![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/midlet/48YcPW9WoE3JGmwjVjjFtNN4U1QTnM9s7cN7ZP1ZazM4qQzjBKT7aLws5dwJbmpCAx.png)


There's so much to write about on the topic of NFT's. They're everywhere right now. I think the hype is even bigger than the ICO boom and it's something that's getting more mainstream attention than that did because it's a lot easier for a normie to buy a piece of digital art vs figuring out wth an ICO is.

For some context I got introduced into the NFT world almost one year ago by some fellow Hivers. I won't keep tagging them in posts but yea, eternal gratitude. Back then I was a bit blah about getting involved, because there were lots of crypto related things where you could supposedly earn money from your art, but besides Steem/Hive I'd found most to pretty much be a waste of time. After hearing as many "...no SERIOUSLY, you should get into NFT's" from friends I went ahead and gave it a shot.

I sold my first few pieces pretty quickly for something like $96 and $169 at the time. This was back when ETH was super cheap. Back then I was super happy about these sales too as the only way up until then that I could earn anything from personal work like this was on Hive, and $96 on a Hive post, while not impossible, was rare.

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/midlet/23t8D1dSffWEpAzNchT9uqhiJfnSr7JFLfhw6trD4XRYKmCXVMiyq5SNW83nYAmYz8668.png)

From that point on I'd gathered that this was legit and I've been minting artwork since, but like Hive, these things were still largely undiscovered by the mainstream and I had the same thoughts all this time for NFT's that I've thought for Hive. If this gets any sort of traction, it's going to absolutely explode. Fast forward, this is the moment things changed...

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Well, I had a good run... <a href="https://t.co/1SyhiGoayT">https://t.co/1SyhiGoayT</a></p>&mdash; midlet (@c_middlet) <a href="https://twitter.com/c_middlet/status/1321274133016158209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

As you can see here, I knew this was going to change things. Within the digital, especially 3D art space, Beeple is HUGE. Everyone knows him, and I knew that his drop was going to shatter records. It even destroyed my expectations because the record NFT sale at that point was around 50k by I think Trevor Jones. I was thinking 250k or around that area, but if you haven't been following this, this drop collectively made about 3.5 Million.

Digital artists around the world heard that shot, and on came the horde.

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/midlet/48QRJdxqLkGMMPcnPFFEwbX7HdGqtye6FJEksSfT3tTyemZq5eGnsDyhDPNhc9ziHz.png)

Fast forward again and Beeple just made history selling his latest piece for 69.3 Million dollars which was the 3rd largest art sale by a living artist in history, and I believe the 19th of all time.

Now that NFT's are blowing up, of course there's a lot of skeptics popping up as well. Some of the usual concerns.

- NFT's are in a huge bubble
- It's just a jpeg, it's not worth anything
- NFT's are horrible for the environment
- It's a pyramid scheme
- You're just buying nothing, you don't have rights to the image
- It's just a bunch of dumb investors with too much money, who are gonna get rekt.
- The artists making the most money suck, and or are mediocre.
- The collectors in the space aren't real art collectors.

I'm sure I'm missing some, but let's dive into these.

# NFT's are in a huge bubble

Maybe, maybe not. We all know crypto markets are cyclical and things go up and down, but on one of the many Michael Saylor talks I've watched he mentioned something that I think is relevant here. I don't remember the exact quote but it was along the lines that within an industry there are moments when effectively things just fundamentally change. Through some innovation, or some critical mass of exposure, or whatever, from that point on, all previous metrics to inform future activity is meaningless and irrelevant. You want all that previous experience to mean something, but it just doesn't. It's a paradigm shift and things will never be what they were before. 

Is that what's happening with NFT's? Maybe, maybe not. Probably not, but you never know. Bubbles and busts don't really mean much if you have a long time horizon on things like this, which I'd argue is a good idea in this space at this time.

# It's just a jpeg, it's not worth anything

As many have pointed out before me, what you're actually buying is the token which I'd say is most analogous to something like a certificate of ownership. There is only one of those(or however many the artist minted) and that can't be copied or forged. The token is a representation of the artwork and you can view it in virtual galleries online, you can resell it, you can print it out(in the case of still images), and in the future, you'll probably be able to do even more. NOW, do you think that that's valuable? Yes? Go pick up some NFT's. No? Don't. Nobody is putting a gun to your head. Here's a list of things people spend a ton of money on that I personally think are worthless

- Jewelry
- Designer clothing and accessories
- Country Music
- Mayonnaise

Does anyone give a shit that I PERSONALLY don't find these things valuable? Nope. Should they? Nope. The point is someone finds them valuable, so there is a DEMAND, and there are people producing them, so there is a SUPPLY. There are marketplaces where these two opposing forces can find equilibrium and that is literally all that matters.

# NFT's are horrible for the environment

This one is complicated. On the one hand, PoW blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum DO in fact use a lot of energy, but where this narrative is losing context with reality is where they fall relative to other industries that also consume a lot of energy, what the ACTUAL relationship is between energy use and CO2 footprint, and the apples to airplanes comparisons being made by most critics.

So one thing to be mindful of when looking at this is that because of the nature of blockchains, although surely flawed, you can actually gather SOME sort of insight of total energy use when looking at a blockchain. But say for instance I was curious, what is the carbon footprint of "Gaming". PC, Console, Mobile. All the GPU's in computers and consoles and on phones, all the people streaming, all the companies working for years to produce the titles, all the work to produce physical discs, package them up and ship them all around the world. I can't get a number to put on that because it's a huge system with a bajillion moving parts, but my guess would be that it dwarfs Bitcoin and Ethereum by A LOT.

There's a few good articles written up that go into detail about the problems with the critical analysis on Blockchain energy use, so I won't go into a ton of detail here. I'll just link to those.

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-energy-consumption-is-far-more-efficient-and-greener-than-todays-banking-system/

https://www.coindesk.com/what-bloomberg-gets-wrong-about-bitcoins-climate-footprint

# It's a pyramid scheme

This is a brand new one that caused a little mini uproar for like a day as this was getting shared around
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Sharing this excellent and informative infographic made by <a href="https://twitter.com/cabeza_patata?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@cabeza_patata</a>, you can find the original post on their Instagram by the same name (1/4) <a href="https://t.co/E0PwS6fQ5f">pic.twitter.com/E0PwS6fQ5f</a></p>&mdash; Kim Parker (@thatkimparker) <a href="https://twitter.com/thatkimparker/status/1370579822213173248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 13, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Honestly this one is baffling to me. Just using a tiny bit of logic and common sense and the whole thing falls apart on literally the first slide with these totally arbitrary percentages just picked out of nowhere. Reading through everything made my brain hurt with just how stupid it was. I don't typically like to just write criticisms off as "that's just stupid" because it doesn't usually actually address the criticism, but I'm going to make an exception here, and say, this is just stupid. If you'd like to read someone actually pointing out WHY this is stupid here you go.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">(1) A lot of gullible people falling for this.<br><br>Some of my thoughts as an artist/collector in the scene 🗣️<br><br>A long thread, retweet to share 👇: <a href="https://t.co/hwE4N7WsNT">https://t.co/hwE4N7WsNT</a></p>&mdash; Loopify 🧙‍♂️ (@Loopifyyy) <a href="https://twitter.com/Loopifyyy/status/1370744034151518223?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 13, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

# You're just buying nothing, you don't have rights to the image

When you buy a baseball card, you own that card. That physical piece of cardboard. You didn't buy the intellectual property of the athlete featured on the card, or the right to recreate the card infinitely for a profit. You bought that one card and you can sell that one card. What is the actual cardboard worth? The ink? Is that what people are paying for when they spend thousands on trading cards? Same thing with NFT's except minus the worthless piece of cardboard. Instead you have something much more durable, and instantly transferrable across the entire world that you and nobody else in the world owns that can't be stolen from you(unless you lose your keys), copied, or counterfeited. Which one is better?

# It's just a bunch of dumb investors with too much money, who are gonna get rekt.

All investment comes with some element of risk. No matter what the investment, some people will make a lot of money and some people will get rekt. Do your due diligence before you buy anything, don't invest more than you can afford to lose, (insert every other incredibly basic thing about investing in literally anything) 

90% of businesses fail. Probably more than 90% of blockchain projects will ultimately fail. X percent of any amount of people that do Y will fail. So what, who cares. Use your brain and do your best, don't be an idiot and don't blindly follow anyone's advice which also falls under don't be an idiot. You are a free thinking sovereign individual and you can do whatever you want or not do whatever you want and experience the benefits or drawbacks of whatever decisions you make. The End.

# The artists making the most money suck, and or are mediocre

This one is actually an interesting critique that really made me think and examine my own perceptions of what "good" is. For the past many decades, the bulk of people who want to pursue the arts as their main source of income don't do fine art. ie art to sell. They go into one of the entertainment, advertising, or design industries. I'd say this is where the majority of the worlds artistic talent has been for a while. This is not a knock on fine artists or anything. I just mean if you grab randomly 100 people that want to do artistic things for a living, the majority of them pursue getting a job at a company, and that is usually in the industries mentioned above.

So the thing is, the definition of "good" for all of these artists has largely been defined by the demands of these industries. This is further defined by the demand of the customers of those industries. I saw this video by the Blender Guru guy and it seemed like NFT's were breaking his brain and he'd mentioned this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnYT_suO6bg&ab_channel=BlenderGuru

Even if you go back to the days of Norman Rockwell and J.C. Leyendecker it was really the same thing. Their style and what they were painting were largely dictated and defined by the industry that they worked in. Of course there are things about their work that are all their own, but it does beg the question, if they were just making art for the sake of art, what would they have made?

Anyway, here we are in the NFT world and all of the sudden there is a totally new uncorrelated market to the markets we'd been serving before. Certain things that we'd have thought nothing of are actually really popular, and certain styles we'd have written off can potentially do really well. It's a whole new ball game and that's freaking some people out, pissing some people off, and just leaving others scratching their head. Also look, I get it. If you've dedicated your life to being one of the best and made sacrifices for your craft and someone that seemingly has made none of or nowhere near as many of those sacrifices completely overshadows you in financial success...that can sting. My advice...adapt. The market doesn't care about your sacrifice as harsh as that may sound and people like what they like and that is what it is. I seriously doubt it's a good strategy to get angry at and start hating on other artists, and feel like you're entitled to success(even if maybe you deserve it). I'd say if you want to do this and do well, there is only one thing you can do. Get out there and try and do your best.

# The collectors in the space aren't real art collectors

This one also falls under "That's just stupid" Literally anyone that sees a piece of artwork and buys it for literally any reason, is a "real" art collector. I suppose what they mean is people are only buying artwork in order to hopefully flip it at a higher price, this is also not true. I've sold pieces that as soon as the collector got them they got a 2X offer on it, which they didn't accept. Now maybe they just believe in me and think it will go even higher, or maybe they just like the art. Either one is okay, they bought it, it's theirs, they can do with it what they want. Regardless if you spend 5 seconds in this space you will find collectors that are CLEARLY collecting because they like the artwork. The only type of person that would ever say this is someone on the outside looking in and not looking too closely.

As I said, I'm sure I'm missing some stuff, but I'm tired of writing, and if you made it this far you're probably tired of reading. These are my thoughts so far. If you're an artist, I'd suggest diving in. I'm not going to be trying too hard to convince anyone because if people are inclined to believe dumb FUD, I'm inclined to let them. If you have any questions from the artist side of things I'd be happy to help you. From the collector side, I'd say if indeed you are ONLY getting into this to flip, you very well may get rekt, or not. High risk high reward and all that. Big boi pants necessary. If you lose all your money or if you get rich, it's all your fault :)

Okay, I'm done, rant over.