Re: <nettime> what does monetary value indicate?

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

Last post in this subject, I promise.

The NFT in the blockchain, recorded for eternity, does not contain
artwork itself, but metadata pointing to the art work. It basically
says, the file over there is the 'originalcopy' and I own it. Of course,
everyone can still copy the art work over there (assuming it's a public
location), but only that file on that location is the "original" one. Of
course, if that server disappears, then the meta data point to nowhere,
and becomes impossible to distinguish between the copies that might
float around somewhere.

One way to sidestep this is not to point to a location, but to a hash,
which can stored anywhere in a decentralized file system.

In Beeble's case, the token contains metadata that points to such a hash
(a IPFS file). This has the advantage that it's not depended on a server
which may or may not be around for very long, so it removes the
dependency of the particular entity which host the server mentioned in
the token.

So, so this is the file that the token points to:

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmPAg1mjxcEQPPtqsLoEcauVedaeMH81WXDPvPx3VC5zUz

{"title": "EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS", "name": "EVERYDAYS: THE
FIRST 5000 DAYS", "type": "object", "imageUrl":
"https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmZ15eQX8FPjfrtdX3QYbrhZxJpbLpvDpsgb2p3VEH8Bqq";,
"description": "I made a picture from start to finish every single day
from May 1st, 2007 - January 7th, 2021.  This is every motherfucking one
of those pictures.", "attributes": [{"trait_type": "Creator", "value":
"beeple"}], "properties": {"name": {"type": "string", "description":
"EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS"}, "description": {"type": "string",
"description": "I made a picture from start to finish every single day
from May 1st, 2007 - January 7th, 2021.  This is every motherfucking one
of those pictures."}, "preview_media_file": {"type": "string",
"description":
"https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmZ15eQX8FPjfrtdX3QYbrhZxJpbLpvDpsgb2p3VEH8Bqq"},
"preview_media_file_type": {"type": "string", "description": "jpg"},
"created_at": {"type": "datetime", "description":
"2021-02-16T00:07:31.674688+00:00"}, "total_supply": {"type": "int",
"description": 1}, "digital_media_signature_type": {"type": "string",
"description": "SHA-256"}, "digital_media_signature": {"type": "string",
"description":
"6314b55cc6ff34f67a18e1ccc977234b803f7a5497b94f1f994ac9d1b896a017"},
"raw_media_file": {"type": "string", "description":
"https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUwqtFucG1RMS6T87vi1CdvadfL7qA"}}}


Which, again, is just metadata pointing to, well, a webserver
(makersplace.com). In other words, the seller, in order to have any
object at all, is dependent on makersplace.com to remain online. In this
case, it doesn't really matter, because buyer and seller is, in effect,
the same person. But in other cases, the buyer becomes dependent on the
seller for as long as s/he hold be token. Of course, the "originalcopy"
could also be stored in decentralized file system, but apparently, this
is not done very often. Some people have called this structure
"long-game extortion."

See, https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1372163423446917122

On 16.03.21 10:41, Florian Cramer wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 5:49 PM Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com> wrote:
> 
>> I'm sure many have followed the NFT art saga over the last couple of
>> months and seen today's headline that somebody just paid $ 69,346,250
>> for a NFT on a blockchain, meta-data to claim ownership of the
>> "originalcopy" of a digital art work.
> 
> Thanks to Amy Castor's article (which you also mentioned/linked to,
> https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/),
> we now know that the buyer didn't actually pay $69,346,250, but "$60
> million in ETH and $9 million in fees, also in ETH" - a significant
> difference IMHO. The whole Christie's sale thus boils down to a conversion
> of one type of ETH token into another type of ETH token within the
> portfolio of a crypto currency investment firm, and using the art market
> transaction as means of pumping the value of the latter.


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