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I don’t think he’s danced in that pink shirt the 3x he wore it. Did he really?
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NFTs sound like a money laundering scheme. Also, I wonder if Apple is aware of how much energy is wasted on this crypto stuff? Surely that goes against their green goals?
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one of the things Eddy Cue is advising them about.
 
I have some insight as I used to work for an NFT based startup. I don’t work for one anymore so I don’t have any skin in the game, but I am a believer.

An NFT can be anything digital, not just art. But it introduces something never before possible in digital goods. Scarcity/uniqueness. From the moment you “mint” this digital whatever, it is the only one of it in the world. So ownership can be sold and transferred (instead of copied indefinitely). It is also a perfect record because its life is recorded across many computers. Someone tries to change the record on one and the other computers correct the tampering.

Notaries can (and some now do) use this for more trustworthy land deeds.
Sports stars/teams/publishers love it because Lebron James can give you an autograph and despite it being digital, it’s still 1 of 1. Completely unique. It doesn’t lose its value.
Artists (visual and musical) like this because you can build in “smart contracts” at the time of minting. These ensure that a portion of money is redistributed to creators each time the good is resold.
Its general resistance to hacking (via distribution of records) makes it a great way to do everything from securing prizing to voting (!!) to keeping track of provenance in a supply chain. And it’s great for currency (see: Bitcoin, Etherium, Dogecoin, etc.).
There’s too much hype right now about it’s use for art, but it’s a useful tool and there’s a gold rush trying to figure out all the ways it can be used so they can figure out something novel. Rest assured that Apple will build some blockchain type functionality (probably into Wallet). You need a tool that will only display if the item is all verified.
 
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I have some insight as I used to work for an NFT based startup. I don’t work for one anymore so I don’t have any skin in the game, but I am a believer.

An NFT can be anything digital, not just art. But it introduces something never before possible in digital goods. Scarcity/uniqueness.

But it’s not scarce or unique. When you put a digital asset online it’s a copy uploaded from a computer and it can be copied an infinite number of times. This is an unavoidable situation no matter what kind of database type, DRM, hashing, etc you can use.

NFT sites are literally full of duplicate images and copyright theft.

Apart from the criming and climate impact, the other big downside of these NFT sites is that they are getting so much stupid low quality art and other assets uploaded to them. There’s no curation or quality control. So if you’re a high quality content creator then your work has to share space with all the low quality 💩 💩 💩

It’s demeaning, devaluing and debasing to artists and making a mockery of their craft.
 
He’s kept a low profile because everything he oversees has been an abject failure. In fact, I’m not sure why he still has a job. AM, Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Arcade, Siri, Apple TV, Maps, etc. have all been financial failures and/or has fallen way behind the competition. The most profitable service is the app store and he couldn’t even manage that well which is why the reins were handed over to Phil.
 
But it’s not scarce or unique. When you put a digital asset online it’s a copy uploaded from a computer and it can be copied an infinite number of times. This is an unavoidable situation no matter what kind of database type, DRM, hashing, etc you can use.

NFT sites are literally full of duplicate images and copyright theft.

Apart from the criming and climate impact, the other big downside of these NFT sites is that they are getting so much stupid low quality art and other assets uploaded to them. There’s no curation or quality control. So if you’re a high quality content creator then your work has to share space with all the low quality 💩 💩 💩

It’s demeaning, devaluing and debasing to artists and making a mockery of their craft.
This duplication isn’t true or people could just copy/paste their way to a billion Bitcoin. The scarcity aspect makes digital currencies possible. I can see why you think it can be duplicated, because you’re just thinking about the image Application, but the point of NFTs is that there is a digital trail pointing to who has the real one. Even with an image. A blockchain wallet would only display “the real McCoy”. So all the others are basically the same as taking a perfect picture of the Mona Lisa. It’s easy to prove now that the person doesn’t have the Mona Lisa, despite their very convincing print.

Also, artists can choose where to sell their work, just like IRL. Forget NFT auction sites. They’re trying to cash in quick and so are many junk artists, but that’s really not my point. NFTs and the scarcity they create is new and have profound implications that haven’t been completely understood yet but, as I said, it’s already being used for money, land deeds, art, music, supply chain provenance, and digital collectibles (including rare autographs).
 
Another get richer scam by the 1% and celebs and criminals who don’t care if it harms the planet or the little guy who can barely afford the fees and commissions to join in.
It's (still) amazing how little you know about this.
 
This duplication isn’t true or people could just copy/paste their way to a billion Bitcoin.

Holy 💩!!! You just failed crypto 101.

Bitcoin has been forked into several coins and each fork rewards holders with the same number of coins in each new forked chain. That’s literal duplication.

Bitcoin’s source code repository has also been cloned and had some minor parameters changed to create a joke like of new 💩 coins like Litecoin etc

If I want I can take the bitcoin source code right now and start the whole thing over again from scratch without forking. All I need is a few computers to host the nodes and miners.

There are also still double spend bugs in most of these chains that are always being fixed.

How come blockchain blockhead defenders don’t know how this stuff works? 😝😂😂😂😂

ANYTHING digital can be and is often duplicated.

And if you people really were interested in artists, you would find one and commission them or hire them or find jobs for them. But no crypto people weren’t interested in doing that for 11 years. They don’t give one F about artists. It’s just a fat scam by the 1 percent because they are always creating new schemes to get rich off everyone else.
 
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This duplication isn’t true or people could just copy/paste their way to a billion Bitcoin. The scarcity aspect makes digital currencies possible. I can see why you think it can be duplicated, because you’re just thinking about the image Application, but the point of NFTs is that there is a digital trail pointing to who has the real one. Even with an image. A blockchain wallet would only display “the real McCoy”. So all the others are basically the same as taking a perfect picture of the Mona Lisa. It’s easy to prove now that the person doesn’t have the Mona Lisa, despite their very convincing print.

Also, artists can choose where to sell their work, just like IRL. Forget NFT auction sites. They’re trying to cash in quick and so are many junk artists, but that’s really not my point. NFTs and the scarcity they create is new and have profound implications that haven’t been completely understood yet but, as I said, it’s already being used for money, land deeds, art, music, supply chain provenance, and digital collectibles (including rare autographs).
Thanks for taking the time to explain a bit how this works with its use cases, a bit rare over here.

With the art craze I could really draw almost all parallels with real physical art: if I paint a blue square, sign it myself and ends in the Louvre, no matter how many pictures of it appear online or how many others draw the blue square to the T, there will always be one original one... the one in the museum. Same with art that starts on the digital front, like 3D renders and sketches (or others that are digitized for that matter with cameras or scanners)... the one signed will become the original one and even if people find the scene files and re-render themselves an exact copy (minus a few pixels because of RNGs maybe) it won’t be the source one.
In both cases some people will spend crazy amounts of money for some reason that I don’t comprehend yet, the blue square could rack up several hundred millions too (and it did).

However that does cloud a bit the full reach, I didn’t think about the land deeds and any other sort of signature really, like a DRM++, stopgaps for digital counterfeiting, tracked history of the life of the original, etc... curious to see where this is gonna go.

EDIT: had a thought about the duplication issue, maybe is it more establishment too? Because sure I could make a copy paper currency and name them $pollars and put bears faces instead of Bejamin Franklins, yet the value of 1Million $pollars is practically none.
 
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