NFTs (thread now extremely NSFW)

Imagine a world where...

This is an infallible marker of the utopian style. It is also framed as a command, which marks it as a sales pitch.

The perfect tweet

Anna Sorokin, known for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends and businesses while posing as a German heiress, says she's trying to move away from the "scammer persona" and plans to launch a collection of NFTs. https://t.co/k4XzaoK2qO

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 16, 2022

this is a test conducted by aliens to identify who the earthlings are that will believe absolutely anything

After the apparently genuine tulip bulb NFTs and Ponzi NFTs there is nothing left to parody here

xp
They sure run that test a lot.

Read that as Aaron Sorkin, the West Wing guy and thought sure, he seems like the scammer type who would do a douchey NFT

This is insane pic.twitter.com/hyyma3sJmC

— harper (@harper) June 21, 2022

lmfao good on the scammers

Just saw that tweet and was filled with joy.

I assume you still have to log in?? Or does it get your credentials from your phone?

If the scammers are any good at their jobs, it's just scan code > lose all your "money."

I've never scanned a QR code in my life, and this isn't making me want to

Scam Billboards in NYC
QR Codes lead to wallet drainer sites
The sky above the port was the color of television
Tuned to a dead channel

I'm at the NFT NYC conference again in Times Square, and Snoop walked by, flanked by security. I grabbed his handler, said I'm a reporter, would love a few minutes. The guy said actually that's an impersonator, legally can't say it's him, they hired him to drum up excitement.

— Kevin Collier (@kevincollier) June 21, 2022

Holy shit that name tag tho https://t.co/s4e3TOJQCK pic.twitter.com/3sHo1hqgBY

— amosmelli (@regiscake) June 21, 2022

that tweet thread is still killing me

call him Doop Westwood

You spend the first five ETH trying to get with the plan
And the next five ETH trying to get your apes back again

LCD Soundsystem played a Bored Ape Yacht Club party at Pier 17 yesterday: https://t.co/YbOsXPHUUI pic.twitter.com/qzmuYG3Aez

— BrooklynVegan (@brooklynvegan) June 21, 2022

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-01/crypto-stock-meltdown-hits-rolex-patek-philippe-audemars-piguet-watches

Hard times for the ultimate signifier of being a douchebag

lol Tom Morello did a NFT drop last year

My Genesis NFT collection has provided an exciting way to bring to life the incredible Dungeons & Dragons characters I’ve been playing for years. THE ORDER OF KARROS is basically a supergroup of my entire history playing the game. pic.twitter.com/ggTW9sdRUT

— Tom Morello (@tmorello) September 17, 2021

Grift grift grift

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/12/they-couldnt-even-scream-any-more-they-were-just-sobbing-the-amateur-investors-ruined-by-the-crypto-crash

It all started in February 2021, with a radio advert for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency promoted by Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla. Intrigued, Roy started Googling, eventually using his credit card to make an initial investment of €2,500 (£2,200) in a range of cryptocurrencies. The value of Roy’s portfolio climbed to €8,000, then €100,000, then €525,000.

On one hand I get that these people had convinced themselves it was like investing in an index fund, retirement money, but it's hard to grasp holding a winning lottery ticket and not cashing it in. When Bitcoin was peaking I was 1% bummed that I'd used 5-6 (or more) bitcoins when they were under $1k in value - but I would have sold out long before hodling to $60k. (I guess I did, actually, I sold the one full leftover when it hit ~$2k, more than doubling my money.)

I can’t imagine getting a 250% return on a credit-based investment and not bailing but what do i know i only gamble with regular stonks

That article reminded of GT Advanced, which bubbled and burst a few years ago:
https://www.joshuakennon.com/gt-advanced-technologies-bankruptcy/

GT Advanced made solar panels, so they knew a bit about bonding glass to metal - Apple gave them a loan of something like $900m to develop sapphire glass for the next generation of iPhone, and the forthcoming Apple Watch. A lot of people on a forum called The Contrarian Investor put a tonne of cash into GT Advanced because great things were expected of it. But on the day that Apple announced the new iPhone (the 6?) there was no mention of sapphire glass, so the share price cratered. And a few weeks later the company declared bankruptcy because it had nothing coming in. Apple was its only potential customer, but Apple decided that sapphire glass wasn't worth the trouble.

And it all played out live, in real time, on the forum of the website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20141220201352/http://forum.thecontrarianinvestor.com/index.php?threads/gt-advanced-technologies-inc-gtat.69/page-499

Notice how towards the bottom of the page they realise that trading has halted, and then three pages later they realise the company has gone bankrupt. The initial reaction is "shut up, don't say that", but it gradually sinks in. Some of those people had put a small fortune into the stock and had already made a profit, because it seemed to be doing well. But they kept on because they wanted even more "and my friends on the internet said it was alright". At least one person invested their disabled child's school money and another invested a tonne of cash without telling his wife and kids.

If I had an investment that ballooned to over two hundred times its value I would sell it and never look at it ever again. I would not want to know what happened after I got rid of it.

Ah of course

BREAKING: Crypto lender Celsius files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a month after freezing customer withdrawals, the latest casualty from the rout in cryptocurrencies https://t.co/PCi6CfpfjL pic.twitter.com/infYnkua5s

— Bloomberg Crypto (@crypto) July 14, 2022

We're freeing ourselves from the repression of FDIC insurance over our money

lol

An NFT is like being the Foursquare Mayor of a JPEG

— Don Marti (@dmarti) January 1, 2022

absolutely banging thread about practical applications of web3, every idea even better than the last

35 business ideas of how web3 could improve or disrupt the most successful companies:

— Tascha (@TaschaLabs) July 24, 2022

These need to be read in Patrick Bateman voice

Though I would like to rent out my Costco membership on a secondary market. Sounds worthwhile.

14. Starbucks

Allow customers to monetize their loyalty by earning Starbucks points in tradable token format. Customers can stake tokens to get tiered discounts in future.

I'll stick with my "buy ten get one free" punchcard, thanks.

The Costco one is the best, I'm sure they would greatly prefer someone else make the money on their memberships instead of them.

Already dying and I’m not even done reading #1:

1. Amazon logistics

Instead of having large distribution centers, Use decentralized mini warehouses (e.g. your backyard) for storage

PayPal already lets users buy crypto in their app. Next step is to evolve into KYC-ed DeFi.

I’m literally crying laughing. How is this real it’s so wonderful

Amazon drivers spend the first 12 hours of their shift traveling between backyard storage units and the next 12 delivering the packages to the next zip code over.

this explains so much

I’d traveled 3 days to a remote town in Peru to track down a jungle shaman to perform a ritual of ayahuasca, a mythical medicine plant that I heard would open you up to a higher wisdom & see the future.

— Tascha (@TaschaLabs) May 23, 2022

PS Cosmetics biz disrupter of future would be customer-owned to share high biz margin w/ users to grow faster.

yeah like maybe you could buy ‘shares’ of the company to become a part-owner and like the more shares you own the more payouts you get, this is genius-level stuff, could disrupt the whole economy if it becomes reality

that would be a good grift to capture everyone who's addicted to essential oils and supplement MLMs

lmao

my friend almost sucked me into the Primerica MLM in the early 2000s, somehow seems like I'd have made more money there than with NFTs

I remember one 'meeting' I was invited too, which was a bunch of high-ranking MLM folk getting up to the front and insulting each other and yelling "You can't fire me! You can't fire me!" when they clapped back to point out we 'worked for ourselves'

Virtual real estate bubble collapsing as investors discover imposition of artificial scarcity itself not enough to drive demand of fundamentally useless asset https://t.co/NZ05N3wyWw

— cathode ray theory (@said_mitch) August 5, 2022

"Some day I hope to build on it!"

Man, can't believe Second Life II didn't take off.

VR Florida swampland

ICYMI: Meet Polar, a metaverse-born singer, dancer and influencer. With 1.6 million followers on TikTok and more than over 500,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel, she has ambitions to perform in the real world https://t.co/QNBaKAoiyA pic.twitter.com/JoyrrhEMM5

— Reuters (@Reuters) August 7, 2022

Wasn’t the ‘fully animated pop star’ a Japanese or Korean pop thing like 20 years ago?

And before that the Archies and the Banana Splits

Hirst is burning his paintings on Instagram Live at the moment.

On Tuesday morning Damien Hirst, a British artist, will begin burning a collection of paintings valued at about $10m as the finale of “The Currency”, his project pitting physical art against non-fungible tokens.

Last year 10,000 of Mr Hirst’s paintings featuring colourful enamel spots, made in 2016, were made into digital files, known as NFTs. Each NFT was sold for $2,000 but buyers were later given the choice between keeping the NFT or swapping it for the painting. Unwanted paintings are now being burned and rejected NFTs deleted.

In all 9,000 works were sold to the public: 5,149 buyers chose paintings while 3,851 wanted the NFTs. (Mr Hirst kept the rest.) Fewer than 70 physical works have appeared at auction, fetching twice the price of the more than 2,000 NFTs that have been resold. If “The Currency” asks whether digital works are as valuable as tangible ones, the answer seems to be no.

we needed a project to tell us this