This was just bought for $23,702,160.16 USD(twitter.com)
twitter.com
This was just bought for $23,702,160.16 USD
https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1492602644417896454
32 comments
> What I wonder is, how much of the overpayment for non-digital art in the 20th century was like this?
Hundred billion dollar question. Blockchains are just providing immediate transparency for big markets that we didn't have the transparency for. I just consider it price discovery, where all price discovery is better than the absence of it.
I noticed it is easy for me to accept things that others have trouble with due to two or three things:
1) To me, all price discovery is good
2) I don't care what prices the price discovery reveals
3) It isn't controversial to me that prices can go down, or that liquidity can evaporate, whereas with others this seems to be something they think is their missionary duty to reveal to people. Speculation does not matter to me, be objective about your own risk profile. Don't worry about other people's lack of objectiveness, if you are a smarter market participant then the market will reward that.
This isn't supposed to be some libertarian free market theory, its just shocking that people are operating under a less effective set of rules for a market based economy, these are assumptions that work really well because thats what is happening.
Hundred billion dollar question. Blockchains are just providing immediate transparency for big markets that we didn't have the transparency for. I just consider it price discovery, where all price discovery is better than the absence of it.
I noticed it is easy for me to accept things that others have trouble with due to two or three things:
1) To me, all price discovery is good
2) I don't care what prices the price discovery reveals
3) It isn't controversial to me that prices can go down, or that liquidity can evaporate, whereas with others this seems to be something they think is their missionary duty to reveal to people. Speculation does not matter to me, be objective about your own risk profile. Don't worry about other people's lack of objectiveness, if you are a smarter market participant then the market will reward that.
This isn't supposed to be some libertarian free market theory, its just shocking that people are operating under a less effective set of rules for a market based economy, these are assumptions that work really well because thats what is happening.
From the Wikipedia article (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania): "At the peak of tulip mania, in February 1637, some single tulip bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled artisan. ". There is nothing new under the sun ...
This attitude was used as an example in "Heuristics that almost always work": https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost...
So parent is almost certainly right?
Indeed!
"He works in a very boring building. It basically never gets robbed. He sits in his security guard booth doing the crossword. Every so often, there’s a noise, and he checks to see if it’s robbers, or just the wind.
It’s the wind. It is always the wind. It’s never robbers. Nobody wants to rob the Pillow Mart in Topeka, Ohio. If a building on average gets robbed once every decade or two, he might go his entire career without ever encountering a real robber.
At some point, he develops a useful heuristic: it he hears a noise, he might as well ignore it and keep on crossing words: it’s just the wind, bro.
This heuristic is right 99.9% of the time, which is pretty good as heuristics go. It saves him a lot of trouble.
The only problem is: he now provides literally no value. He’s excluded by fiat the possibility of ever being useful in any way. He could be losslessly replaced by a rock with the words “THERE ARE NO ROBBERS” on it."
"He works in a very boring building. It basically never gets robbed. He sits in his security guard booth doing the crossword. Every so often, there’s a noise, and he checks to see if it’s robbers, or just the wind.
It’s the wind. It is always the wind. It’s never robbers. Nobody wants to rob the Pillow Mart in Topeka, Ohio. If a building on average gets robbed once every decade or two, he might go his entire career without ever encountering a real robber.
At some point, he develops a useful heuristic: it he hears a noise, he might as well ignore it and keep on crossing words: it’s just the wind, bro.
This heuristic is right 99.9% of the time, which is pretty good as heuristics go. It saves him a lot of trouble.
The only problem is: he now provides literally no value. He’s excluded by fiat the possibility of ever being useful in any way. He could be losslessly replaced by a rock with the words “THERE ARE NO ROBBERS” on it."
Yes, I understand the article.
What I'm saying is that you're accusing them of having a boring, predictable, likely correct take and nobody should be impressed when it turns out to be correct.
I didn't think this was your intention from context. But if it was, I couldn't agree more.
What I'm saying is that you're accusing them of having a boring, predictable, likely correct take and nobody should be impressed when it turns out to be correct.
I didn't think this was your intention from context. But if it was, I couldn't agree more.
In a past NFT discussion an HN'er commented that "NFTs are the world's most convoluted and expensive way to store a bookmark."[0]
But it is plausible to store low-resoltion low-color-depth bitmap "art" like a cryptopunk on a blockchain. Based on the image in the tweet, the cost of a raw encoding may be 24x24x3 = 1728 bits which would cost 1728/256 * (20000gas * $0.0018) = ~$243USD on the Ethereum blockchain which isn't all that expensive if the NFT gains traction.[1]
Can someone confirm. Does a cryptopunk's complete image data exist on the blockchain ? Perhaps that partly explains why it gets higher valuations than other arguably more creative art projects.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208 [1]https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/872
But it is plausible to store low-resoltion low-color-depth bitmap "art" like a cryptopunk on a blockchain. Based on the image in the tweet, the cost of a raw encoding may be 24x24x3 = 1728 bits which would cost 1728/256 * (20000gas * $0.0018) = ~$243USD on the Ethereum blockchain which isn't all that expensive if the NFT gains traction.[1]
Can someone confirm. Does a cryptopunk's complete image data exist on the blockchain ? Perhaps that partly explains why it gets higher valuations than other arguably more creative art projects.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208 [1]https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/872
But why? "Good for extremely low-res art" is not exactly a wide selling point.
Cryptopunks are fully stored on-chain, including the image: https://www.larvalabs.com/blog/2021-8-18-18-0/on-chain-crypt...
Everyone is saying laundering, but wash or related parties is much more likely. The principal invested parties in NFTs desperately need to maintain transaction volume to pretend this is a real thing in which real people are really engaging.
I hear about how these things are used for money laundering but I don't understand the mechanics. Could I get an eli5?
Someone wants to buy $27 mil in cocaine.
Rather than use cash, they used art.
That's really it.
Rather than use cash, they used art.
That's really it.
That's a kind of unnecessary contortionist perspective don't you think? vs:
Someone is selling $27M in cocaine, but wants to pay taxes on and spend the $27M as legitimate money.
Rather than record a cocaine sale, they sell an NFT for $27M of crypto to a cooperative buyer, and the cocaine is delivered but never existed.
Someone is selling $27M in cocaine, but wants to pay taxes on and spend the $27M as legitimate money.
Rather than record a cocaine sale, they sell an NFT for $27M of crypto to a cooperative buyer, and the cocaine is delivered but never existed.
I don't know whether this is actually money laundering, but here's how it would work if it was:
1) Get some money illegitimately (scam people, do credit fraud, sell drugs, whatever). End up with some cryptocurrency.
2) You or a partner sets up an NFT for some ludicrous amount of money. An anonymous buyer (the wallet with your dirty money, or some cryptocurrency tumbler) purchases the NFT at asking price.
3) Now you have clean money. Once you pay taxes on it, you can buy regular goods and assets without much scrutiny. If law enforcement asks where your 8 figures came from, you can point to the sale of this NFT, and say that the buyer was anonymous and that this is standard practice for NFTs/cryptocurrency trades.
If you're not careful, law enforcement might be able to prove that you (or your friend) owned the illegitimate money from 1), but with proper precautions it's much much harder to track.
1) Get some money illegitimately (scam people, do credit fraud, sell drugs, whatever). End up with some cryptocurrency.
2) You or a partner sets up an NFT for some ludicrous amount of money. An anonymous buyer (the wallet with your dirty money, or some cryptocurrency tumbler) purchases the NFT at asking price.
3) Now you have clean money. Once you pay taxes on it, you can buy regular goods and assets without much scrutiny. If law enforcement asks where your 8 figures came from, you can point to the sale of this NFT, and say that the buyer was anonymous and that this is standard practice for NFTs/cryptocurrency trades.
If you're not careful, law enforcement might be able to prove that you (or your friend) owned the illegitimate money from 1), but with proper precautions it's much much harder to track.
thank you for the clear explanation!
Much nicer tricks were used to launder money in the past. Isn't it ridiculous where we're at?
Can you explain to me the mechanics of how purchasing an NFT facilitates money laundering?
You'd have to buy $23m of ETH with cash, which isn't as easy as it seems, but then why is the NFT important? Just put the ETH through a tumbler and sell it. Withdraw to a bank account and tell the IRS you made a lucky investment.
You'd have to buy $23m of ETH with cash, which isn't as easy as it seems, but then why is the NFT important? Just put the ETH through a tumbler and sell it. Withdraw to a bank account and tell the IRS you made a lucky investment.
Not an expert, but there was a post on HN recently which mentioned an exchange refusing to touch tumbled crypto.
If anybody took computer science 101, take a look at the class structure of the NFT standards.
These are simply getters and setters. The setters occurring in the constructor once.
In the popular Profile Picture collection sector of the NFT economy, a compute instance randomly assigns attributes in the constructor. The art reflects that assignment as well, but this part doesn't really matter, people sort the items in the collection programmatically based on the getters.
When they find random assignments that occurred less, they recognize it is less common and rare in the collection. Those NFTs, within the collection, have value to those communities.
These are simply getters and setters. The setters occurring in the constructor once.
In the popular Profile Picture collection sector of the NFT economy, a compute instance randomly assigns attributes in the constructor. The art reflects that assignment as well, but this part doesn't really matter, people sort the items in the collection programmatically based on the getters.
When they find random assignments that occurred less, they recognize it is less common and rare in the collection. Those NFTs, within the collection, have value to those communities.
I understand that Nft are programmatically generated with some random attributes on decentralised vm.. but how to know whats rare?
all whales, monkeys nft collection looks unique and different but what is rarity?
The marketplaces like OpenSea often show metadata and % of other items in the same collection with the same metadata
This is in competition with other services that only do those things, such as rarity.tools
For example,
https://opensea.io/assets/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18...
This item in this collection has a "properties" tab on that UI, which shows you what was read and compared to the others in the contract
This is in competition with other services that only do those things, such as rarity.tools
For example,
https://opensea.io/assets/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18...
This item in this collection has a "properties" tab on that UI, which shows you what was read and compared to the others in the contract
Genuine question and not a troll but what is the true value behind NFTs? What is there to suggest that it is not a fad/hype and something of real value? I remember cryptokitties back in the day..
People brush this off as money laundering, but I'll note that this was purchased by an account linked to a real person, Deepak Thapliyal, CEO of Chain.com
It's highly visible and if there's anything sketch going on, it strikes me as very dumb to be this out in the open with such a large public transaction.
It's highly visible and if there's anything sketch going on, it strikes me as very dumb to be this out in the open with such a large public transaction.
Yeah, it's not money laundering, it's just part of a mania. I say that as an NFT true believer.
Right now it feels like the speculation in NFTs is narrowing from a relatively broad-based buy everything phase to focus on a very limited list of "blue chip" NFTs. Those small numbers of NFTs are being pushed to higher and higher levels while that vast majority of NFTs languish with almost no trading activity.
I don't know how that ends. Sure, it's a bubble, but it may not pop in any meaningful timeframe. It's already gone way past what I feel is reasonable, so I know not to trust my judgement on how much longer it can last.
I also have to factor in envy. I passed up Bored Apes when they were quite cheap, so I'm sure that's coloring my view.
Right now it feels like the speculation in NFTs is narrowing from a relatively broad-based buy everything phase to focus on a very limited list of "blue chip" NFTs. Those small numbers of NFTs are being pushed to higher and higher levels while that vast majority of NFTs languish with almost no trading activity.
I don't know how that ends. Sure, it's a bubble, but it may not pop in any meaningful timeframe. It's already gone way past what I feel is reasonable, so I know not to trust my judgement on how much longer it can last.
I also have to factor in envy. I passed up Bored Apes when they were quite cheap, so I'm sure that's coloring my view.
I wonder if the people involved in this are paying all the taxes...
Imagine if we could skim 0.1% of all transactions to some kind of charity.
Aka “money” went from one wallet I own to another wallet I own.
But, what is "overpay"? Well, something more than what other people are paying for that. What if most of the people are trying to "overpay"? Well, the price of that thing would spiral upwards. If it were something of no intrinsic value, that would actually be a bonus, since it's oddly more difficult to spot the overpayment part if it's a rational thing, for which there is a clear market price.
What I wonder is, how much of the overpayment for non-digital art in the 20th century was like this?