Crypto/NFT

[Davetrials]

How many of us have started/thinking about or already are dabbling in Crypto or NFT's?

NFT's really blow my mind that these have taken off and  this video of Beeple watching his work sell at Sotheby's and jumping from 29mil to 69 in less than a minute makes me sick

I'll be honest I'm not sure what I'm doing so I won't make any suggestions other than "straight to the moon!"

 

[Joe Aston]

I was made redundant back in 2019 so put some of my severance package into BTC and ADA and it's seen a pretty healthy return since then. Haven't needed to cash yet so i kinda just leave it as a long term investment. 

I did set up a coinbase account, they have some quizzes you can do to earn up to £30 worth of different coins which you can then trade and play around with. If you need to I think you can cash out pretty easily. 

[MadManMike]

I stuck in $61 last April, it's now at $1000. A series of incredibly lucky purchases has made that happen.

Started looking at NFT's now, but not properly - lots to learn on that front!

[Ali C]

Jane is deep into the world of trading, FX and currencies and listens to a lot of podcasts from Peter Schiff... he has some strong views on crypto currencies which are quite interesting, worth looking into what he says (whether you agree with him or not).

[Davetrials]

11 hours ago, MadManMike said:

I stuck in $61 last April, it's now at $1000. A series of incredibly lucky purchases has made that happen.

Started looking at NFT's now, but not properly - lots to learn on that front!

I'm trying to get involved pretty early to avoid being priced out, but I think that's already happened, $10,000 for the dancing banana meme seems a little steep for a gif..

 

[Mark W]

I didn't really 'get' NFTs before but spent quite a bit of time over the past week listening to a load of different podcasts interviewing people for, against and otherwise about them. The thing that stood out from those is that even the people involved in a deep way with them don't really 'get' them either. That's either through there being flaws in their ideas/plans that they seem to want to gloss over by just saying "Just you wait" - they all have different, competing ideas about how it could/should work, and be pulling in different directions. Pretty much the same way that there's so many different coins out now that operate in different ways. Bitcoin seems to be the one that everyone's following, but it doesn't seem to be as versatile or nimble as other coins so I can't really see how it becomes much more than just some speculative trading thing.

In principle it seems like there's plenty of scope for what can be done with the smart contracts that underpin them, but much like with cryptocurrencies, at the moment it just seems bubbly because there's plenty of people trying to throw money at it in the hope that they choose the right iteration early. At least with something like Bitcoin there's the potential for a much wider range of market conditions to cause the value to go up, whereas for an NFT, depending on the market it's in, there's less of a chance to bump the price up from where they are currently. For example, I don't really get how the NFT/column in this article is going to increase in value. It sounds like the people doing it were mainly doing it to show support for the concept, but that just sounds like putting more air in the bubble rather than reinforcing it (to torture the metaphor).

Either way, crypto/NFTs/smart contracts are definitely the future. There's so much potential in them. Just seems we've got to let all the 'personalities', snake oil salesmen and hype die down and for the actual work of making them more widely viable to take place. Some of the interviews I listened to are with people more involved with that side and it does sound like there's progress being made, but I don't think lashing a shitload of cash at gifs is really going to be the defining moment of this...

[Mark W]

1 hour ago, Davetrials said:

I'm trying to get involved pretty early to avoid being priced out, but I think that's already happened, $10,000 for the dancing banana meme seems a little steep for a gif..

 

Happy to mint an NFT of this:

First person's money to hit my PayPal gets it: paypal.me/markwestlake143/100gbp

It's a lot less than most other NFTs and it's the first from this artist so guaranteed riches beyond your wildest dreams await.

[Davetrials]

Will you supply a certificate of authenticity? I'm not a mug Mark.. cmon.

[Mark W]

42 minutes ago, Davetrials said:

Will you supply a certificate of authenticity?

The NFT is the certificate Dave. The clock is ticking...

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

I'm so confused by this NFT thing. So Beeple's work was all available free, in the public domain yet someone paid £69M for it? Who even owns the dancing banana .gif to sell? Again it's all over the internet and completely in the public domain and available for anyone to 'have', so why pay $10,000 to 'own' it? Unless you're going to try and license it and charge people to use it (impossible) I see no value in something that's in no way unique or saleable. f**kin' hipsters I tell you.

[marg26]

I was speaking to a youth the other week about bitcoin etc, found it really interesting, then this thread, and now I have some Cardano, District0x, and Stellar Lumens. I'm on the waiting list to 'earn' some stuff on Coinbase.

I utterly failed as a painter after graduating from university with an art degree.... Maybe NFT's are my chance!? Any tips on where to start being an NFT artist? I've googled, found a couple, found "If you’re planning on selling a couple NFTs for huge prices, Rarible is likely your best bet. On the other hand, if you want to create a multitude of cheaper NFTs, you’ll want to use OpenSea’s Collection Manager"  so thinking OpenSea... Uhhhhhhmm Yeah. No idea what I'm doing. Watching numbers is a bit addictive.... hoping I might recoup the transaction fees atleast!

 

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

I tried signing up for a Coinbase account when the Dogecoin thing was going a bit daft but over a month later it was still confirming my ID so I f**ked that off and am now happily accepting that it's all over my head and I can't really be arsed!

[bikeperson45]

I started using Coinbase a month ago to see what the fuss is - put in £150 split between Bitcoin, Etherium and Chainlink, and 6 weeks later it's gone up to £230 so I believe that I may be a financial genius. 

[marg26]

£50 last year in ETH would be well over £500 now.

I've been well aware of this stuff for years just not looked into it, it's not even like I'm remotely IT illiterate, just ignored it. It never came across as something to casually dip your toes in the water with.

[Mark W]

16 hours ago, monkeyseemonkeydo said:

Again it's all over the internet and completely in the public domain and available for anyone to 'have', so why pay $10,000 to 'own' it? Unless you're going to try and license it and charge people to use it (impossible) I see no value in something that's in no way unique or saleable. f**kin' hipsters I tell you.

It's basically the digital equivalent of wanting to buy the Mona Lisa. You could just buy a poster of it, print it yourself, etc., or you could choose to buy the real thing.

I think a better way to look at all this stuff is the way the NBA is doing their 'Top Shot' collectibles. Basically, they're like the trading cards you can buy for different sports from a newsagents, but in this case they're digital so are typically highlights videos or specific artworks. As those cards are affiliate with the NBA there's a lot of rare/unusual content there, so you can get something that nobody else would ordinarily have, and also have 'the original' (by virtue of it being specified as the original when it's minted as an NFT). This might explain it a little better:

"Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has compared Top Shot to the old-school model of trading cards, where consumers can have fun trading and collecting scarce items – only with no risk of damage or theft. “And the value is still set by the same laws of supply and demand,” he wrote in January.

“Leave it to Mark Cuban to frame it in a good, sensible, easy-to-understand way,” said Richardson, also SVP of strategy at Mercury Intermedia. “So if enough people wanted that same Zion Williamson highlight, that NFT, and bidding on it they got up to $100,000, that’s supply and demand. Someone thought it was worth $100,000.”

The bet for traders is that in 2051, a LeBron James NFT could be worth what a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card is worth today -- one of those rare cards recently sold for $5.2 million. And just imagine what a rare Michael Jordan rookie highlight NFT would sell for in 30 years."

I don't think it's necessarily the best use-case, but it shows there is potential for 'something' in future. That's what I meant in that post before about it being a very immature thing as yet, but having huge scope for things further down the line.

 

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

37 minutes ago, Mark W said:

It's basically the digital equivalent of wanting to buy the Mona Lisa. You could just buy a poster of it, print it yourself, etc., or you could choose to buy the real thing.

In my mind there's something very different buying something physical like the Mona Lisa that was painted by da Vinci because the original is very definitely unique and special. Anything that is available in its entirity online as a digital item (picking on the dancing banana .gif again) is not only available as an exact, original item across the entire internet but could also be exactly replicated from scratch in a matter of hours as it's just a collection of pixels (and not many at that).

I can understand the Beeple thing more as it seems he puts a lot of work into each piece and assuming the 'buyer' effectively received terrabites worth of original files in all their detail (and assuming that what was posted online was only ever a compressed version of the original pieces) then the buyer is at least getting something that's not in the public domain.

I guess the basball card analogy works better, again assuming that the number of certain versions are very much limited in number and are only available to the 'owners' not also posted on Youtube or whatever.

[Davetrials]

Crazy that so many people pumped huge amounts of money it what is essentially a meme and there are actual millionaires today from bloody doge coin

i mean if you have 200k to drop on a lol crypto, you were likely in decent shape beforehand

 

[Mark W]

1 hour ago, monkeyseemonkeydo said:

In my mind there's something very different buying something physical like the Mona Lisa that was painted by da Vinci because the original is very definitely unique and special. Anything that is available in its entirity online as a digital item (picking on the dancing banana .gif again) is not only available as an exact, original item across the entire internet but could also be exactly replicated from scratch in a matter of hours as it's just a collection of pixels (and not many at that).

I can understand the Beeple thing more as it seems he puts a lot of work into each piece and assuming the 'buyer' effectively received terrabites worth of original files in all their detail (and assuming that what was posted online was only ever a compressed version of the original pieces) then the buyer is at least getting something that's not in the public domain.

I guess the basball card analogy works better, again assuming that the number of certain versions are very much limited in number and are only available to the 'owners' not also posted on Youtube or whatever.

Those NBA 'cards' are also shared elsewhere online as far as I'm aware. Twisting that fine art kind of analogy, a better way would be to look at them as equivalent to an Andy Warhol piece. He did a lot of works that were printed by silkscreen in limited numbers. There was no "original" as such as because it was just created using the silkscreen masks, so effectively all the screen prints are as original as each other. They still have high value though because they're an original work created by him, even if they aren't as 'unique' as the Mona Lisa is. That's also factored into the price though should you want to buy them. Again, you can also get postcards, posters, JPGs or any other form of copy/version of them, but you won't have one of those limited, numbered originals.

From my (limited) understanding of it, you can kind of imagine the NFT as being an equivalent of one of those screenprints. The smartcontract part of it is what creates the value of it, if that makes sense - imagine it as being the "1/20" that an artist might write on the back of a print.

The meme stuff is definitely just people f**king about and seeing what they can get away with, so I wouldn't really look at that as being what a typical use-case might be in future. I kind of view it in a similar way to 'Fountain' by Marcel Duschamp. That was just a mass-produced urinal that he had nothing to do with, save for selecting it and displaying it as an artwork (and also signing it with a fake name). That was done to push the boundaries of what 'art' could be, and although that doesn't make sense either, the concept/what it stands for is what creates the value of it.

 

[marg26]

I was just thinking of Fountain by Duchamp, not to mention Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII - an arrangement of 120 fire bricks in a rectangle on the floor, might as well mention unmade beds, shit in tins (is there or isn't there) etc, all this conceptual stuff about authenticity, ownership, value, what-is-art, etc has been a staple of Art for long before NFT came along. Difference I guess is there's still physical objects, so these age, that age increases value, rarity. Also sure there's at least one artist who's exhibited absolutely nothing at all, and probably sold it, but can't remember name from Art History lectures.

 

[Mark W]

59 minutes ago, marg26 said:

Difference I guess is there's still physical objects...

That specific aspect matters with those (and in some cases doesn't matter with them, and that's the point of the piece), but it doesn't with something like modern music, digital photography, digital art, videos, etc. 

I wouldn't say that age necessarily confers increased value - I'd imagine scarcity/rarity (which can be tied to age) and market opinion/demand will be more a driver of worth or value? Now that we're entering an age where products/media are  being solely created in a digital space, age is probably going to become even less of a concern in some ways unless it has some kind of tie to the 'real' world.

[Ali C]

I see dogecoin is doing well...so well Crypto.com has crashed, it’s funny what effect people’s Twitter posts have on things like this (Elon musk).

I’m intrigued to see where my dogecoin ends up.

[ItsMatt]

NFT's will be huge in the future, I can easily see houses and other physical assets being held as NFT's one day. I don't see this being sustainable on the ETH network, transactions are slow and expensive. 

NFT's are big boy news for artists and creators because you can still get commission on the resell value. For those who don't really get NFT's just think proof of ownership and speculated asset value. Demand * supply = market value. At the moment I feel like most of it is rich crypto people buying shit for a laugh. Once the intuitional/commercial market gets involved that's when things will really kick off but I can't see that happening while its all running on the ETH network. 

Crypto I may or may not hold along with the current price just so I can look back at this in the future and have a little laugh or a cry: 
ADA - $1.44
XRP - $1.68
EOS - $8.64 
XLM - $0.62
BNB - $541
XDC - $0.12
XMR - $360
LTC - $330
ETH - $2460
RVN - $0.22
ENJ - $3.11 
DOGE - $0.29

I remember learning about BTC when it was <$10 in 2012. I channeled my inner autism to fully understand how blockchain works and why its important. I thought "This is going to be the next .com boom, I have a feeling I'm going to regret not buying in. Shame its only used to buy drugs." 

Crypto has only ever gone up, market cap is now $2.25 trillion and only 100 million people are invested. If you hold any top 10 crypto you are out performing inflation and the stock markets.

Some tips:

Cost average and buy the dips. never withdraw until you've 'made it'. at a loss? zoom out and hold. 

Doge coin is a joke, it has no technical support. (I bought some very cheap to be safe) Please don't buy when its already 600% up. any investment in it is a gamble because it has no goal or utility. Over 50% of Doge is held by 12 wallets so they have huge control over the liquidity. I can just see a lot of people losing money. 

Be emotionless and logical about any investment. Just think about where you are in the chain of information. Coin utility, progress and chart fundamentals are EVERYTHING. 

Never say to yourself "I could have had XXX amount if I ..." just take it as a lesson learned.

 

YouTube is full of people trying to hype up things they are already invested in. 

Solid info and updates, you don't need to know it all to watch this guy: 
https://www.youtube.com/c/JRNYCrypto

for absolute nerds and those who have far too much invested:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC70Q-2uXkC_5xk9-L5qhm1Q

Tools: 

for market overview: https://coinmarketcap.com/

to look up coins with upcoming development upates https://coinmarketcal.com/en/

Referral links if you so wish:  

Binance is the worlds biggest exchange. It can be as simple or advanced as you like. Best mobile and desktop app by far imo. 

https://www.binance.com/en/register?ref=DTFEY2G8

(we both get 10% commission of trading fees)

Coinbase is great for the newbie, although they have high transaction fees and a limited selection of coins. You can also take quizzes on coins and get a free $40 or so why not. 

https://www.coinbase.com/join/spence_tgn

(you deposit £100 we get £10 each)
you can also use your login to get into Coinbase Pro for much lower fees and a trading chart. 

On 4/14/2021 at 8:43 PM, Joe Aston said:

I was made redundant back in 2019 so put some of my severance package into BTC and ADA and it's seen a pretty healthy return since then. Haven't needed to cash yet so i kinda just leave it as a long term investment. 
 

2019 ADA?! I hope you're staking it. 

[MadManMike]

I've quickly learned not to give any advice on crypto.

Any posts I make on social media are "I'm doing this, could be interesting" - if people choose to do the same, fine, but I'll never tell someone they should. It's too volatile and essentially a gamble. Some of my friends made a quick buck off DOGE and ETH because of it, but I'm glad to say I didn't tell them they should do it.

I do think some of the smaller coins are worth a punt if you have spare cash, but it's definitely worth researching first. I jumped in back in 2018 and lost about £200 doing stupid day trading with no idea about it all - these days I hold a select few and my stash has gone through the roof.

[Davetrials]

Have you got any idea when you plan to take it out and turn it in to real money, or are you quite happy sitting on it watching it fluctuate?

 

[MadManMike]

In a year it's gone from $61 to $1000 and is still rising, so I have no plans to take any out yet. In fact I just use it to diversify the portfolio.

In the grand scheme of things, $1000 isn't much, so I'm holding. I look at it like this: some of the coins are literally worth $0.05, or less. If they go to $0.50 it's a lot, $1 it's a lot, $10 it's massive, $1000 it's huge, $5000 I could almost retire... One coin I have 140,000 of and they've quadrupled in value since I got them, but they're still worth barely anything... If they went to $0.50 that's 70 grand, $2 is 280 grand etc...

And I know if I took the grand out now and then in 4 years it went to that level I'd feel sick. If they all drop and I end up taking out $200, well it's still a decent profit and I had fun doing it.