Bill Gates says NFTs are "100 percent based on greater fool theory"
Bill Gates is not my cup of tea, but I found his review of NFTs interesting and a little bit funny.
He quipped, “Obviously, expensive digital images of monkeys are going to improve the world immensely."
He also asserts that NFTS are "100% based on greater fool theory."
Trending on Indie Hackers
I saw a post here on IH a couple of days ago about NFTs being the new beanie babies, and I can't agree more. That was a "greater fool" product. So are NFTs. NFTs just have a cooler name.
It is just frustrating to watch friends loose large amounts because they bought into crypto and thought it would make them millionaires.
Yeah, it's the ones who didn't have much money to spare that are getting hit the hardest.
That said, I also know an ex-millionaire who lost his entire fortune on crypto (pre-crash). He did something where he bet more money than he had on some crypto investments and lost it all — not sure how or why he did that. But of course, he's still doing fine — his income was very high so he's replenishing his losses pretty quickly.
Have you noticed something interesting about crypto regarding billionaires...what's the biggest difference between billionaires who support crypto vs. those who are suspicious of it?
Age.
Take Zuckerberg. Or Dorsey (the founder of Twitter). They not only support it, but actively work on enhancing it in one way or another.
On the other hand, take a look at Buffet or Gates. Both seem to hate crypto/NFTs/other web 3.0 tech.
It could also be a conflict of interest...but I suspect it's more about age than anything else. Web 3.0 also promotes decentralized social media and still Zuckerberg/Dorsey are "for" vs. "against" it.
Age... or wisdom? 😆
But yeah, that's a fair point.
Maybe it's because they have seen much more *promising, *revolutionary projects in their lifetime and they assess better?
Not really, the divide is between people who know what they are talking about and are honest [1] and the honest that don't understand the scam or are dishonest (ie. riding the hype wave). Zuckerberg is trying to pushing the distopyan meta verse nonsense and with Dorsey both have stake on the crypto ecosystem as well. There is plenty of young people who recognize and actually call out the crypto madness.
1- https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/web3-fraud#Nicholas Weaver
You don’t know enough billionaires. Tim Draper is arguably one of the biggest and oldest advocates of crypto out there.
He bought the Silk Road 1.0 Bitcoin assets seized from and auctioned off by the federal gov. His son invested in the earliest rounds of Coinbase.
There are cable interviews where Draper lampoons Buffet for his hugging of Insurance and traditional finance.
It is definitely not an age thing. It’s a person thing. And not liking NFT is not necessarily discarding all of what crypto is or could be.
I'm crypto strong, yet I find NFT-s and many of the web3 solutions ridiculous. NFT-s possibly because I have absolutely no sense for art and its market (and partially because some NFT platforms do not share the same decentralized nature as blockchains do), and any web3 projects because there's nothing preventing a such a project to just ditch the blockchain for some closed data storage mechanism.
I do not consider myself old either.
I think ethics would be the dividing factor
Yep. He's right.
@Alienroid you’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head as I think the main “obvious” use for NFTs at the moment.
I think Gates’ opinion on them is based upon the opinion that a business should only exist to provide greater good to humanity type thing, something I’ve seen a bit of.
Whereas, what if we just want a business that makes money to generate value for stakeholders?
NFTs to me, have so many unique applications, much of my time is spent working in medical devices, in which ultimate traceability and ownership is imperative.
I’d like to think that further down the line, we’ll see NFTs become more solidified/embedded within the blockchain and utilised within heavier regulated industries (if they so wish to accept it, but many of these are still ran by buffets etc.,). But the potential for NFTs is huge. Imagine if you could utilise NFT technology for identity cards etc., and remove identify fraud?
Blue sky thinking, but I think with any of this technology the people who are criticising this now (gates), at one point he was pushing a technology in which people were extremely skeptical also.
You mentioned great application for blockchain as it's a suitable solution for traceability. But at the same time, people forgetting that it already existing solution that's probably more suitable than moving the platform/underlying technology to use blockchain. I evaluate architecture and solutions and I see vast application for blockchain, at the same time, it's not actually suitable or customized enough than the existing. I never doubt blockchain, but I doubt the why people would apply blockchain as an implementation over other alternatives when others are clearly better.
I've also worked in regulated industries including healthcare and depends on the application, I can say a Lasik machine don't need to apply blockchain at all (just imagine how that's going to get pass FDA regulation for tiny updates will just blow up itself)...
Identity certainly is an important problem to address. It's $B business opportunity. While blockchain will help being part of it, it's just part of the underlying technology. Security as a whole only works if everything works (I am old school). In other words, you can probably achieve what you want to accomplish without using blockchain/NFT in respect to identity.
I agree with your blue sky thinking. Someone has to make that risky bet and when they win, they'll win big. I think the space has great opportunity but the tech is also being abused as a marketing/scam tool far more often. Yeah, it's complex and confusing...
There are various platforms in the blockchain technology. NFT is getting more hype for art, music developers
I agree with him on this.
Me too.
Currently, NFT is the superstar of the blockchain world. Even celebrities also get entry into the NFT space. Celebrities like Anthony Hopkins, start their own nft collection for his movie.
I see
The purpose of NFT is to solve the problem to provide authenticity to an object. Without it, someone could easily copy it. (This is the reason why when you buy diamond at Tiffany, they gave you a report or when you buy luxury goods like LV, they'll give you a seal...). Without the proof of authenticity, the object might be worthless.
So NFT has some value.
However, the way we use NFT these days are tied to that object's value, for example a piece of art, which is now a greater fool theory.
I also make the same analogy with some crypto. You cannot valuate crypto company with the crypto they are printing/transacting (ie XRP). If their argument is true, then visa/mastercard would worth unlimited as they are doing unlimited transactions...
Jamie Dimon , CEO of Chase feels the same way, so does Warren Buffet
Think about the obvious conflict of interest that the CEO of a traditional bank would have against crypto, which works to decentralize finances. Not saying existing arguments against crypto are wrong, but definitely would take a CEO of a banking company's opinions with a grain of salt in regards to crypto.
Fair point
😂 that monkey quote is pretty great
People get too hung up on funny looking pictures of cats. If more people read the technical documentation on ERC-721, they would see there are plenty of use cases for a decentralized tokenized data system. A speculative investment on a funny looking picture isn't really one of those use cases.
NFTs:
– based on the peer-to-peer network, cryptography, and game theory,
– make property rights of digital assets available for Internet users,
– present an algorithmic alternative to international law.
If you think about, traditional art is probably based on the greater fool theory as well. You would buy a Mona Lisa because you know that potentiall in the future, someone could buy it off you at a higher price.
The words "greater fool theory" makes it sound bad!
not trying to just shill my own stuff, but I struggled with NFTs for a long time. Still haven't bought any jpeg/gifs, but I came up with an NFT use case around purchasing lifetime deals that i think makes sense. AKA the NFT represents access / ownership of a lifetime subscription to a particular saas company.
Have also seen some cool community membership things around NFTs or like NFT gated content i think is cool.
I agree with Bill gates on NFT as something that can be traded to earn money. But NFT has so much potential than just digital images.
Think about an identity on a web3 world, or your degree or your profile that can not be stolen and is unique. Thats just one of the examples. I believe we are still in early days when it comes to blockchain and web3 world.
But there are cryptocurrencies tied to real world assets, Mr. Gates... https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-are-real-world-asset-backed-tokens
The non-scientist non-doctor non-biologist "Gates says he prefer investing in assets with tangible benefits" like vaccines to inject and experiment on the worldwide populations and as such what the f.. do we care about what Gates believes or not, seriously.
Bill Gates is a greater fool theory. hahaha. He's definitely not my cup of tea either and I kinda wish he'd go back to making crappy software and stay out of our lives. :)
hahaha 😂 couldn't have said it better myself.
I know right. Somoene please tell him to go away.