
I don’t know how Ticketmaster plays into this?
There’s nothing there that can’t be done with a standard, public database. What’s lacking is the political will to modernize these systems. NFTs don’t solve that.
I brought up Ticketmaster because it’s a common thing to bring up for NFT replacement. A dumb thing to bring up, because while everyone hates Ticketmaster, people don’t understand why venues are beholden to them and how NFTs won’t solve that.
For classical databases there is always someone with root access, who could modify whatever they want.
In practice, for important stuff, there is a good chance enough people were observing to make a case based on witnesses, but it isn’t exactly ideal.
You don’t often get banks running with your money or some storage facility selling your stuff illegally, but it could happen. And that is enough for some (paranoid) people. Maybe some day there might even be applications that would not otherwise be feasible due to fear of scams.
There is a usecase for crypto currencies, so why not the highly related NFTs where the only difference is that the stuff you own is a unique thing (like a title) instead of a bunch of non-unique things (like currency).
I might be incorrect, but databases can always be updated to affect existing data.
No it’s not useful at all
The best part is that for 99% of NFTs, that graphic isn’t stored on the blockchain. It’s just a standard internet URL. So you are relying on the TLD to be alive in ICANN, the TLD to be registered to the same party that originally sold the NFTs, the DNS servers the TLD uses to be registered and function as expected, and finally the servers that are privately owned by somebody else to be hosting the stupid graphic at the URL the NFT is registered to.
So then they aren’t even NFTs
The NFT is just the receipt for a URL isn’t it?
NFTs, as implemented on a block chain are a unique number. A URL to that transaction can be generated, but a URL itself does not establish anything.the NFT needs to be in your block chain wallet. “Not your keys, not your wallet, not your crypto” applies here as well.
Which is why the whole graphic -> nft thing didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Great. You own the number assigned to a graphic. You own that graphic. You can still copy the pixels of that graphic too.
What do you mean, I shook my magic 8-ball and it clearly said I was correct in valuing my stick figure at 50b USD. I was completely bankrupted when my kid ripped my paper in half
50 billionth of a USD sounds about right.
Step 1: Say blockchain to an investor
Step 2: Tell them you will use it to sell a new thing.
Step 3: Tell them that no one has ever done it before, and it’ll be the next hot thing.
What if we took the art market, where prices can be whatever, so it’s really easy to launder money. Then we let people easily set up multiple accounts for wash trading. And we supported currencies held in stupidly large amounts by people who can’t legally use them for anything useful.
It’s all fun and games until they’re prosecuting you under the RICO act ;)
Then you just pay the president for a pardon. No worries.
Probably, but the way it’s written does add to the funnys
Duh, not non-fungible of course!