What are NFTs? Digital Stickers Explained

NFTs are an idiotic scam and anyone who trades NFTs, for reasons not involving making money from suckers, is a moron.

Let’s start at the beginning though. What is ‘the blockchain’? It’s highly relevant to discussions on NFTs, yes, but also, imagine, just, infinity receipts. The receipts store various bits of information, such as the results of trade deals between people. Now imagine them stapled together, end to end, in chronological order. Now imagine everyone on earth having a copy of it on their computer for some reason. That’s the blockchain. Didn’t think you’d read the best explanation of crypto tech in an article telling you how dumb it all is, did ya?

Now, an NFT is an image, usually something thrown together in Photoshop in 15 minutes, that has a ‘token’ associated with it. Once you pay for the image on one of the crime-ridden cesspools that are NFT exchanges, that trade is recorded onto the blockchain, and now everyone knows that you paid way too much for an drawing of a monkey that someone else will slightly modify and sell to someone else for far more than it’s worth (which is nothing). The image can be of anything though, it doesn’t have to be a monkey. It also doesn’t have to be an image, but here in 2021, that’s pretty much all it’s used for. Told you it’s dumb.

As dumb as this whole thing is though, that NFT is now yours. You own it. Are there any benefits to owning an image? No. Are you the only person who can use it? No. Does anyone actually care that you ‘own’ some silly picture? Not only do people not care, but they will bully you online for being so stupid as to think your ill-advised purchase actually means anything outside of signalling to the world that you’re a dumbass.

While it’s true that it’s written in some worldwide ledger that you now own whatever image you paid actual money for*, it’s even more true that who cares! Yes, everyone agrees that you exchanged money for an image, that’s where it ends. You have no power. You have no authority. You don’t even have exclusivity. Maybe you have clout- wait! No-one cares! It’s Just like making a little kid king for his birthday - people play along and do as the kid asks, until something is on the line, and then it’s game over. That’s NFTs: A stupid little kid thinking that everyone will do whatever he wants, until he fucks up and does something he shouldn’t, and then he sees who really has the power. Hint; it was never him.

That brings us to another point. You may think that you “own” whatever NFT you paid for, but do you? Oh, don’t get me wrong. I agree that the blockchain says that you paid for it, but I could write in a book that I’m the king of France and get all my friends to sign it in fancy handwriting. Doesn’t make it true though, does it? The fact that it’s in writing doesn’t make it true. The blockchain can make any wild bullshit claims it wants, as can any other loser on the internet, regarding blockchain or otherwise, and they will all be ignored equally. Let none say that I am not fair, for none shall speak, for they are all equally dumb - but not as dumb as spending money on an NFT.

All this, and NFTs typically go down in value after they’re legitimately purchased anyway. You may see a giant list of trades below that dumb monkey, but that’s just one person swapping it back and forth between a bunch of wallets in to create artificial demand. You didn’t actually think that any sensible person would care about a virtual sticker collection, did you?

Crypto nerds will tell you that blockchain-enforced ownership is the future and that NFT tech doesn’t just apply to pointless avatars - and they’d be right. In the future, we might see films and books and video games tied to NFTs. It might happen, but thing is, we already have that. It's called intellectual property law. ‘The future’ finally catches up! What a joke.

A big selling point of the whole NFT movement is that they’re ‘unique’. That no-one has one quite like yours. It might be unique, but guess what? Who fuckin’ cares?! Your drawing of an ape has a different hat and to this other drawing of an ape? Bet that really makes it special, doesn’t it! Out of hundreds of thousands of variations, none will look exactly like yours. Not that it matters. Don’t think that more won’t be ‘released’ either. These aren’t exactly scarce. They’re photoshop drawings that someone put together in 15-30 minutes. As soon as the creator needs an injection of funds, you can expect another round of these ‘rare’ images. Well done.

I guess the crux of the thing is that NFTs are dumb, I’ll right-click any one I please, you have no power, we already have the thing that does what people say blockchain will do for us, they aren’t scarce or rare, and you paid $10,000 for .jpg that a hundred people will mock you for as soon as you post about it on Twitter.

*NFTs are bought with crypto, but you’re either exchanging real money for crypto to get the NFT, or you’re using crypto that you gained from mining, which you’re using to get this NFT instead of trading it for real money