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So WTF are NFTs all about? Buying JPGs? Why can't you just right-click save? Is this a giant ponzi? Far from it...

Arithen

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Would it be possible to issue 1000 NFTs and say that each nft equals .1% of the company. So an nft is equivalent to a stock share? Then they get sold and sold and go up and down based on the company’s performance.
Yes, there are now fractionalized NFT's and gamification that provide such concepts.

Many NFT's are now releasing their own tokenomic systems as well. Essentially, owning and staking/holding one of their NFT's may garner varying degrees of their token, which comes alongside some sort of utility internally or externally to their project. In the case of a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), this can equate to voting rights on what the project invests in and the direction in which the project goes.

In other cases, this could mean that tokens are distributed throughout the stakers/holders and can sometimes be sold.

It's a bit subjective, depending on the project
 
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Arithen

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The trouble I'm currently having, is how do I find the NFTs that actually have some kind of use or purpose?
Most NFT projects will provide a Whitepaper/roadmap, which is essentially their business plan. I take note of how reliable the team is, how obtainable their goals are (and the timeline in which they hope to achieve them), and what attributes it has that apply to CENTS. That is for long-term holds only.

When it comes to flipping for profit, that's a whole other animal. In that case, you'd want to gauge what kind of people are in their community, how that community was grown (organically or synthetically), what notable NFT Influencers are talking about it, among other variables. Most NFT collections seem like okay-to-good flipping opportunities, and I've done well for what I've invested so far due to it.
 

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Can someone explain to me the CloneX or other PFPs?

@Arithen ?

How liquid are the CloneX? OpenSea lists them for min of 5-6 ETH. Say I got one, and the price went down to 3ETH in the future (or even lower), is it easy to transact? What is the use-case value for CloneX?

I am trying to understand that space better, but it's not easy to truly grasp it. Outside of having an cool and expensive PFP...
 

Arithen

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Can someone explain to me the CloneX or other PFPs?

@Arithen ?

How liquid are the CloneX? OpenSea lists them for min of 5-6 ETH. Say I got one, and the price went down to 3ETH in the future (or even lower), is it easy to transact? What is the use-case value for CloneX?

I am trying to understand that space better, but it's not easy to truly grasp it. Outside of having an cool and expensive PFP...
It is far more varied than simply having a PFP, which is why it's a bit difficult to explain.

Many projects that offer PFP's as their NFT don't offer anything else other than that. They typically have varying degrees of rarities in a system that determines what traits of the NFT are more or less frequent. Think of these similar to a deck of cards. The total value of the cards in your deck depends on which cards you get, and the rarer you get the more valuable it is. In NFT's the 'deck' consists of traits, instead of different cards. Each of those traits has different values assigned to them upon them being generated. The more traits you have that are rarer, the more value it can have, but someone may just like what it looks like, too.

When it gets interesting is when the project provides some kind of utility. The NFT could be a ticket to an exclusive club or party, or, it could be something more complex. Many NFT collections are now 'gamified'. A simplistic version would be, if you hold an NFT from that collection, you generate a token that acts as a currency within that collection. Some of the NFT's in the collection may provide a boost, powerup, or something else of the sort that benefits the main NFT in some way. Usually, the benefit is to increase the generation of tokens. Furthermore, some NFT's have a 2d or 3d model that can be used in an actual game that the team is developing. These games are becoming 'play to earn' games, where playing the game can actually make you money.

In fact, there's an NFT collection called Axie Infinity that has a simple game that is very popular. Many players are earning upwards of $100-400 per month. This may not seem like a lot, but some citizens from countries with lower standards of living have already made this their main source of income. They would typically make under $100 per month otherwise. Additionally, some projects allow people to rent their characters. So, if you purchase one, you can rent them out to other people to play. They play for free, and you split their earnings.

Then you have metaverse applications, which is going to be massive. Think Facebook, but virtual reality, with its own economic systems. In a VR world, there could be (and already exists) digital land that you can own, develop on, and sell, just like the real world.

There is so much more than that too.

For instance, I'm starting a project which aims to decentralize the animation industry's business model by providing a DAO platform that funds Animation Studios directly, cutting out the producer, restructuring their pay scale, and injecting new services within the animation industry through unique metaverse applications. NFT's provide us with a way to fund our vision, grow a community that wants to participate in the development of this industry, a way to showcase and advertise upcoming series, and as a way to create our own currency which is required to participate in exclusive events in the Metaverse and in person.
 
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Most NFT projects will provide a Whitepaper/roadmap, which is essentially their business plan. I take note of how reliable the team is, how obtainable their goals are (and the timeline in which they hope to achieve them), and what attributes it has that apply to CENTS. That is for long-term holds only.

When it comes to flipping for profit, that's a whole other animal. In that case, you'd want to gauge what kind of people are in their community, how that community was grown (organically or synthetically), what notable NFT Influencers are talking about it, among other variables. Most NFT collections seem like okay-to-good flipping opportunities, and I've done well for what I've invested so far due to it.
Would you be able to teach me more about flipping? I follow people like ChampCrypto, Thebrettway, dopeoxide, PopeyeNfts but it would be dope to talk 1 on 1 with someone who is profiting
 

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Would you be able to teach me more about flipping? I follow people like ChampCrypto, Thebrettway, dopeoxide, PopeyeNfts but it would be dope to talk 1 on 1 with someone who is profiting
Those guys are good guys to follow. To be honest, their videos will do you a lot of good, and applying what you know from MJ's books will surpass that. At this point in time, I don't have very much time to spend helping others, just yet. However, I am more than willing to answer as many questions as time permits here in the forum!
 
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@MTF Question, can I limited the NFT to pre-screened buyers upon initial release? 100 business owners who are engaged in their Fastlane is far better than 100 people who just agree with the books, but have NO business and NO experience. As you see here at the forum, plenty of people want to live a Fastlane, but few will actually execute it.
Yes. If you knew me, and I gave you my wallet address, you could add my wallet address to a list of other wallet addresses who will be allowed to mint that specific NFT. However, I don't believe there is a way for you to ensure I don't sell it to someone else unless it's somehow written in the smart contract.

This is essentially how WhiteLists work in the NFT space.

Projects will offer Whitelisting for presale events to select individuals (influencers, partnerships, giveaways, to people who 'earned it' through their activity, etc). These presale events are typically 24 hour long periods for people to mint the NFT. This is important in blockchains like Etherium, where each transaction could cost a lot of money, and where a sudden volume of transactions can make the cost of the transaction much higher than normal. Whitelisting people negates this.
 
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I bought NFTs, I minted them, I got white listed for a project. And I still do not understand how these are valued. It's like a wild west out there.

Technology proposition of it all, that part I get. But let's take a CloneX as an example (or BAYC for even more expensive NFT), at a floor around 6TH - that's a lot of real money for a jpeg. What's the value? What does a CloneX do other than a cool jpeg?

I remember @AceVentures was involved in that project and made great returns. Thanks for posting btw! Would you mind trying to explain it again? I just don't get it. Even with Nike involvement, I am at a loss. Why is it floor priced at over 6ETH?
 

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I bought NFTs, I minted them, I got white listed for a project. And I still do not understand how these are valued. It's like a wild west out there.

Technology proposition of it all, that part I get. But let's take a CloneX as an example (or BAYC for even more expensive NFT), at a floor around 6TH - that's a lot of real money for a jpeg. What's the value? What does a CloneX do other than a cool jpeg?

I remember @AceVentures was involved in that project and made great returns. Thanks for posting btw! Would you mind trying to explain it again? I just don't get it. Even with Nike involvement, I am at a loss. Why is it floor priced at over 6ETH?

You're trying to understand it rationally but it doesn't work this way. This is purely emotional.
 

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Haha, I'll add this to my top 10 best responses. One word. Everything I needed to know. Appreciate it Ace. :rofl:

I suspected it that much, but then kept digging thinking I may be wrong. Grateful for the opportunity to be able to ask here and get a reply.

Thanks again.
 

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Hello @AceVentures.

I'm wondering what your latest thoughts are on Lukso? I know that you told us that you would update if you saw something that made you change your mind.

Also, thoughts on Facebook planning on entering the NFT space? Should we be worried?


Thank you!
 
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Hello @AceVentures.

I'm wondering what your latest thoughts are on Lukso? I know that you told us that you would update if you saw something that made you change your mind.

Also, thoughts on Facebook planning on entering the NFT space? Should we be worried?


Thank you!

My thesis has changed. I've wanted to share my thoughts for a while now and I believe this is a good opportunity to do so.

I noticed several unsettling patterns last year, and in late November I decided to pull everything out from crypto - despite it not being aligned with my prior strategy. I saw liquidity dry up in NFTs, then I saw liquidity dry up for LUKSO, and I began to see liquidity dry up for best-in-class assets like ETH. Moreover, I had unresolved questions about the impact of ZK on blockspace economics. Being dynamic with my viewpoints allowed me to win. When ETH was sitting at around ~4600 I exited everything in a flash of intuition and have not gone back in yet.

I mentioned a few months ago that I believe ZK cryptography will flatten a lot of people. I still believe this to be the case, and my unresolved questions around it are what keep me from entering new positions.

Crypto's sustainability today is held on a few basic premises:

1. Demand for blockspace
2. Supply of blockspace

ZK is a form of compression. You can take hundreds of thousands of transactions, and batch them into a singular proof, and then submit that singular proof into a new block. In practice, what would have required thousands of blocks (and associated fees) to process information can all be reduced to one block. Moreover, you can layer these compression methods: meaning that you can then take hundreds of thousands of these proofs, and compress them into another singular proof, and then submit that into a new block. There does not seem to be a limit to the depths of compression layering.

For months now I have been trying to engage people to get clarity around the community's thoughts around the impact of ZK compression on blockspace economics. I have yet to find any answer, possibly because even the people we might look up to within the web3 space have inherent bias depending on their financial stakes.

So far, what I can tell is that these compression methods will result in a reduced demand for blockspace by several orders of magnitude. People that ignore this view suggest that the excess supply of computation will be met with spam and further demand given cheaper transactional capabilities. I tend to agree - but in order to validate that thesis I should see demand pick up.

Crypto plumbing is more or less capable of meeting mass demand at the moment - what it really needs is killer applications. Censorship resistant and community owned applications that generate cashflow and have massive demand. Only a handful exist today. I am certain more of this will come with time.

I remain on the sidelines until I can validate this theory.

At a macro level - what I estimate will happen is blockspace will become a utility, similar to how HTTP is a data transfer utility you don't pay for. I expect the largest bulk of value-transfer to take place at a dApp level instead. Meaning the service or product offered is value-accretive enough to demand a profitable fee. Right now, much of the web3 space revolves around fees/blockspace.

What does this mean for LUKSO? I still believe that the abstraction of blockchain interaction is a killer feature nobody else has. With their partnerships with the likes of Nike, Instagram, and major fashion brands, I still believe it can grow a sizeable network of users. The economic sustainability of the network? Less certain of, as the thesis I outlined above applies to all blockchains who's cashflow comes from the basic premise of earnings per sale of blockspace.

In practice what this means is that there is still money to be made - but it might largely be driven by speculation and forward looking sentiment rather than current economic viability. It becomes much harder for me to make educated bets under these circumstances. The blockchain business model, as it sits, struggles to be profitable in the face of monster compression techniques. The only way to continue providing an economically viable source of blockspace under this compression technique is to counter it with orders of magnitude larger demand. To be clear, this could very well happen, I'm just waiting to see it with my own eyes.

This is my own personal opinion. It comes from my own experiments and understanding. In fact I have not seen anybody talk about the concerns I outlined above. I do not suggest you or anybody else make financial decisions from what I share here. This all might play out completely differently from how I present it today: I simply want to reiterate again that ZK is a paradigm change in cryptography and we ought to be prepared for the risks and opportunities that it brings about.

As an advocate of web3, I struggle with a sense of responsibility for what I share. There is much joy to see others win, but that sentiment reverses and feels exponentially more hurtful when I see others lose. It has humbled me many times over the past year - and though the immediate answer has been to pull back from discourse, I believe there is a harmony to be found in offering counsel without stirring the pot above boiling point.

The best advice I have for people playing the game right now is to think for themselves. It is of utmost importance for your financial and overall wellbeing that you do not outsource your thinking to me or anybody else for that matter. When I pulled out, nobody was doing that, and at surface level the sentiment seemed incredibly bullish. I didn't even have much time to act - there was no DCA out, I acted on intuition and didn't have enough time to warn others, because my own line of thought was blurry. The only reason I succeeded where others failed was that I made a decision of my own thinking, irrespective of what anybody else thought. This comes with self-confidence and a record of acting on one's own intuition.

I still believe there is much money to be made playing the game - but we all gotta smarten up, pay close attention, and never get married to our takes. There is so much noise right now that it takes a lot of insight to discern the real signals. Being dynamic is the most important skill in a world that changes so fast.

Keep your head up, especially on a bloody day like today. All the best friends.
 

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View attachment 39588

I've noticed that there is an increasing number of people on this forum that are becoming aware of NFTs and are interested to participate, but rightfully cautious at the moment. After all, it sounds absolute bat-shit crazy to talk about NFTs today. Buy a $300,000 jpg of some pixels? Bound to get ridiculed by way of pointing at ponzis and tulips. In fact, this is how I feel every time I talk about NFTs to somebody that's only known of them from word of mouth with the real value-proposition seemingly lost in translation.

So I'm starting a separate thread outside of the main Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency discussions to bring attention to this next-level abstraction that we as fastlane unscripted f*ck-you entrepreneurs absolutely ought to know about.

I've been digging and digging for the "right" resource but I've only lead myself astray - I do not believe a comprehensive medium exists that encompasses the depth/breadth of what we're talking about.

Instead, I've opted to share with you glimpses of the vision and hope that with the community here we can gather the missing pieces as the story unravels before us.

I'm going to Frankenstein a bunch of different things together so bear with me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From VISA's latest CryptoPunk purchase (today) comes an article describing NFTs. It mostly brags about VISA and lacks enough depth but it's a good start for people that have no idea wth I'm talking about. Here are some key points and I'll even highlight the bangers.

Let’s start with the basics — how do you explain NFTs?​

Cuy Sheffield: NFTs are a way to represent ownership of a digital good, like an image, video, or piece of text. Since the rise of the Internet, there hasn’t been a way to claim possession of a digital good, since most files can be infinitely copied, pasted, and shared. NFTs are unique tokens that can be used to certify the provenance, authenticity, and ownership of a piece of digital media.

Like cryptocurrencies, NFTs are tracked and exchanged on a public blockchain. But unlike cryptocurrencies, NFTs are unique. One bitcoin is identical to another, but each NFT is one-of-a kind.

What excites you about NFTs?​

Sheffield: NFTs have the potential to become a powerful accelerator for the creator economy and lower the barrier to entry for individual creatives to earn a living through digital commerce. NFTs are starting to usher in a new form of social commerce that empowers both creators and collectors.

NFTs could also fuel small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in powerful new ways. The rise of ecommerce has made it possible for SMBs to sell online and reach customers around the globe. But they still have to produce and ship physical goods, which can have high upfront costs. NFTs give small businesses an opportunity to harness public blockchains for producing digital goods—which can be delivered instantly to a crypto wallet. We can envision a future in which your crypto address becomes as important as your mailing address.

How are you and your partners at Visa thinking about this space?​

Sheffield: From a commercial perspective, NFTs are gaining momentum as digital-first sports memorabilia. With platforms like NBA Top Shot, fans can collect and display their favorite game “moments.”

We expect a huge range of new cases in the years ahead. The ability to track and leverage a digital asset in multiple environments could mean exciting new opportunities in ticketing, gaming music, art, and beyond.

Imagine discovering a new musician online. You purchase an NFT of their album art, which can simultaneously serve as a piece of art that you can display online, an entry into an exclusive chat group where you get to connect with other superfans, and a backstage pass for an upcoming show. Ownership of the NFT could also unlock exclusive memorabilia, whether “air dropped” into the owner’s wallet or rewarded after certain behavior, like making a purchase at a specific store.

The artist and their fans can now connect directly with each other and build a powerful community that create new experiences for both.

How might Visa play a role?​

Sheffield: NFTs are rapidly gaining traction and we expect continued growth. For example, there has already been $1B in payment volume in August alone up from less than $100M in all of 2020.

Enabling secure commerce is what we do — we’re the network working for everyone — and that extends to new forms of digital commerce that unlock access. So, it’s not surprising that we’re thinking deeply about this space and how we can apply our expertise in enabling seamless and secure digital payments to make NFT-commerce accessible and useable for buyers and sellers.

In the near term, we want to help brands and businesses better understand NFTs and how they might be harnessed for customer and fan engagement. To that end, we published a paper with observations on today’s NFT landscape, as well as actionable guidance on how to evaluate and scale NFT opportunities.

Looking ahead, we’re working on some new concepts and partnerships that support NFT buyers, sellers, and creators. We look forward to sharing more in the months ahead.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now let's talk about imo the most exciting economy that emerges from the NFT abstraction: the MetaVerse.

I wrote the below piece back in February of this year - and it is more relevant today than ever so review it if you want to get a better feel for what the MetaVerse is all about.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


There was also a post I read this morning that describe this emerging economy nicely so I will share as well:

On Metaverse "But in the metaverse" is a running joke on cryptotwitter I regret to inform you that it is no joke. What we are playing for is whether our children will be fully free or residents in a digital company universe - with the illusion of free, but not really free.

The Wikipedia definition is OK "The Metaverse is a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the Internet."

In other words, the metaverse is a superset of virtual realities, augmented realities and the internet. NFT Twitter & Discord is a form of proto-metaverse, with its avatars, shared communities and shared 2D/3D spaces (
@opensea, @oncyber, @decentraland), hanging off it.

And this is, of course, a continuation of decades of internet communities from bulletin boards to AOL to modern social networks So what is different now? Why does this feel different? So what is different now? Well, global internet scale for one, but more importantly: - Crypto/NFTs and - UX

Crypto, and in particular NFTs, have converted our online communities for the very first time into an ownership society. Your avatar, your digital art, your in-game items, your gallery template are all NFTs and they are genuinely owned by you

This is very new, very different. You are not a 'user' on the flip side of an EULA, a mere guest on someone's server with effectively no rights whatsoever, but a true sovereign owner of your digital objects. It is BTC, but for everything digital

The scale and breadth of what this can unleash is astounding as you get huge decentralized global communities coordinated with economic incentives. Crypto is like 5x normie speed. NFTs are 2x to 3x crypto speed

What about UX? This is what drives the jokes right now. 3D worlds are still clunky. Interesting, but not ready for consumer prime-time YET. I like Decentraland, but my information flow is 100x better on Twitter

The UX issue is going to be solved in the 2020s [AceVentures here: this is what LUKSO's ERC725 asset class unlocks, seamless UX via blockchain abstraction]. You can expect photorealistic mixed reality (augmented reality, virtual reality and real reality) with minimal lag in non-ridiculous devices this decade. Mixed realty (the Metaverse) will be just your regular life.

Some of the smartest people in tech also know this, including: 1) Mark Zuckerberg 2) Epic Games https://theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ceo-metaverse-interview

This is both good because they have the money to invest in improving the tech but this is bad because the goal will be walled gardens. You already can't access the best VR hardware in the market without a Facebook account which is, to me, alarming

Unfortunately right now we have few allies: a) China is going walled garden b) US political leadership is not thinking strategically, sees everything through an AML/KYC lens c) EU is determined to learn nothing from the last 30 years of tech failures

So anon fam, for right now, we are on our own. We have to build, build, build now, as fast as possible, to make the default decision for corporations to join the open system, not to try to capture a closed one.

We are all in this together. Don't sweat the differences between punks / BAYC / AB or 1/1s. Right now we need to scale and onboard everyone. If we can get 1M, 10M, 100M, 1B people the experience of owning their digital assets, good luck to the in-game closed store.

The Metaverse will actually happen this decade. If it is open, human innovation will flourish. If it is closed, we are digital serfs of sorts. We 100,000 or so people right now are the front-line in this battle and we have to do it ourselves.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is much more to this and I will be updating this thread as I get more time. For now - let's just get a conversation started. And y'all please make an effort to keep this thread separate from the BTC/Crypto thread which has an INSANE amount of value contained within. This is not meant to replace the other thread - but instead of all the price talk, I just want us to take a step back here and understand the abstraction, to discuss emerging business models, to talk about the topic of private ownership, and ultimately to leave bread crumbs for the less fortunate amongst us to catch up with this ground-breaking model for future economies.

As a fellow Unscripted member of this forum - I salute you for taking the time to educate yourself on a controversial and technically challenging idea.

Tagging @GPM @Bekit @Ocean Man who had originally asked for some NFT info - just as a reminder that I've decided to take this conversation out of the main BTC/Crypto thread.
Thanks for starting the thread. Only just starting to get my head around NFTs. Gonna be a lot of reading/studying/listening in the months ahead and it will take a while for it to settle in. I thought about buying BTC in 2013 and it was like $100, but decided it was all a load of bs. Took my eye off it and I ended up buying years later. I was wrong and crypto isn’t going away. NFTs though I’m not going to miss. I think I’m still early…..ish. Like what people thought about the internet in 1994/5.
 
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robjohn

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My thesis has changed. I've wanted to share my thoughts for a while now and I believe this is a good opportunity to do so.

I noticed several unsettling patterns last year, and in late November I decided to pull everything out from crypto - despite it not being aligned with my prior strategy. I saw liquidity dry up in NFTs, then I saw liquidity dry up for LUKSO, and I began to see liquidity dry up for best-in-class assets like ETH. Moreover, I had unresolved questions about the impact of ZK on blockspace economics. Being dynamic with my viewpoints allowed me to win. When ETH was sitting at around ~4600 I exited everything in a flash of intuition and have not gone back in yet.

I mentioned a few months ago that I believe ZK cryptography will flatten a lot of people. I still believe this to be the case, and my unresolved questions around it are what keep me from entering new positions.

Crypto's sustainability today is held on a few basic premises:

1. Demand for blockspace
2. Supply of blockspace

ZK is a form of compression. You can take hundreds of thousands of transactions, and batch them into a singular proof, and then submit that singular proof into a new block. In practice, what would have required thousands of blocks (and associated fees) to process information can all be reduced to one block. Moreover, you can layer these compression methods: meaning that you can then take hundreds of thousands of these proofs, and compress them into another singular proof, and then submit that into a new block. There does not seem to be a limit to the depths of compression layering.

For months now I have been trying to engage people to get clarity around the community's thoughts around the impact of ZK compression on blockspace economics. I have yet to find any answer, possibly because even the people we might look up to within the web3 space have inherent bias depending on their financial stakes.

So far, what I can tell is that these compression methods will result in a reduced demand for blockspace by several orders of magnitude. People that ignore this view suggest that the excess supply of computation will be met with spam and further demand given cheaper transactional capabilities. I tend to agree - but in order to validate that thesis I should see demand pick up.

Crypto plumbing is more or less capable of meeting mass demand at the moment - what it really needs is killer applications. Censorship resistant and community owned applications that generate cashflow and have massive demand. Only a handful exist today. I am certain more of this will come with time.

I remain on the sidelines until I can validate this theory.

At a macro level - what I estimate will happen is blockspace will become a utility, similar to how HTTP is a data transfer utility you don't pay for. I expect the largest bulk of value-transfer to take place at a dApp level instead. Meaning the service or product offered is value-accretive enough to demand a profitable fee. Right now, much of the web3 space revolves around fees/blockspace.

What does this mean for LUKSO? I still believe that the abstraction of blockchain interaction is a killer feature nobody else has. With their partnerships with the likes of Nike, Instagram, and major fashion brands, I still believe it can grow a sizeable network of users. The economic sustainability of the network? Less certain of, as the thesis I outlined above applies to all blockchains who's cashflow comes from the basic premise of earnings per sale of blockspace.

In practice what this means is that there is still money to be made - but it might largely be driven by speculation and forward looking sentiment rather than current economic viability. It becomes much harder for me to make educated bets under these circumstances. The blockchain business model, as it sits, struggles to be profitable in the face of monster compression techniques. The only way to continue providing an economically viable source of blockspace under this compression technique is to counter it with orders of magnitude larger demand. To be clear, this could very well happen, I'm just waiting to see it with my own eyes.

This is my own personal opinion. It comes from my own experiments and understanding. In fact I have not seen anybody talk about the concerns I outlined above. I do not suggest you or anybody else make financial decisions from what I share here. This all might play out completely differently from how I present it today: I simply want to reiterate again that ZK is a paradigm change in cryptography and we ought to be prepared for the risks and opportunities that it brings about.

As an advocate of web3, I struggle with a sense of responsibility for what I share. There is much joy to see others win, but that sentiment reverses and feels exponentially more hurtful when I see others lose. It has humbled me many times over the past year - and though the immediate answer has been to pull back from discourse, I believe there is a harmony to be found in offering counsel without stirring the pot above boiling point.

The best advice I have for people playing the game right now is to think for themselves. It is of utmost importance for your financial and overall wellbeing that you do not outsource your thinking to me or anybody else for that matter. When I pulled out, nobody was doing that, and at surface level the sentiment seemed incredibly bullish. I didn't even have much time to act - there was no DCA out, I acted on intuition and didn't have enough time to warn others, because my own line of thought was blurry. The only reason I succeeded where others failed was that I made a decision of my own thinking, irrespective of what anybody else thought. This comes with self-confidence and a record of acting on one's own intuition.

I still believe there is much money to be made playing the game - but we all gotta smarten up, pay close attention, and never get married to our takes. There is so much noise right now that it takes a lot of insight to discern the real signals. Being dynamic is the most important skill in a world that changes so fast.

Keep your head up, especially on a bloody day like today. All the best friends.
Thank you Ace! I will post a longer reply over the weekend.
 

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We recently published an article with the basics for NFT's because we have been getting a lot of questions about them. They are fairly simple in implementation anyway ...

What is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT)? In today’s digital world, a non-fungible token (NFT) is a digital asset that is sold and traded online. Most current NFT implementations are secured using blockchain technology. NFTs can be associated with a wide variety […] read more in our article titled Non-Fungible Token.
 
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Ocean Man

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For those familiar with the scene and know BYAC or Yuga Labs… have you seen this recent teaser? View: https://twitter.com/yugalabs/status/1505014986556551172?s=21


Wow! I don’t own anything within the BYAC ecosystem, but I’m definitely trying to get in after this. Supposedly land sales may be happening this month or next month.
 
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Leo Hendrix

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For those familiar with the scene and know BYAC or Yuga Labs… have you seen this recent teaser? View: https://twitter.com/yugalabs/status/1505014986556551172?s=21


Wow! I don’t own anything within the BYAC ecosystem, but I’m definitely trying to get in after this. Supposedly land sales may be happening this month or next month.
heard apecoin is a pnd...there was a good article about bayc etc. I think it was from coindesk...something about INSIDERS trading or something like that. I'll search for it & post it here later.
 

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My thesis has changed. I've wanted to share my thoughts for a while now and I believe this is a good opportunity to do so.

I noticed several unsettling patterns last year, and in late November I decided to pull everything out from crypto - despite it not being aligned with my prior strategy. I saw liquidity dry up in NFTs, then I saw liquidity dry up for LUKSO, and I began to see liquidity dry up for best-in-class assets like ETH. Moreover, I had unresolved questions about the impact of ZK on blockspace economics. Being dynamic with my viewpoints allowed me to win. When ETH was sitting at around ~4600 I exited everything in a flash of intuition and have not gone back in yet.

I mentioned a few months ago that I believe ZK cryptography will flatten a lot of people. I still believe this to be the case, and my unresolved questions around it are what keep me from entering new positions.

Crypto's sustainability today is held on a few basic premises:

1. Demand for blockspace
2. Supply of blockspace

ZK is a form of compression. You can take hundreds of thousands of transactions, and batch them into a singular proof, and then submit that singular proof into a new block. In practice, what would have required thousands of blocks (and associated fees) to process information can all be reduced to one block. Moreover, you can layer these compression methods: meaning that you can then take hundreds of thousands of these proofs, and compress them into another singular proof, and then submit that into a new block. There does not seem to be a limit to the depths of compression layering.

For months now I have been trying to engage people to get clarity around the community's thoughts around the impact of ZK compression on blockspace economics. I have yet to find any answer, possibly because even the people we might look up to within the web3 space have inherent bias depending on their financial stakes.

So far, what I can tell is that these compression methods will result in a reduced demand for blockspace by several orders of magnitude. People that ignore this view suggest that the excess supply of computation will be met with spam and further demand given cheaper transactional capabilities. I tend to agree - but in order to validate that thesis I should see demand pick up.

Crypto plumbing is more or less capable of meeting mass demand at the moment - what it really needs is killer applications. Censorship resistant and community owned applications that generate cashflow and have massive demand. Only a handful exist today. I am certain more of this will come with time.

I remain on the sidelines until I can validate this theory.

At a macro level - what I estimate will happen is blockspace will become a utility, similar to how HTTP is a data transfer utility you don't pay for. I expect the largest bulk of value-transfer to take place at a dApp level instead. Meaning the service or product offered is value-accretive enough to demand a profitable fee. Right now, much of the web3 space revolves around fees/blockspace.

What does this mean for LUKSO? I still believe that the abstraction of blockchain interaction is a killer feature nobody else has. With their partnerships with the likes of Nike, Instagram, and major fashion brands, I still believe it can grow a sizeable network of users. The economic sustainability of the network? Less certain of, as the thesis I outlined above applies to all blockchains who's cashflow comes from the basic premise of earnings per sale of blockspace.

In practice what this means is that there is still money to be made - but it might largely be driven by speculation and forward looking sentiment rather than current economic viability. It becomes much harder for me to make educated bets under these circumstances. The blockchain business model, as it sits, struggles to be profitable in the face of monster compression techniques. The only way to continue providing an economically viable source of blockspace under this compression technique is to counter it with orders of magnitude larger demand. To be clear, this could very well happen, I'm just waiting to see it with my own eyes.

This is my own personal opinion. It comes from my own experiments and understanding. In fact I have not seen anybody talk about the concerns I outlined above. I do not suggest you or anybody else make financial decisions from what I share here. This all might play out completely differently from how I present it today: I simply want to reiterate again that ZK is a paradigm change in cryptography and we ought to be prepared for the risks and opportunities that it brings about.

As an advocate of web3, I struggle with a sense of responsibility for what I share. There is much joy to see others win, but that sentiment reverses and feels exponentially more hurtful when I see others lose. It has humbled me many times over the past year - and though the immediate answer has been to pull back from discourse, I believe there is a harmony to be found in offering counsel without stirring the pot above boiling point.

The best advice I have for people playing the game right now is to think for themselves. It is of utmost importance for your financial and overall wellbeing that you do not outsource your thinking to me or anybody else for that matter. When I pulled out, nobody was doing that, and at surface level the sentiment seemed incredibly bullish. I didn't even have much time to act - there was no DCA out, I acted on intuition and didn't have enough time to warn others, because my own line of thought was blurry. The only reason I succeeded where others failed was that I made a decision of my own thinking, irrespective of what anybody else thought. This comes with self-confidence and a record of acting on one's own intuition.

I still believe there is much money to be made playing the game - but we all gotta smarten up, pay close attention, and never get married to our takes. There is so much noise right now that it takes a lot of insight to discern the real signals. Being dynamic is the most important skill in a world that changes so fast.

Keep your head up, especially on a bloody day like today. All the best friends.
Interesting - I was going through articles that Vitalik posted a while ago trying to wrap my head around the concepts and their potential impact and you presented some possible paths here. Thank you!

What are your views on the crypto space as a whole now? ( If you care to share)

I do not see much adoption or use of zero-knowledge proofs in the crypto space yet.. except for Argent & Zksync.
 

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For those familiar with the scene and know BYAC or Yuga Labs… have you seen this recent teaser? View: https://twitter.com/yugalabs/status/1505014986556551172?s=21


Wow! I don’t own anything within the BYAC ecosystem, but I’m definitely trying to get in after this. Supposedly land sales may be happening this month or next month.
I thought you must have deleted this post I could never find it again.

I made a quick 50% off ape coin after you shared this so thank you for that.

My thoughts were ape coin is a shitcoin so people will dump it, but this ape company has also backed them self into a corner where this is now their coin, if they do anything in the future that needs a coin they are going to be forced to use this one or admit it was a cash grab.
 
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MTF

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For those familiar with the scene and know BYAC or Yuga Labs… have you seen this recent teaser? View: https://twitter.com/yugalabs/status/1505014986556551172?s=21


Wow! I don’t own anything within the BYAC ecosystem, but I’m definitely trying to get in after this. Supposedly land sales may be happening this month or next month.
Ape just announced land sales will be starting soon and ape coin has pumped to $20+
 
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I have not seen too much about this here so wanted to give a few more pieces of info to anyone venturing into the shark infested, scum filled waters of the current NFT space.
Over the past few months I've been made moderator of several spaces. it's getting ridiculous the amount of places that want free labor.

Anyway.

GAS FEES
Some people mentioned it but gas fees suck. Basically when you use ETH (a eletronic currency) SEND ETH
(which includes buying or selling NFT's) or transact on the blockchain you are paying fees to do so. Those fees are for the eletricity used powering the blockchain, and misc FU fees on top.

ETH at it's core is a broken system. In the future it will get fixes, but for now the more people that are using it= the higher fees are. You can load a transcation and watch the fee rise to $800, then not complete the transaction and check it in the middle of the night to see a fee of $60. it's insane. Expect fees to cost at least $30 per transaction.
You pay to send ETH, you pay to use ETH and you pay to convert ETH into WETH (I found THAT one out the hard way)
What's WETH? wrapped ETH! Why would you want to wrap ETH? who knows! - answer it's a supposed to be a way of sending ETH with less costs. You still pay to reconvert WETH to ETH

all this jibberish means
You pay to send money into your account.
you pay to "start" your account if using Opensea.
you pay to purchase something. i don't mean you just pay the cost of the NFT, you pay that above mentioned gas fee.
And then.. this is the bad one

Sometimes transactions FAIL.
it's happened a few times to me. Sometimes your transactions just arn'y important enough and they just fail. the money you spent to send the ETH gets spent, (that ETH is gone goodbye!) and you didn't recieve the NFT you were buying, or the ETH didn't add to your account. Yes the money you are paying money to send failed so you send more money.

ETH is a massive pile of crap. Use Cardano, or solana. These have very very tiny gas fes. Solana fees are $0.00025 per transaction. Cardano is about 0.16-0.17 ADA, which in USD is about a penny or two. So why in hellocks are people using ETH? I don't really know.

SCAMS
you all know scams exist. But in the realm of NFT's you can scam yourself.
If you have ANY value in your wallet use a hardware wallet. This means go and buy yourself a trezor. Get into the habbit of using serperate browers- one for your crypto crap and one for normal use. I go heavy hardcore with a virtual machine hosting all crypto stuffs.

Why? because the wrong link can attempt to steal your funds.
Fake mints exist who's purpose is to drain wallets. You sign a signature and instead of selling you a token you completed some contract with the devil to drain your tokens, code hidden away in the site details. Because make no mistake, NFT's ARE CODE. When you get into the details of it many times you are simply buying a string of text representative to the photo you see as artwork
This video explains what a NFT really is.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz9zw7-_vhM


Scams are everywhere in the space. Hidden in the site, or maybe the entire "mint" (that is distribution of the project) is a scam. Every message sent to you is a scam if you were not expecting it. I've even seen bots who's whole purpose is to pretend to be moderators of a project, to get someone to message them, to start a screen-share session with the victim!
Just really crazy stuff. And the worst part? this is NORMAL. when a creator of a project leavs it's called a "rug pull" and they often vanish with millions. Will they get procusuted for this in the future as the blockchain is avalible for anyone to see? maybe? we'll see in time. But in the here and now scams are everywhere, and if you are just starting out it's important to take a crash course in safety, less you end up on the New York Times.

GAMBLING
If you are buying a NFT you are gambling.
You are taking a bet that the price may go up. However it may go to ZERO. you may lost anything you had "invested" into that .JPEG and be left holding a worthless photo. I have several items that are worthless that I bet wrong agsinst and the discord server (I'll get to that in a sec) was in revolts.

However the thing you may not have been prepared for is Discord is used primarily within NFT groups to manage users who are within a project. A bee hive for any bees buzzing around so to speak. Well not all of these servers are the same and it's very possible to run into one run for profit only- which encourages real life gambling. If you see this activity RUN
There's nothing wrong with a game of poker played for free without any money involved but the INSTANT you hear
"casino" (hell take off if you hear cas..) "passive income guaranteed" "play and win money" "Stake your NFT for profit" you should be selling your NFT and getting out while you can because it WILL come crashing down. - at best you are providing income for those at the top and fostering a unregulated ponzi scheme. At worst you are fostering a gambling addition - and there's plenty of casinos hidden away in the discord server hellscape in the current form of NFT projects.

ECONOMICS
Almost every project runs into the same issue. to sell out they generate a token. We'll call it $SH1TCOIN
So your NFT project is a photo of a platapus or whatever and it generates 5 $SH1TCOIN a day.
If you have 10 people who bought in, that's 50 $SH1TCOIN a day.
Now let's say 7000 people bought in. That's a lot of $SH1TCOIN! All these people are trying to sell their craptokens
after all you promised passive income right? It doesn't work. The tokens are worth nothing and you ahve a ton of them made.

Now you have to make something to erase that amount of token. This is exactly why Otherside NFT burns $APE
$Ape is a $SH1TCOIN. Even stupider, it's a ETH token. Remember the above mentioned issues with ETH? they manifest in other ways. So you have people coming up with creative ways to collect or destroy that coin except it doesn't work as it's not sustainable.

At this point one of a few things happen. The people in charge lose their minds attempting to keep an entire ecosystem afloat, sell all their remaining $SH1TCOIN and the price tanks to 0 for the token and NFT. Remember as long as a ecosystem is in place the token value can rise and as the project is generating magic tokens every day = poof magic money. However there MUST be a burn in place and it must be structured in a way that systemically erases tokens, that at the same time must have enough demand in place that people want them.
A great example of this and I believe one of the first was Bears Delux
DO NOT BUY THESE. POSTED AS EDUCATION.
The bears make $honey, the token is worth money because.. uhh I think people use the $honey to upgrade their bears to make more or something. But what happens when there's too much honey?
Chaos.

Or maybe the server gets hacked. Legitimately or the admins running off laughing to the bank.
Fk the token, screw everyone else they made millions see ya! I've seen it happen.

Or equilibrium occurs.In this case the token becomes so valued or attached to the project, or the project becomes large enough thaat people start accepting the coin as a tangible asset; case in point $ape with the BAYC project.
 
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This video explains what a NFT really is.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz9zw7-_vhM
I have a more interesting video that actually digs into everything with more depth. I'm not against NFTs or crypto but I see valid points which has me concerned. Until a house cleaning is done it will never reach the heights crypto bros claim it will go to.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
 
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I agree Line Goes Up is a good video. it's also two hours long. :eyes:
So grab some popcorn. And after watching that one- watch this
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kjMbScb75Y


I think a healthy dose of criticism is valuable when learning any new topic.
Seeing how people are both against and for it us useful when making your own decisions.
I'm more interested in the possibility of the power of blockchain= aKA IPFS and fully autonomous businesses that can come from it than the hyperbole that comes from the "exclusivity" of a given project.
 
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