Are NFTs Here to Stay?

Limarc Ambalina, Ellen Stevens, and Amy Tom debate the future of NFTs. This Week On Planet Internet - are NFTs here to stay? Will the hype die down? 

Listen to The HackerNoon Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

🌎 THIS WEEK ON PLANET INTERNET:

• How do you determine which NFTs are million-dollar investments? (02:01) 😵
• What gives art value? (08:37) 💰
• How can you invest in the metaverse? (11:15) 🤑
• Is the metaverse even real? (14:32) 🤟🏻
• Is there value in metaverse land? (21:10) NOT OFFICIAL INVESTMENT ADVICE LOL 😂
• How hard do we have to look out for NFT scams? (24:05) 🤔
• How to embed NFTs into your HackerNoon story (32:30) 🤗

🗒️ SHOW NOTES:

• Start embedding NFTs into your HackerNoon stories: https://hackernoon.com/embed-nfts-say-what-into-your-hacker-noon-stories
• Get started with the metaverse on HackerNoon: https://hackernoon.com/how-you-can-invest-in-the-metaverse-today
• OK Tim Sweeney, WHATEVER: https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/27/22696978/epic-tim-sweeney-nft-scam-concerns-web-3
• Monkey JPEGS, who knew? https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/set-bored-ape-nfts-sell-244-mln-sothebys-online-auction-2021-09-09/

COMPUTER-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Limarc: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us this week on planet internet, we are talking about NFTs and whether or not we think NFTs are here to stay. And we have some for cool articles around the internet to illustrate these points today, I'm joined by your regular podcast. Hosts Amy, Tom. Hello. Hi, as well as our editor and community advocate.

Ellen Stephens. Hello? Hello. And immediately mark. So why don't we just get into it? Here is the first article we're talking about titled set of board ape NFTs sales for 24.4 million. And so it's, B's online auction and this is a article from routers. I hope I pronounced that right. Routers, and basically.

It's a talking about a really expensive, a set of NFTs that's still on. So Sophie's online auction. What do you think of this article? Amy? 

[00:01:00] Amy: I love an OTs and like the randomness of it. Could you looking at the bad apes, NFT mark have pictured that it would sell for 24 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. So like how I'm just slept fine.

It's so interesting. The culture of NFTs of like, how do you determine which ones are going to be the million dollar NMT is like this board, the board apes NFTs are cool, but they're not anything different than I have seen bad unicorns or. K9, whatever, there's a million different versions of these kinds of NMT is so I wonder why bad apes specifically took off.

I'm not really sure.

[00:01:44] Limarc: And in this article, did it talk about like a bit about the project or what ended up happening? Like why it sold for that much? Was there anything about that? 

[00:01:52] Amy: No, it doesn't really. Necessarily say, like why it sold for that much. And that's like kind of the question really of NFTs and like, how do you determine which one sells, which one is going to sell for more?

I really don't know. I guess it's just like the gamble of getting into the NMT. 

[00:02:10] Limarc: Yeah. And this one just to be clear, it was a set of 107. And is that sold for a total of 24.4 million, but that's still a huge cost per NFT, I think for sure. What about ULN did you, would you have expected just by looking at this picture that these can sell for that much.

[00:02:27] Ellen: I would not have expected that because it's a quite a large number for for, just images. It's literally 

[00:02:38] Amy: a JPEG. 

[00:02:40] Ellen: Yeah. But it makes me think, sometimes when I hear the use very large sums of money for what is seemingly like a questionable potentially in Way to invest that money.

I think about maybe laundering money or not like for me doing it, other people other people potentially doing that because sometimes when there is really no rhyme or reason for why something is done there may be potentially some sort of Some sort of reason that you do not know about for why it is to be done, because some of us do use respectfully or just absurd. 

[00:03:16] Amy: Yes. Do you think the whole NFT market though is like that then? Because there's so many that sold for thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars. So are all of those big ticket NFTs money-laundering. 

[00:03:32] Ellen: Maybe not all. But it does.

It does. I do question definitely. What is going on. Exactly. So yeah I know that people can invest their money and all sorts of different things, and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. But when you think about NFTs, there is quite a large risk factor. Bless you. I do I, I do.

I think it does beg the question out where this money is coming from and is it really legit? Because there's so many different options in the block blockchain technology to, run scams to do things someone illegally. I do wonder I do wonder about. For sure.

But I'm not, I also don't want to suggest that, I don't want to make the claim that this is what's happening here. It just, it made me so sorry to whomever was the seller and buyer. But it doesn't make me think about that for sure. 

[00:04:25] Limarc: So I'm talking about. Why certain NFC is going to higher in price.

In my opinion, there's kind of two reasons for that. One of them is there's like a functional reason of that. Like the NFT is a part of a larger platform where it serves a function rather than just owning it for the sake of owning it, like a painting or something. But then the other option is.

Like the idea that these NFTs are arts and they are like buying a painting at an art gallery that could go for millions of dollars. And this article, it said near the bottom like Amy was talking about the NFT marketing as a whole could be a bubble, but this artist believes that they see the board apes as a work of art.

And at the end of tea market is not a bubble. But I guess a question I've always had even before NFT is. When would you ever decide that a work of art can be worth millions of dollars in either, yeah. 

[00:05:15] Amy: It's like, where are these investors that are spending these millions of dollars and why are they not showing up in the traditional art world?

[00:05:24] Limarc: Yeah. Yeah. But it's a bit of a hard question, but what do you feel is like arts that is worth that much? Do you feel that. Art is worth that much because of its historical value, like a DaVinci painting or something, or is there something about art that I just can't see that these these investors and maybe perhaps you can see, okay.

[00:05:45] Amy: Yes. I love art and collecting art and I would pay. Pretty penny for a piece of art that was created by someone that I really admired and respected. So I think it depends on the creator and maybe that's also like the draw of the NFT, right? Like the fact that you go back to the creator and support the creator is something that draws artists to NFTs.

Yeah, Jeff, like I would definitely pay more money for art that was created by someone that I respected and admired, then some random JPEG of a monkey on the internet. But if that NFT was connected to something that I wanted, like a. I don't know an area on a grunda NMT. I love Ariana Grande.

I appreciate her as an artist. If she made an NFT, maybe I would buy one because I appreciate her art, that kind of thing. 

[00:06:47] Limarc: So it's for the sake of having it in general, it's not the idea that maybe you can sell it off for more later on. Like you just want to support the artists that you like the most.

[00:06:57] Amy: There. That's a different side of buying NFT is you're asking me, like, why would people buy these like million dollar NFTs? Ma I guess like people who are buying these million dollar NFTs are thinking about flipping them at some point. But I'm just thinking purely from like the standpoint of supporting artists and buying and the fact that I would spend more money on an NFT that was for related to someone that I respect.

[00:07:24] Limarc: Cool. Do you feel the same Elinor? Do you have a different aspect on that? 

[00:07:28] Ellen: So with respect to what gives our value in a particular society? I think a number of the factors that were already mentioned are completely completely reasonable and I think. They are factored into what, what the ultimate value of art is.

I think part of it is this concept of scarcity and which is a concept in economics. And it means that the demand for a good or service is greater than the availability of the goodness of. And so I can limit the choices available to customers who ultimately make up the economy.

So when you think about originals when you think about art so you can have a very high demand for a piece of art and the price can go up. If it's a, if it's an auction type situation which. I think it naturally would be. So the highest bidder generally would would be able to, would be able to get the item.

So I think that's definitely something that is That has to be put into consideration when looking at a value. So I think it's also individual rights. If you have 10 billionaires wanting to buy the same NFT of ensure that price can skyrocket but is it really worth that value?

I, to someone apparently, like who. Who defines value, usually the market in a free market economy. Personally it's, I don't think I, I, I'm in that circle yet where, spending millions of dollars on on an NFT. A reasonable decision or even a feasible one as I 

[00:09:11] Limarc: don't think I'm good.

Can you please keep your $25 million in the bank? LN don't spend it on. You might 

[00:09:16] Amy: want us to look like a house or, 

[00:09:18] Ellen: yeah. Basic first time for the Ana. 

[00:09:25] Limarc: Yeah, perhaps though, the first house you buy might be in the metaverse, which is one way you can invest in the metaverse today, which is the title of our next article written by Mr.

Eric. And this article is actually a part of our gaping metaverse writing contest. And it was really interesting. So we talked, we did a podcast episode about Metro versus before, and this one outlines the ways that people can inverse sorry to invest in the metaverse in specific Metta versus, or just in general, how you can invest in this as a concept and giving it a brief outline.

There are basically. Three to four ways to do this. So let's say let's pretend hackathon had a metaverse right. And in order to do that, we would need a token for currency on the metaverse. So way one is to just simply purchase the tokens of the company who has whatever metaverse that you're interested in.

Be at the sandbox decentral land, maybe hacker news feature. That's option one, option two is an interesting option. We also talked about before, which is buying land within that metaverse. So if we believe that the hackaton metaverse is going to get huge with billions of users later than obviously what if you bought land the hackneyed metaverse right away, that land would skyrockets when the metaverse got more popular.

So the first is buying this Oak and the second is biker. And then the third one which is what we're talking about today is buying that Metta versus NFTs. And in my opinion, I think this is the biggest function of NMT is that. Decide value. So let's say you own a pair of sneakers in the hacker noon metaverse but only a thousand people live in that.

Metaverse, it's probably not worth a lot, but if I bought a thousand of these sneakers in Michael Jordan's metaverse and his metaverse had 2 billion people next year, these sneakers could be worth a hell of a lot as an NFT. And I could sell that for a lot. So those are the ways that this author outline of how people can start investing in metaverse today.

Now that. Amy, where are you going to start doing any of these? Are you going to start investing in the metaverse? 

[00:11:27] Amy: No. Okay. Can I be an old person for two seconds? Yes, you're saying so you're telling me that you're going to invest in a piece of land that doesn't actually exist, but it's just on the internet.

And then. You're going to spend your tokens in this, like all universe and you're going to sell and buy sneakers in this all you're going to reverse as well. That's how this world is going to play. 

[00:11:58] Limarc: Yeah, in some ways you can already do that with Metta versus like the sandbox. I think I told you guys, I bought land in that metaverse and it doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist physically, but I can put a video game on there. I can put hacker news website on there and that exists as a piece of their world. Now, if I were to do that, 

[00:12:19] Amy: okay. Blows my mind. Why? 

[00:12:24] Limarc: What, another way thinking about it as let's say you wanted to go to Amsterdam to go there. You have to get Amsterdam's currency.

So to go to the sandbox metaverse and buy things in the sandbox better versus you have to get their currency. So it works the same 

[00:12:39] Amy: going to Amsterdam physically. Like I'm a be there, but like I'm never going to be in the metaverse. 

[00:12:47] Limarc: Oh, I don't know about. I'll already with virtual reality. I could do that.

And if I want to walk there, how about you? 

[00:12:53] Amy: I'd be like one of those be like old people. They're like the internet. 

[00:12:57] Limarc: In a way it is like that. Because this thing isn't built yet, it is something comfortable. What about you all? And when you started buying land tokens and NFTs and your favorite metaverse.

[00:13:07] Ellen: So I currently, I think I should focus on buying probably real land in the real universe. But I do think that quite a large section of the population exists in the virtual world. Even if you're not playing video games, you're probably, existing on some sort of social media platform.

And the thing with these platforms is that people get very attached to, to them and to spending time there. So when a platform wants to make money, they can sell various extra features, et cetera. So this is an extension of that but I do think it's going to go further. So again, we don't know, 100% what the future holds.

The risks that we've been warned about and that we see happening fairly regularly our, the destruction of the environment various viruses, which are just going to continue to get worse. I don't mean to be like a doomsday, a weather vane human here, but the reality is A good section of the population may in the future exist at least in part virtually.

And so these platforms that are providing these spaces where these metaverses w where a person can create their reality. So I think that it just seems like the natural kind of step, especially when we morph a little bit more with artificial intellect. Et cetera.

I 

[00:14:37] Amy: think I get it. Is it going to be like SIM. 

[00:14:40] Ellen: And I'm sure some people would choose that version of a metaverse for them. But it could also be, I don't know if you want to exist in a world where, you know, maybe. That you don't follow like a particular law of gravity or law of physics or something of that nature, you could get as creative as that's kinda the magic of it is you can literally exist in a dream world without, doing some sort of hallucinogenic substance 

[00:15:06] Amy: or what have you.

But like that was the big draw. back in like the nineties early two thousands. The fact that and th that's why so many people flock to in a real obsessed and crazy about it. And let's spend like their entire day on it because the virtual Universal's better than the real one. So they would just spend all day on it.

So I guess like maybe that's where the metaverse will go. Imagine if sandbox got that wide adoption and then everyone would just. Yeah. Okay. I get my audit. It's also like in my mind. Oh my God. I understand. 

[00:15:38] Ellen: Yeah, the and so actually I had posted I D I think it was a different article.

I think Lee mark, that was the one where you're talking about purchasing some lent. I think that, and so there was an interesting question that came up that I'd like to, I'd like to talk about because it's I thought it was a good. Interesting way to think about value. So what actually guarantees the scarcity of the land you purchase?

So again, back to this topic of scarcity if you purchase a piece of land in, what are some of the PLA platforms there's sandbox and other ones. Yeah. In different platforms, which one of those pieces of land is going to gain the most value. And so when you think about scarcity what that means is that there isn't an infinite amount available, right?

So these companies that are starting these Mehta verses and selling these pockets of land they're likely going to have to program into this system and. So for example, I think Bitcoin, right? They, it has a limit. And so they're like dividing it into like very small fractions now. Or what have you but that's, an interesting point as well for me, because, which is more likely to win and why 

[00:16:59] Limarc: so if your question is, what guarantee is the scarcity Almost nothing.

As you said, Bitcoin has a cap when they wrote out the plan for that coin, they decided on that cap. But I've read articles or programmers could find a way to not have a cap. It's like the. Crypto miners and the community agreed on that cap to keep the scar city, to keep the scarcity of that coin and keep the value high.

But I can just tell you that, Hey, these NFTs are capped at 1000 copies there. Get them while they're out there. There's not going to be more printed, but we could meet more at any time. There's nothing stopping us other than, hopefully there's a lot, that'll come out that we could Sue people for not following those rules that they set out.

But physically there's really nothing. The sandbox could infinitely, keep getting bigger and not have a cap if they wanted to. But the other way to create value in lands, even if it's infinite is at what point you buy and where are you? So for example the reason I was really interested to get in when I did is because that batch was when they partnered with the walking dead, which is a series I love.

And that was part of the walking dead land sale. And there's these big blocks of lands that have the walking dead on them because that's going to host the walking dead content. So if I think the walking dead is an important IP and that other people will value it. And if I buy my land next to that big block, Then probably mine has more value than a piece of land that's in the middle of nowhere, just like real estate and the real world.

If I have an apartment next to downtown, it's much more valuable than one in the boonies for most people, at least. 

[00:18:33] Ellen: That's true. Yeah. So the location matters as well. It's just fascinating to see that play out in a virtual space.

[00:18:42] Limarc: Let's why don't we bring it back to something that's more.

Easily feasible and like easily understandable in terms of value and talk about a metaverse that has already proven value, which is fortnight's members. Not everyone might be as geeky as me. So if you don't know, Fortnite is one of the most popular battle Royale games in the world. It was the most popular one at one point a billion dollar company and a.

The fortnights is a matter of verse in their own rights. They hold concerts with famous people. They hold events that millions of people experience around the world at the exact same time, no matter where you are. And in my opinion, games that already have Metro versus like this, these are like the best place to implement NFTs because kids and adults spent hundreds of dollars buying these digital items that are again, just images digitally that you'd never really own.

If fortnight's shut down. Those things are gone, but if they were NFTs, you would have them forever on your wallet, which is why I think they should do that. But as it says in this article, by the verge Tim Sweeney says epic is not pursuing that at all. And the main reason they give is they are attaching NFTs because of the amount of scams in the space.

I'm not fully buying that reason, but I want to hear what you think. L and I think you said you read this article. What do you think about. 

[00:20:02] Ellen: Yeah. I think it's interesting to present a balanced side to things, right? So you have a lot of people that are very much, gung ho for these NFTs.

And here you have someone that is looking at, what's actually happening in this space that it's not overly positive. And so I actually wanted to touch up on some of these scams that are happening because I think, people should be aware of what's going on.

So there there was a couple of things here. So one of the problems that's occurring currently is people are pretending. So they'll go onto these spaces. Open see, or, these NFT markets and they'll pretend to be a particular artist. And allegedly the verification processes are not ideal.

Upload a particular piece of art onto this NMT platform, that's creating an NFT and then later an artist will find out that someone is selling their work, potentially for high prices and the are not them, it's quite unfortunate. And so like by that point, that NFT has been registered in the system as allegedly an original a and so I'm actually not a hundred percent sure.

I imagine they, they try and take it off, but at that point, sales have been made right. Been transferred. And what these scammers do is because with blockchains you have a record of the account and the wallet that bought bought the particular NFT. So the scammer sole sell it immediately.

So the personnel who's purchased state is. Very likely and innocent, I'm an innocent person. So that's kinda how they Dodge the whole, tracking element. And there was a, yeah, and there was a, larger larger story about someone who had purchased something and realized that there was something a little bit off about it.

And. He had gone to two, I think. It was open C so he had gone to the platform to complain about this. I don't remember exactly what the situation was but someone. Approached him and started a conversation, I think on discord or something of that nature.

And he thought it was the official people. They pretended to be like the official people from open sea. And they had a pretty I guess maybe standards, conversation of like tech support. And then eventually he ended up screen-sharing with these people.

And they actually ended up stealing pretty much all of his NFTs. I think it was like 

[00:22:48] Amy: oh my God. Don't discord with people. Don't discord, my friend people 

[00:22:53] Ellen: that's that? 

[00:22:54] Amy: Yeah, that's the lesson. They don't put their support on discord. 

[00:22:59] Ellen: Yeah. So I think he, he lost $500,000 or something like a large amount of money.

Yeah. And so the kind of they were able to trace, the wallet, but again by the time that they did this the assets were already sold to other people, innocent people. And one of the lessons that he was saying that he learned was when you're in charge of being your own bank, that's one of the risks. Whereas, at a bank you might go in right away to take out money, whatever, generally speaking you're not thinking about the bank scamming you. Whereas now if you're taking out the middleman in a certain sense now your. Having to mitigate those risks essentially on your own.

So that does leave quite an quite an opening for scammers. And there's actually like one quick thing that I did want to bring up and that I think is absolutely fascinating. That's a little bit outside the scope of this, but we recently published an article that. Was talking about privacy coins.

And so again, when you hear about blockchain, when you hear about NFT is a lot of the reoccurring statements happened to be that, it's very secure. It's secure because the transactions are mostly. Please meet or uncover privacy coins, right? Some coins allow you to register the details of all transactions in the blockchain.

And there are others where it is impossible to do. So no one knows either the details of the transactions or the names of the users who perform them. They're called privacy coins. They're anonymous, peer-to-peer decentralized systems that are a unit of calculation within the network. Naturally within any type of new sort of structure system, there are going to be questionable players.

But I did want to note that such things exist and are being developed as well. Yeah, I think that's the end of that rant. 

[00:24:56] Limarc: Cool. Cool. And those scams are real. I have discourse. And if you just join one NFT discord, you'll get those messages every day about this new thing that you should join this new oh, you should buy this new coin.

And it's the same thing. These are the same people that call and pretend to be Microsoft support, like it doesn't really matter. It's not at the NFTs fault. Those people will be everywhere every time there's an option to make money off gullible people they're going to be there. It does exist.

People should be aware, but it's not the NFTs fault. It's not blockchain's fault. 

[00:25:24] Ellen: I, I. I don't think I was necessarily assigning the fault to anyone other than, the people who are doing these scams. But the important element is the fact that, the people who are generally, it seems participating in the whole NMT culture, generally speaking.

Quite tech savvy likely. I would say maybe the majority are and here you have a person that's, in tech savvy, like he's pretty tech savvy and he fell for it. So it's just the the level of sophistication, and the level. Awareness that you now have to have if you're acting as your own bank.

So that's yeah, an important to 

[00:26:02] Amy: bring it back to the original story and something that you just mentioned mark, about the fact that like tons of people are messaging about. By this entity do this NMT. Yeah. The back that Tim Sweeney is getting like tweeted and DMD, like constantly please, or check this NMT police or make an NMT with us.

I think it's hilarious. Or just like fact that any celebrity is getting approach right now. And just please make an Adam to you with us. 

[00:26:31] Limarc: I'll make one for myself as well. Eventually my entire wardrobe. But nevertheless NFT is, are still big and hacking it and being a blockchain and crypto publication, we have a new cool feature to talk about.

And I want to hand this over to Ellen, who will talk about. 

[00:26:50] Ellen: Yeah, so a NFG is, are awesome. But it, it's it's good to be aware. So we now actually have the ability for the people who are writing on our website in editor 2.0 to be able to input NFT art or NFTs. So it's relatively straightforward.

So the example given in the article, that's written by one of our developers is that you can go to open sea and then you can, pick out various. And FTS and then you'd need a, what you'd need, as to look at the details of the NMT. So you can actually, I do this with me. So if you go scroll up a little bit or you don't have to, but anyways, so you'd go to the details of the of the NFT.

And then there's going to be a contract. Address that you that you would copy. But that's not all right. Then what you need to do is you need to put a hashtag and then you need to put a token ID. So there's also a token ID that you can copy. So it's going to be like a long string of the the address and then a hashtag and then a four or however many digits for the token ID.

And all you do is you. Enter and it should show up. So I tested it a few times last night and this morning to make sure I knew what I was talking about. And yeah. And then it shows up. So it's it's really cool. And we mark 

[00:28:27] Amy: in the story. Yes, 

[00:28:29] Limarc: for sure. For sure. And I think it's, it works on both editors.

So I'll we can correct this later if that's wrong. Cause I did try it and editor 3.0 and it worked as well. So we'll see. But yes, please. If you have NFTs and you're writing about NFTs, please do embedded directly. You don't need to just take a screenshot anymore. All right. Lastly, some surprise news that came to mind to Amy's delight.

Neo pets are getting NFTs. Now I don't want to talk too much about it, but are you excited? Are you going to buy some what's going on? 

[00:29:06] Amy: I've decided that I'm going to buy a Neopets NMT. So long as they're not millions of dollars, but I feel like it would take off, I loved meal pets. And then, again, it's like what am I willing to spend my money on the things that pull my heart strings Neopets.

Great memory is good times. 

[00:29:26] Limarc: Based on everything we talked about then today in a one minute, can you tell me, Ellen, do you think NFTs will last or are they a bubble that are going to burst? 

[00:29:35] Ellen: I think it's likely that this technology will continue. I think, the concept of blockchain makes sense in a lot of different ways is especially in terms of system verification and things like that.

And so I think NFT is as art and et cetera are It's like something that naturally comes with that. So I do think that they are here to stay for sure. I think technology is going to continue developing that way. And yes, if I can do a quick a hacker noon product.

Advertisement though about writing prompts. If you want to write about tech trends you can do that. You can do that. There is a way to, if you go to our nav bar and you hover over yeah, there will be writing prompts. And at the very top, you can see a description about all of their writing prompts that are available, that you can also pick the prompt that asks about And and trends and texts.

So that's a, if you want to write about NFTs, please please go ahead and do that. I, you just have to click on the prompt and it'll take you to a draft and you just write yeah, sorry. little random 

[00:30:45] Limarc: about you, Amy. Do you think NFTs are here to stay or are they a bubble that are getting a burst?

Why or why not? 

[00:30:53] Amy: I think we've been riding the like million dollar NFT hype for over six months now. So I'm pretty sure it's here to stay. 

[00:31:03] Limarc: Cool. Cool. I also agree it's here to stay. I think even though there's hype, I think the hype will burst, but as Ellen said, the technology will be here to stay.

Once you get away from like these NFTs that are just pumping dumps and you get into things that actually have utility. I think that's where this will last longterm. And that was our discussion on NFTs this week on planet internet. Thank you very much for joining me, Amy and Ellen, and see you next time.

This podcast was produced by hacker noon and hosted by me Lee, mark, and edited by Alex. Thanks for joining us, everybody. See you next week on planet internet.

This article is part of The Gaming Metaverse Writing Contest hosted by HackerNoon in partnership with The Sandbox.

Submit your #gaming-metaverse story today for your chance to win up to $2000.