The company behind the NBA’s NFTs is valued at $2.6b

https://www.fastcompany.com/90619728/the-company-behind-the-nbas-nft-trading-cards-is-now-valued-at-2-6-billion

by jbegley • 5 years ago

14 35 5 years ago

I really don’t understand NFTs. You’re not buying a thing. You’re buying a hex code. Take for instance these NBA clips. Are you getting an exclusive license to the clip? No. Are you getting an exclusive login to view the clip? Also no.

A few weeks ago some artist said he was selling a “limited edition of one” image as NFT. I downloaded the image off the web, and tweeted, “And now there are two.”

At least the MP3 Warz was about copyright and licenses. NFTs feel like their nothing but bragging rights among a small clique of the ultra rich.

robotnikman• 5 years ago

NFTs feel like their nothing but bragging rights among a small clique of the ultra rich.

Best way to describe it right there

usehackernews2• 5 years ago

Best way to describe the art market too

whateveracct3• 5 years ago

NBA Topshot is a centralized as it gets.

The only reason they use NFTs to track clip ownership rather than a normal DB is to ride the hype wave to pump their initial value.

heckerhut6• 5 years ago

I disagree. By putting it on the blockchain it becomes a crypto asset. That’s a new primitive.

rdtwo2• 5 years ago

Yeah it’s crypto for no reason it should be just a regular database

AlimJaffer• 5 years ago

NFT's generally don't make sense to me, but targeting a specific real-world market is a rare use case that seemingly makes sense. The patterns already exist in terms of Fantasy Sports, betting on sports, collectors sports cards, etc.

NFT's representing a tweet or image are pointless and all about bragging rights for the ultra wealthy, but attacking an existing billion dollar+ market in the sports and gambling space with a new twist does appear to have merit.

Anything digital being scarce is typically artificial for sake of, but in this case it's for the meta of the 'game' that they're playing and is ironically a centralized version of crypto that so many crypto people tend to rail against. Yet it's insanely popular.

spoonjim• 5 years ago

Almost all art is bragging rights and tax evasion for the ultra wealthy. NFTs can easily satisfy both of these as long as a 501c3 “museum” is created to accept NFT “donations” to enable the tax evasion side.

camgunz2• 5 years ago

NFTs are the new copyright. Gear up now.

rednerrus3• 5 years ago

Until you own the rights to the underlying object, it's not. Blockchains don't have anyway to enforce contracts. That's the rub.

heckerhut6• 5 years ago

You can easily confer copyright through an NFT. It’s just that so far nobody does it bc nobody gives a shit.

camgunz2• 5 years ago

Yeah, the idea is it'll someday be illegal to have a copy of something that isn't on an NFT chain somewhere.

rasz• 5 years ago

waynesonfire3• 5 years ago

Honestly, surprising this didn't exist before. A database of who owns what. Due to modern technology, this problem is now ready for disruption. Fascinating, and it's blowing peoples mind. "I don't get what NFTs are.." -- it's no different then submitting a document with the city that you own the property at some address. Everything else is details.

Like, if I make waynesonfire collectable cards, and I produce 10 of them, I'd make a paper certificate or something and maybe announce that I've made 10. I wouldn't know who owns them. However, computers can keep track of that now. That's great.

The question is, does this require a distributed ledger to operate? Maybe.. but, if I was waynesonfire card maker and was popular, I'd be very interested in creating and operating a ledger. This ecosystem seems VERY similar to social media, the ledger with the strongest network will win and there will probably be just a handful of them.

jonathankoren5• 5 years ago

But the ledger is meaningless. You make 10 copies of a PNG and put them on a blockchain to sell them, nothing prevents me from making a million identical copies of that PNG and give them for free. It’s not even counterfeit. They’re the exact same item. NFTs aren’t even DRM.

Even if you wanted to keep track of who “owned” something, what does blockchain provide that a relational database doesn’t? Commit privileges on a GitHub repo have more real world impacts than who “owns” a no exclusive link to a URL (not even the domain or content hosted on the domain!), but that’s managed through an database.

waynesonfire3• 5 years ago

I could careless that it's on a blockchain. In fact, I suspect the ledger that wins won't be. The claim I was making is that it doesn't matter whether it's a crypto-ledger or a central DB. The winner is the solution with the strongest network. I wouldn't be surprised if FB got into this space.

briangerman• 5 years ago

So wait we could potentially disrupt the NFT by adding a primitive form of DRM?

ChainOfFools2• 5 years ago

it did exist before. rarepepewallet, though amateurish in its UI and full of unserious and borderline offensive memery, was (maybe still is?) an NFT platform years before the term existed. In some ways is more fully realized for the purpose of trading unique token indexes than most of what goes by the name NFT presently.

jl2718• 5 years ago

“Valued” by whom?

The company behind the NBA’s NFTs is valued at $2.6b

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