Most artists are not making money off NFTs

For tiden hærger NFT'er min filterboble. Kimberly Parker forklarer i sit indlæg her hvordan det (som de fleste andre steder og måder at sælge sin kunst på) kun er de få der reelt formår at sælge i et omfang der betyder noget. Men også hvordan løfterne om guld og grønne skove drukner i gebyrer. Og nævner desuden nogle mere fundamentale problemer med blockchains og kryptovaluta i almindelighed.

The largest group of Primary Sales (34%) were for $100 or less. For $100, you can expect to have 72.5% — 157.5% of your Sale deducted by fees. That’s an average(!) of 100.5%, leaving you with a $0.50 deficit or more.

Truly the most shocking thing about these numbers is that they look ordinary. They look just like every other market. Everything about this is run-of-the-mill, banal, predictable capitalism.

Decentralization does not mean equality of opportunity. Tech deployed within the confines of a capitalist framework will never be liberating. The only way out is by breaking the frame.

Ponzi schemes typically have someone at the top as a “mastermind” but Ethereum does not, which is why a “headless Ponzi scheme” is the most accurate way to characterize it, or as Preston Byrne calls it a “Nakamoto Scheme,” named after the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

This feudalist system quickly turns artists into crypto recruiters, desperate to bring even more people into the fold so the value of their Ethereum token stays high and they can sell for a profit.

Artists are in many ways the perfect marks: chronically underpaid, tired from trying to shine in an increasingly over-saturated attention economy on social media platforms that have already trained us to produce endless rapidly-consumed content.