from Hacker News

I spent 300$ on an NFT and I regret it

by Link- on 1/3/22, 4:25 PM with 47 comments

• by japhib on 1/3/22, 4:41 PM

  Summary: “I was pretty sure NFTs were pointless, but they’re so hyped that I thought I must be missing something. So I bought one and sure enough, they are pointless.”

• by jsiepkes on 1/3/22, 4:42 PM

  > - NFTs are not a good investment

  Why would anyone think a silly picture of an ape would ever be a good investment?

  I fully understand that something is "worth 300 bucks" if everyone agrees it's worth 300 bucks. I also understand that Apple stock is also overpriced but in the end there is a big gap between an overpriced stock and a silly picture of an ape...

• by Pigalowda on 1/3/22, 4:59 PM

  Pretty cheap lesson in FOMO and bagholding though.

  Why play with greater fool theory when there are so many other safer alternatives to invest in.

• by claudiulodro on 1/3/22, 6:11 PM

  A thing I've been wondering for a while now is how many NFT advocates have ever bought, like, a physical painting from an artist? I think that data would be good at identifying whether people are in it because it's an arbitrary hyped investment or whether they're in it because it's a "better" way to buy art or support artists.

• by Zababa on 1/3/22, 6:07 PM

  Something that wasn't mentionned: that monkey jpg is ugly as sin. Github auto-generates icons and makes something that looks nice. Some people have worked on AI-generated art and made beautiful things. You could also take a camera, point it at the sky, take a picture every minute and get a better result than this. I don't get why when you get a NFT, it has to be an ugly monkey/ape/lion. Is there something attractice in their ugliness? I think the vast majority of people see them as ugly, at least from what I've seen online. What am I missing here?

  > NFTs are swapped frequently to generate fake demand. Look at the transaction logs before buying

  Sounds like an opportunity for a business. Get data on this, write a few articles on obvious scams, introduce a metric for how "scammy" and inflated the value of a specific NFT is, sell that notation.

• by rags2riches on 1/3/22, 10:49 PM

  "Building schools" always sounds dumb or even scammy to me. What is a school building, really? Surely running a school is the hard part (assuming the students can afford to go to school to begin with).

  Am I wrong about this? Are there any success stories from these schools built by foreign help?

• by Tempest1981 on 1/3/22, 5:43 PM

  More ape hype -- people stealing Bored Ape NFTs? Insane. Hope he keeps them in a hard/cold wallet.

  https://cointelegraph.com/news/opensea-freezes-2-2m-of-stole...

• by pengaru on 1/3/22, 8:18 PM

  Over the holidays I learned a friend of a friend who has been playing with AI-generated art earned ~$400k selling some of this stuff as NFTs.

  I'm wondering what are the odds my friend's friend just needed to launder some illicit crypto gains, and NFTs are a perfect zero-cost substrate...

• by MichaelBurge on 1/3/22, 5:13 PM

      > “130$” GAS FEES!
      >  NFTs are swapped frequently to generate fake demand.
  

  Why don't wash trades cause the scammer to rack up thousands of dollars in gas fees before they sell it?

• by bko on 1/3/22, 5:31 PM

  > 1. You can bid on one and when the bidding duration is over the NFT goes to the highest bidder

  Does anyone know if the bids are binding and use an escrow? I see crazy bids out there, but I always thought those could be bs. But if they are binding and get held in escrow (with gas fees and all), then they're legit.

  > - NFTs are swapped frequently to generate fake demand. Look at the transaction logs before buying

  High gas is a feature not a bug in that case. If you're spending hundreds of dollars in gas to create a phony transaction, then its pretty expensive.

• by Imnimo on 1/3/22, 5:50 PM

  >NFTs are a great way to directly fund artists and creators in general

  This feels like a weird conclusion given the issues encountered.

• by ilaksh on 1/3/22, 9:06 PM

  I think the reality is there is a lot of uninteresting art and nonsense hype and speculation out there. But I also think there are real artists whose NFTs are actually .. artistic and interesting and their sales help them get by.

  Look into Algorand if the gas fees are an issue. Transaction fees in ALGO are less than a penny.

• by nashashmi on 1/3/22, 5:03 PM

  OT: I considered it uniquely my error to put dollar sign after number (1$). Glad to see others copying this.

• by tartuffe78 on 1/4/22, 1:36 PM

  Good lord, maybe Jeff Bezos does deserve to have everyones money.

• by tonetheman on 1/3/22, 4:46 PM

  You could have just given me the 300 dollars and I could have called you a moron.

  Completely same effect.

  You do not have your money and you feel bad.

• by simonblack on 1/3/22, 9:24 PM

  P.T Barnum was right:

  "There's a new sucker born every minute."