The Alarm Is Sounding On NFTs

[Gordon_4]

Assuming you mean buying something to play in-game for real cash, no. That's more akin to DLC.

See if the Star Citizen game existed, they'd be DLC. But at the moment - as far as I know - the game is unreleased and still selling ships. Not even a demo that I'm aware of.

 

[BrawlMan]

See if the Star Citizen game existed, they'd be DLC. But at the moment - as far as I know - the game is unreleased and still selling ships. Not even a demo that I'm aware of.

Star Citizen is one of the longest running scams I have ever seen. What are these idiots even hoping for at this point? Buy the game at old age, or expect their children to buy the game at some point?

 

[Cheetodust]

Whichever one(s) they wanted to deal with.



Presuming they set themselves up to accept each one, sure. There's nothing about any particular form of crypto that precludes accepting any other.



Nothing would stop a store from doing so, other than having to track a different price for every item in every kind of crypto. I can't imagine anyone would want to do that, just because of what a PITA it would be.



Congrats, you have successfully pointed out the reasons most cryptocurrencies are not very good at being currencies. It's all the downsides of paying for things with precisely weighed flakes of precious metals, but with a massive energy cost to make sure you aren't trying to give the same silver shavings to two different people.

Now, there are things called "stable coins" that solve some of those problems, which are "stable" because they explicitly peg their price to some fiat currency so that price fluctuations are less of a concern (they're as much a concern as using the fiat currency in question in general).

Thanks, basically what I was getting at was that even with the adoption of crypto there's no guarantee that your preferred coin will necessarily be accepted. And the amount of different coins that are accepted basically comes down to how many different ones each store wants to calculate the value of their product in.

So in theory. Tesco could pay employees in tesco bucks, that isn't a widely accepted crypto essentially meaning employees would be largely stuck spending their money solely in their place of work?

Just to clarify, my understanding of crypto is pretty much entirely based on Line Goes Up and a subsequent interview Olson gave. But do crypto bros have any response to these very obvious potential problems beyond "hopefully that won't happen."?

EDIT with how that squid game coin played out couldn't tesco basically make their coin functionally useless or at least egregiously difficult to use outside of their stores?

 

[Gordon_4]

Thanks, basically what I was getting at was that even with the adoption of crypto there's no guarantee that your preferred coin will necessarily be accepted. And the amount of different coins that are accepted basically comes down to how many different ones each store wants to calculate the value of their product in.

So in theory. Tesco could pay employees in tesco bucks, that isn't a widely accepted crypto essentially meaning employees would be largely stuck spending their money solely in their place of work?

Didn't that used to be how a lot of company town places worked? The employees and adjacent businesses were all in service of the company they surrounded so they were paid in a company scrip that was accepted within the company town, but not even worth the paper it was printed on anywhere else.

Truly, everything old is new again.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Thanks, basically what I was getting at was that even with the adoption of crypto there's no guarantee that your preferred coin will necessarily be accepted. And the amount of different coins that are accepted basically comes down to how many different ones each store wants to calculate the value of their product in.

There's a bunch of different places in the UK that print pound notes which are all worth the same, but if you have a shop in England you don't have to accept pound notes from Gibraltar or somewhere. Some stores don't.

So in theory. Tesco could pay employees in tesco bucks, that isn't a widely accepted crypto essentially meaning employees would be largely stuck spending their money solely in their place of work?

...

EDIT with how that squid game coin played out couldn't tesco basically make their coin functionally useless or at least egregiously difficult to use outside of their stores?

Erm, I think that Tesco thing might be currently illegal, (for one, minimum wage laws will tend to give figures in the government's currency), though it was of course seriously popular a couple of centuries back (as Gordon_4 said while I was typing this). You could pay people at least to the minimum amount in normal money and then in store credit, I guess, which could get out of hand.

Just to clarify, my understanding of crypto is pretty much entirely based on Line Goes Up and a subsequent interview Olson gave. But do crypto bros have any response to these very obvious potential problems beyond "hopefully that won't happen."?

I think the useful response is "hope that doesn't hurt me, something something freedom".

 

[Cheetodust]

There's a bunch of different places in the UK that print pound notes which are all worth the same, but if you have a shop in England you don't have to accept pound notes from Gibraltar or somewhere. Some stores don't.

The UK is weird...

Erm, I think that Tesco thing might be currently illegal, (for one, minimum wage laws will tend to give figures in the government's currency), though it was of course seriously popular a couple of centuries back (as Gordon_4 said while I was typing this). You could pay people at least to the minimum amount in normal money and then in store credit, I guess, which could get out of hand.

But, and this is more about the crypto bro than actually asking you, as in what is the proposed solution, will employees have to be paid in regular currency and then buy crypto? Because you couldn't have a functional minimum wage if people are being paid in crypto. So crypto can never replace currency without making the world worse?

 

[Chimpzy]

But do crypto bros have any response to these very obvious potential problems beyond "hopefully that won't happen."?

Considering cryptocurrency is itself already a solution to a problem the vast majority of people don't have, I suspect it's not high on their priority list.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

See if the Star Citizen game existed, they'd be DLC. But at the moment - as far as I know - the game is unreleased and still selling ships. Not even a demo that I'm aware of.

There are alpha build modules available for the paid up marks to play around with.

Or, you know, they could have given up and gotten into Elite Dangerous or X4 Foundations.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Considering cryptocurrency is itself already a solution to a problem the vast majority of people don't have, I suspect it's not high on their priority list.

That's a large slice of the tech industry these days, creating solutions to problems they hope some day someone very rich will have.

 

[Schadrach]

So in theory. Tesco could pay employees in tesco bucks, that isn't a widely accepted crypto essentially meaning employees would be largely stuck spending their money solely in their place of work?

EDIT with how that squid game coin played out couldn't tesco basically make their coin functionally useless or at least egregiously difficult to use outside of their stores?

We used to do that with paper. It was called "company scrip" and was used primarily to keep certain kinds of workers (miners in particular) in what was essentially a peonage scheme. Have I mentioned before that I'm from more or less the heart of Appalachia where an awful lot of that went on, including some of the worst examples? Like it was so bad that my state was a safe Democrat state for half a century because the Dems supported the unions, and stayed that way until the Dems vocally turned on the biggest union industry here (I'll give you a hint: It involves our state rock).

Because you couldn't have a functional minimum wage if people are being paid in crypto.

You could if the crypto in question were a stablecoin, but those aren't super popular because crypto does a bad job at what it claims to set out to do, existing primarily as an extremely volatile investment medium instead, and stable coins are by definition bad at being wildly fluctuating investment tokens.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

So in theory. Tesco could pay employees in tesco bucks, that isn't a widely accepted crypto essentially meaning employees would be largely stuck spending their money solely in their place of work?

This was a favorite tactic of corporations back in the days of the company store.

 

[Dalisclock]

There are alpha build modules available for the paid up marks to play around with.

Or, you know, they could have given up and gotten into Elite Dangerous or X4 Foundations.

I'm not trying to defend SC, but apparently it is "playable" in alpha, but also buggy as hell as well as slows to a crawl when the servers get bogged down. It's Early Access with all that entails. Apparently they have "Free fly' weekends where you can jump in and try it out without dropping a dime on it, or so the fans keep bringing up on their subreddit.

Honestly I don't care much. I lurked around the subbreddit a bit a couple weeks back while people were arguing about the roadmap thing and apparently you can play it as it is, but lots of bits are still very rough and unpolished where they exist.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I'm not trying to defend SC

That's probably for the best.

And honestly, if SC ever sees the light of day and it's any good I might think of buying it... but looking at the ratfuck it is now, I'm keep the wallet firmly closed.

 

[SilentPony]

Did anyone see this? https://www.gamblingnews.com/news/nft-scam-porn-star-disappears-with-1-5-million-says-report/

Basically this ex-pornstar made some NFTs of herself in sexy cartoon form, and promised her marks that buying them could get them real world benefits, including meet and greets with her and her porn friends(with I guess the assumed benefit of sex?). The fools spent $1.5 million on their little fantasy, and then she just emptied the wallet and ran. And I say good for her. Teach those morons a thing or two about crypto's "stable structure".

 

[CM156]

Did anyone see this? https://www.gamblingnews.com/news/nft-scam-porn-star-disappears-with-1-5-million-says-report/

Basically this ex-pornstar made some NFTs of herself in sexy cartoon form, and promised her marks that buying them could get them real world benefits, including meet and greets with her and her porn friends(with I guess the assumed benefit of sex?). The fools spent $1.5 million on their little fantasy, and then she just emptied the wallet and ran. And I say good for her. Teach those morons a thing or two about crypto's "stable structure".

I've been thinking of a response for about ten minutes now and all I can come up with is "why?"
Why do so many people keep falling for these scams? It's like the California gold rush, but stupid.

 

[SilentPony]

I've been thinking of a response for about ten minutes now and all I can come up with is "why?"
Why do so many people keep falling for these scams? It's like the California gold rush, but stupid.

The only logic I can think of is that if prostitution is the world's oldest profession, then lying about prostitution is the second. That's the appeal of dating sites and onlyfans; the fantasy of having someone interested in you. Dating apps sell the idea of hot single MILFs in your area and you only need to subscribe to talk to them, and onlyfans the idea of getting sexts from a woman who cares about you.
This I see as no different. Whether they're willing scam marks, or are so desperate and confused they think an ex-pornstar is really going to meet them in a Las Vegas hotel room, the product is the same; fantasy. The NFT part is almost an afterthought, being a completely unregulated transaction.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I've been thinking of a response for about ten minutes now and all I can come up with is "why?"
Why do so many people keep falling for these scams? It's like the California gold rush, but stupid.

Some people legit got rich by jumping on crypto.

Though, the gold rush analogy isn't bad, some people got rich and famous, most people did not, and there was lots of money to be made mining the miners (selling things in mining towns, for example, not usually robbing them blind, though that also happened).

 

[EvilRoy]

I've been thinking of a response for about ten minutes now and all I can come up with is "why?"
Why do so many people keep falling for these scams? It's like the California gold rush, but stupid.

It's a self selection thing. The only kind of people who get into stuff like NFTs are people who already have some kind of power or influence and know they can make a buck, or those that desperately want some power/influence of their own and think this new thing will help them do it. It's the kind of person who incorporates themselves just so they can claim to be a CEO.

But that's the worst possible combination - the people best at exploiting those that are aspiring to be powerful or influential are people who already have power and influence. That's why you hear about people who are comfortably middle class suddenly losing it all on scams. Somebody with money, or someone good at pretending they are part of the class above, convinces these people they'll get everything they dream of by following a prescribed plan. And it just so happens that the plan usually involves giving all their money away. Want to be the kind of guy that hangs out with porn stars? Gimme your money and I'll make you that person. Wanna be rich? Buy my NFTs and eventually you will be, look at that guy over there who made money doing this, that could be you if only you gave me all your money.

 

[CaitSeith]

I've been thinking of a response for about ten minutes now and all I can come up with is "why?"
Why do so many people keep falling for these scams? It's like the California gold rush, but stupid.

The NFT community fosters naiveté, undermines skepticism and bans reasonable doubts. It's almost cult-like the way they distort their members' perception to believe every single pitch sale and dismiss any scrutiny. So, they make themselves suckers; prime targets for cons and scams (and proud of it). They fall for it, because they think the next one will be the legit one that will make them rich.

 

[CM156]

The NFT community fosters naiveté, undermines skepticism and bans reasonable doubts. It's almost cult-like the way they distort their members' perception to believe every single pitch sale and dismiss any scrutiny. So, they make themselves suckers; prime targets for cons and scams (and proud of it). They fall for it, because they think the next one will be the legit one that will make them rich.

It basically seems like a cult, only with the financial equivalent of drinking cyanide rather than the literal version.