The way I read the article, the “worth millions” is the sum of the ransom demand.

The funny part is that the exploit is in the “smart” contract, ya know the thing that the blockchain keeps secure by forbidding any updates or patches.

        • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          9 months ago

          Love how the NFT hype was a big wealth transfer event. So many rich people, like wealthy oil Arabs, bought into the scam and moved so much money into artists pockets while they essentially got nothing in return.

          • triptrapper@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            9 months ago

            Is there any way to confirm this? Or are there examples of artists who made a significant amount of money from NFTs? I understand its potential benefit for artists, but I mostly remember already-rich corporations (e.g. UFC) using them as another way to extract money from consumers.

              • modifier@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                9 months ago

                He was the first big one I remember. When it still had an air of legitimacy.

            • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              9 months ago

              There are curated NFT auction sites where only selected artists are allowed to sell their work. And you can see for how much they sell their pieces. During the hype many sold items for thousands to tens of thousands or more. Also there is Beeple who rode the hype early from the start and he became a millionaire.

          • lunarul@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            9 months ago

            My favorite is Murakami, who after selling NFTs he made paintings after all all of them. So which one is the “original”? The actual physical painting, or the digital NFT?

            • yeather@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              9 months ago

              Technically, the NFT. In reality, the physical. Is a lot harder to brag about your art assets if you have to log into your pc to show them off.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            9 months ago

            That’s not really what happened. Some people who had invested in companies that would make money if NFTs went up in value chummed the waters by buying NFTs for huge amounts, convincing a lot of people that NFTs were going to be great investments. Then celebrities with an interest in the scheme pumped up the value too.

            That convinced a lot of idiots to “invest” in NFTs, then eventually the bottom fell out of the market.

            As for artists, some made some money, but most of the money went into shit like “bored apes” which were algorithmically generated.

        • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          12
          ·
          9 months ago

          I do see potential use for them, but not in the way they are currently being used. I could see uses like door keys, tickets, memberships, etc being of practical value, but not stupid little pictures.

            • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              8
              ·
              9 months ago

              Besides the obvious of your door lock needing to be connected to the internet, and that could be a problem, what else do you see as being an issue with using it for door keys?

              • logan_berries@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                10
                ·
                9 months ago

                Another question is: why would you need it for a key?

                Long-established public/private keys and signatures are used in this way all the time to control access to servers around the world. No blockchain needed. Blockchain is helpful when we all need to agree on a series of events.

                Homes are a nice example of where you can have an isolated system which knows what it needs to about you (e.g. a public key) without sharing or cross-checking anything with the world.

              • bahbah23@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                7
                ·
                9 months ago

                How exactly would that work? Keep in mind that the blockchain is by necessity not secret.

                • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  11
                  ·
                  9 months ago

                  Right, but all the lock is doing is checking whether you own the NFT or not. If your house was in NFT, people could see that you bought a house, but not where it was as long as it was generic like house #40000

          • notthebees@reddthat.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            9 months ago

            I thought of it as a good way for artists to earn a living by more tokenized artworks, but then it gets hijacked by this shit.

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            12
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            9 months ago

            I think of it like timeshare values. They’re really high …. Until you try to find someone who will actually buy it

            • mhague@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              9 months ago

              The person talking out of their ass is voted up.

              The person bringing up facts is voted down.

              The person posting dismissive nonsense is voted up.

              Gross.

          • Womble@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            9 months ago

            The vast majority of NFTs are worthless now

            “MacContract on Ethereum has a floor price of $13,234,204.2, but its all-time sales is only $18,” the report said, adding: “This stark discrepancy between listed floor prices and actual sales data exposes a significant issue in the NFT market – inflated valuations that don’t reflect genuine buyer interest or real-world transactions.

            “It becomes clear that a significant portion of the NFT market is characterized by speculative and hopeful pricing strategies that are far removed from the actual trading history of these assets,” it said.

            And this is a report from a crypto website with a vested interest in pretending crypto has uses.

            • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              9 months ago

              Its hard to be definitive, especially from one data point, but theres no doubt that lots of NFTs are just copycats trying to ride the coattails of other succesful projects, and end up flooding the market with garbage.

              But that doesnt mean all projects are garbage, nor that the tech is bad or unutilized.

              I had a feeling id get flamed by even mentioning NFTs, so im not surprised a the downvotes or derision. Anyways, have a good one 😃

        • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          9 months ago

          Better than the current money laundering techniques? Using art appraisals to inflate assets and move dirty money, or straight up using banks like Deutsche or Credit Suisse (RIP) to move dirty money?

          • kautau@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            9 months ago

            I mean yeah, it’s better to launder money using a difficult to trace digital ledger. But no, the things you mentioned won’t go away, because there’s also money in the laundering, and double dipping is the name of the game

        • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          10
          ·
          9 months ago

          Mmm, considering NFTs are all on transparent blockchains, I don’t know that I would choose that particular method to accomplish that.

          • Starbuck@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            25
            ·
            9 months ago

            The transparency is the feature that makes it great. I can buy drugs or whatever, and exchange you buy an NFT from me of equal value. Now when the bank comes and says “where did this >$15k transaction come from?” I can point to the blockchain and say that I sold my fancy monkey pic.

            This has been a thing in the physical art world for a while, https://complyadvantage.com/insights/art-money-laundering/, this just made it easier.

            • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              15
              ·
              9 months ago

              Yeah, I know it’s happened for a while, but my big question would be why are you having to put your money back in the bank instead of leaving it on a blockchain such as Monero. The dollar is about the biggest scam around along with all other government fiat currencies.

              • Starbuck@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                17
                ·
                edit-2
                9 months ago

                Because sometimes even criminals need to buy things that aren’t illegal, I guess. And the legitimate people who have those things don’t want to play games dealing with fake internet money.

                If I want to buy a jetski, the place I buy it from isn’t going to take crypto because the people that sell the parts for it don’t take crypto and the people who build it can’t pay for food in crypto.

                Crypto is only useful for rug pull scams, money laundering, and black-market transactions. It’s real innovation is undoing centuries of banking regulations so that people can learn the hard way why all those regulations exist.

                • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  7
                  ·
                  9 months ago

                  For now, sure. However, i will say that i have been buying food woth crypto for over a year now and havent starved yet. And if i wanted a jetski and wanted to pay in crypto i could do so. Fundamentally, crypto and banking are two totally different things because with a bank somebody holds your money. With crypto, you hold your money.

              • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                8
                ·
                9 months ago

                why are you having to put your money back in the bank instead of leaving it on a blockchain such as Monero.

                Because my mortgage company, supermarket and power company only take real money.

                • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  6
                  ·
                  9 months ago

                  The mortgage I could see being a problem. As for groceries and power, I can pay for those with crypto.

              • ElectroNeutrino@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                6
                ·
                9 months ago

                Good and services are still primarily purchased with fiat in most of the world. You need to be able to actually use it for it to be useful, so whether or not blockchain is theoretically better doesn’t matter there if there isn’t wide enough adoption.

                • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  4
                  ·
                  9 months ago

                  True, thanks to the internet if the good is not immediately available in my local area for crypto i can order it online and have it delivered. Depending on exactly what the service is makes that an option too.

              • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                9 months ago

                Hahahahahahaha!

                I’m being serious when I say this: you don’t understand what you’re talking about. I know that’s dismissive, and I’m sorry.

      • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        9 months ago

        Those who buy art and pack it in a safe until it’s worth more?

        Im glad that doesn’t work as well in digital.

    • SCB@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      People buy them for millions or their value would not be in the millions

      • Andy@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        9 months ago

        First, DO people buy them for millions, in the present tense? I know that people did in the past, but I thought the price on most of these took a huge hit.

        Second: do people BUY them for millions, in the sense that they trade things of well-measured value (like fiat currency or gold) for coins to buy these? Or do they buy them for millions of dollars in equivalent coins that they already have, and don’t want to actually sell for real goods or money because they’d realized huge losses if they actually cashed out, so they have to keep them circulating within the blockchain to maintain a hope that they’ll return anywhere near their previous value? Because if you have 10 million dollars worth of etherium that you bought at 20 million and an NFT of questionable value, can’t you just buy and sell it to a few wallets you own to make it look like it’s recently been purchased for a few million to create the illusion of value without actually ever giving or receiving anything?

  • StupendousMan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    9 months ago

    Sounds like a great way to make an insurance claim on a bunch of NFTs work “millions” that you could not convince anyone to buy.

  • crashoverride@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    9 months ago

    Think of it like this, when people make drug busts and they find huge amounts of cocaine or whatever and they say oh this is 300 something mod a million is worth of stuff. No it’s not. It’s maybe like not even half that not even a quarter of that, they just make it up just to make their bust even bigger

    • Squizzy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      9 months ago

      I remember it used to be calculated on the lowest value extrapolated out so a gram of smoke was 20/25 bucks so a kilo of smoke “had a street value of 20,000 - 25,000.”

    • DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      9 months ago

      I also like the “10 Kilos of product was taken off of the street” which means like 12 grams of weed was turned into brownies

  • ShunkW@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    9 months ago

    Yeah the contract is how a few exchanges got stolen from in recent years

  • mhague@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    9 months ago

    People trying to discuss the topic have their posts pushed down while “lmao nfts” are voted up. How do you see someone saying, respectfully, “I think there’s a benefit to this.” and try to push down their contribution?

    Anyone who wants a good discussion about news in this community, must leave this community. If you want to add context or opposing perspectives, better go elsewhere. You build a community like this and you get people who know Hans had a vibrator, because jokes and legit opinions are treated as interchangable.

    • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      9 months ago

      NFTs are a joke, so it’s totally fine for a topic like this.

      Like what is there to discuss? The entire concept is stupid. With NFTs the object isn’t even on the blockchain, the image isn’t there. It’s pretty much just some random information that says image x belongs to you (but you have to store image x somewhere else and can lose it).

      When it comes to owning art either physical media or the rights to the image already do a much better job.

      The only area where NFTs sound useful (but they aren’t) is things like trading card games. Where you can have a card in a game and you own it, but because it’s an NFT you could sell the card to another player outside the game. But the whole concept again breaks down, the game can simply block the card from being played later on or remove the card and you’re left with nothing (besides “proof” that you own the NFT for a card that existed in the past). It adds nothing of value that a normal entry in a database couldn’t provide.

      One thing I’m still positive on: Crypto currency was a great idea, at least until Bitcoin was sabotaged with the 1 MB block size and transacting with it died along the way.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    9 months ago

    There were sufficiently stupid people to pay money for NFTs. They will sufficiently stupid people around to pay the ransom.