• aubertlone@lemmy.world
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    19 minutes ago

    I just remember looking into NFTS when they were gaining hype. There are a few real world use cases for them.

    However ultimately the NFT ended up leading back to a URL of the picture. I may be oversimplifying it a little bit but that’s basically how it worked.

    So the web hoster could just revoke the URL or set it to something else. So you don’t really own anything. I will have to look at the specifics of this “hack”. But this was always gonna be an issue.

      • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        25 minutes ago

        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.

      • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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        2 hours ago

        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.

        • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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          59 minutes ago

          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.

          • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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            2 hours ago

            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.

            • frezik@midwest.social
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              1 hour ago

              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.

              • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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                1 hour ago

                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?

                • frezik@midwest.social
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                  58 minutes ago

                  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.

            • kautau@lemmy.world
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              1 hour ago

              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.

          • Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            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

        • rumba@lemmy.zip
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          1 hour ago

          Somehow it got turned into little graphics exchanged for money

          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.

          • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            57 minutes ago

            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.

            • rumba@lemmy.zip
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              54 minutes ago

              It’s all fun and games until they’re prosecuting you under the RICO act ;)

  • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    I would question how an Instagram account causes nft to be stolen… But we are on meme so let’s leave it at that.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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      29 minutes ago

      One of the funniest ways that these people get hacked is that you can give someone an NFT. Like it’ll show up in the wallet, no way to get rid of it. So you make a fake BoredApe or whatever other stupid JPEG, with a “smart contract” that essentially boils down to “steal everything” if the person ever interacts with it. Iirc some of the bigger name people have a bunch of these fake, toxic NFTs that they can’t interact with in any way, just hanging out in their wallet.

    • vaguerant@fedia.io
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      5 hours ago

      They compromised the official Instagram account then phished its followers for their NFTs.

      The attacker seized control of the BAYC Instagram account and sent a phishing post that many followers were fooled into clicking on, connecting their crypto wallets to the hacker’s “smart contract” – a mechanism for implementing a crypto transaction. That enabled the attacker to steal the assets held in the wallets, seizing control of four Bored Apes, as well as a host of other NFTs with an estimated total value of $3m.

      https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/26/bored-ape-yacht-club-nft-hack-theft-art-simian-oblivion

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    My interpretation of the NFT/Crypto Future argument is “They’re perfect! It’s just that humans have to stop behaving like humans!”