This Paris Hilton NFT ape is, we're told, "worth" over a million dollars.
This Paris Hilton NFT ape is, we're told, "worth" over a million dollars.
Opinion by Karl Puschmann
Karl Puschmann is Culture and entertainment writer for the New Zealand Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
By now - not to be mistaken for "buy now" - you would've heard about NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. The technological fad that's impossible to ignore. Believe me, I've tried.
Celebrities are endorsing them, big companies are trying to sell them and the news is reporting on them becausepeople are paying outrageous sums for them.
Earlier this week Canadian video essayist Dan Olson released a two-hour-long documentary titled Line Goes Up - The Problem with NFTs, on his YouTube channel, Folding Ideas. With the endless buzz around this emerging tech it's been wildly popular, racking up almost four million views.
If you want to know about NFTs, how they work, why they're a massive scam, an ecological nightmare and just a plain old bad idea it's highly recommended. Olson navigates this dense, jargon-filled arena with superb clarity and in an entertaining fashion.
Dan Olson in Line Goes Up - The Problem with NFTs, the documentary on his YouTube channel, Folding Ideas.
But if you don't have two hours to kill, I'll attempt to cover some of the NFT basics here in layman terms.
In short, when you purchase an NFT you're not really buying anything. So don't.
In long, NFTs are a record of ownership of a digital item like, say, a photograph, a song, or an extremely ugly, procedurally generated cartoon of an ape. When you buy an NFT ugly monkey you're registered as the owner of said NFT ugly monkey on an energy-hungry, carbon-emitting, cryptocurrency blockchain. Congrats? No.
This ape, which looks incredibly similar to the other apes on this page, is a throughly unique NFT.
Being digital, anyone can just right-click on your ugly monkey, hit "save as" and download it onto their device, despite not being the registered owner. Because, that's you, remember?
As the proud owner of an ugly monkey what rights do you have? To quote Aotearoa's rapping legend Scribe, "not many, if any". You "own" the image but you don't own the copyright or reproduction rights. All you can really do is sell it. Assuming you can find someone fool enough to buy it.
Given that anyone can copy and save your ugly monkey and you can't do anything with your ugly monkey, why are people suddenly going bananas over ugly monkeys and the technology behind them. Money, baby!
Perhaps you'd prefer an NFT ape in blue? An artwork of such skill, craftsmanship and quality will cost you.
While not explicitly said, the heavy implication is that NFTs will make you all of the money. As long as you get in early enough so you can sell your ugly monkey to some rube coming in late.
Greed is how they get you. The tech may be new but the scam remains the same. Is your ugly monkey ever gonna be worth more than what you paid for it? Will it go, to borrow a crypto-phrase, to the moon?
No. Not unless you can find some sucker willing to buy it. For now, at least, suckers are out there.
Christie's sold this NFT, titled Everydays: The First 5000 Days, by the artist Beeple for US$69 million. Bargain.
Auction house Christie's sold an NFT for an outrageous US$69 million (NZ$103m). Closer to home, a local auction house sold two NFTs for $131,000 just the other night - although in this instance the buyer also got a framed version of each as well as the two glass-negatives. Usually, you don't get squat except bragging rights and a new social media profile picture.
Socialite Paris Hilton minted her own collection last year and pop star Justin Bieber made the news this week by spending US$1.29m on an ugly monkey, five times what, we're told, the NFT was "worth". In this case Biebs was the rube. Although, if anyone can afford to be, it's him.
Can you? As the proud owner of an NFT you own a line of code that says you own something that one day may or may not - probably not - be worth something. Yay?
Presuming it's not stolen first. One of the largest NFT marketplaces recently admitted 80 per cent of the NFTs minted through its site are fraudulent or scams. A bunch of people who bought NFTs of "Evolved Apes" were ripped off to the tune of $2.7m when the developer vanished with the cash and every trace of his existence. And a new NFT start-up called HitPiece lasted only a few days this week before hurriedly taking itself down after attempting to sell the music of hundreds of popular musicians as NFTs despite having no legal permissions to do so.
This photo of Charles Goldie was sold as an NFT at Webb's auction house earlier this week for $131,000.
You don't have to deep google to find countless examples of this sort of nonsense. It'd be laughable if this wasn't the world crypto-nerds are trying to force us to live in now.
And because NFTs and crypto are unregulated, one of their proudest selling points, if you're tricked out of your money, well, it sucks to be you because that money is goneburgers.
And all this before we get to the absolute environmental carnage of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology. According to an NYT article, independent researchers estimated the creation of an average, single, NFT pumped out over 200kg of planet-warming carbon, the equivalent of driving 800km.
All of which is to say the only correct response when someone attempts to sucker you into buying an NFT - whether that's your favourite celebrity or a legitimate auction house - is "no flipping thank you".
