Somebody Paid $1.3 Million for a Picture of a Rock (cnbc.com) 82
Clip art of a rock just sold for 400 ether, or about $1.3 million, late Monday afternoon. The transaction marks the latest sale of EtherRock, a brand of crypto collectible that's been around since 2017 -- making it one of the oldest non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the block. From a report: EtherRock is, as the name implies, a JPEG of a cartoon rock, built and sold on the ethereum blockchain. There are only 100 out there, and that scarcity is part of what's driving up its value. So, what are these rock pics good for? According to the EtherRock website, "these virtual rocks serve NO PURPOSE beyond being able to be brought and sold, and giving you a strong sense of pride in being an owner of 1 of the only 100 rocks in the game :)" Following this latest sale, the new price floor for an EtherRock NFT has been raised to $1.02 million. Two days ago, the cheapest rock went for $305,294. Two weeks ago, it was $97,716.
I'm feeling... (Score:3)
I'm feeling an irresistible desire of owning one! Wait. No. It's gone.
Money laundering, bribes, and payoffs... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody's paying $1.3M for a picture of a rock. That's ridiculous. Either someone is laundering money, bribing someone, or paying off someone. That, or the gov't is making up fake transactions that look like such, so that they can later use these as excuses for shutting down crypto. Either way, its BS.
Re:Money laundering, bribes, and payoffs... (Score:5, Interesting)
They are selling it to themselves. The hope is someone else will think these rocks are valuable and will continue to go up in price and buy one. At which point they will discover this insane demand for EtherRocks was fake and they are the Greatest Fool [wikipedia.org].
Re:Money laundering, bribes, and payoffs... (Score:4, Informative)
The whole thing reminds me of the 90s .com era. Companies would go IPO, soar in value, then several months later, lose most of their value. Then it was on to the next company. These companies often did nothing but have a domain name. It's as if people don't care about the value, they just want to ride the roller coaster. Or something.
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And Futurama covered this https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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P.S. Don't get scammed by the quadair drone ad they may or may not play. To good to be true, its a scam.
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I'm pretty sure it was this lady: https://youtu.be/aO0TUI9r-So [youtu.be]
Re:I'm feeling [a crypto war coming on] (Score:2)
Decent FP. I hope it gets modded Funny.
"Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull an NFT of a rock out of this hat!"
"Bullwinkle. That trick always works. No value there."
New business plan:
1. Create new and improved EtherRock v2.
2. Only 99 much scarcer rock pictures!
3. PROFIT!
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That's just your insurance [youtu.be] calling.
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Money Laundering! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Close but not exactly. I would guess NFT investors and crypto sites colluding to spread PR.
You may have seen a Slashdot story a few weeks ago about a common Nintendo Mario game going for over 1 million dollars. Just about every tech/game/nerd site reported on it. Turns out the whole operation was likely to be a plant by the company who grades the games.
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There are only 100 out there, and that scarcity is part of what's driving up its value.
The "somebody" who spent $1.3M might be same person that has another 99 for sale.
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I believe you're right.
It's like with that guy (Larry Dean Harmon) who got busted for operating a Bitcoin laundering service [wsj.com]
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People are just getting bored of poker, and now want to find a new channel in which to exploit game theory strategies for profit. You know all the famous movies about poker? One day there will be famous movies about day-trading NFTs.
There are people with way too much money (Score:5, Insightful)
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We do tax the rich more than you. The top one percent of tax payers actually pay over 40 percent the income tax collected.
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Your numbers lie, but I bet the truth is that some rich bastard is paying you to post such gibberish.
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Lies? Look it up, fact. Latest years are similar to this
https://www.ntu.org/foundation... [ntu.org]
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NAK
Re:There are people with way too much money (Score:5, Insightful)
The number is accurate but you're either using it to lie or are just misunderstanding the economics.
The 1% also has 40% of the wealth, so they are not, in fact, taxed more than the rest. You can also look at it by effective tax rates, which are lower because of the bigger share of investment income, fuckery with untaxed benefits and other shenanigans.
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Very proper turn. Effective tax rates for wealthiest being abysmal, which was well illustrated in recent reports for taken sample of most outstanding tycoons, the real issue is how disproportional is the distribution of wealth, comparing to the stats, offered above. Top 1% is of much higher wealth (read - control), than 40%, suggested by the net tax volume on display. For one, taxed income is no direct representation of wealth or control. OTOH, many of the operations of wealthiest are shifted out of taxatio
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oh, so you want to tax based on what people own, and not income. That's wrong, some of us took trouble to save and not waste. Or maybe you're advocating raiding all pension and retirement funds?
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Not at all. Did not propose that, why wouldn't you merely follow what is being said.
Flaws were named.
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Not misunderstanding at all, you seem to think you have claim to wealth they hold rather than income in a year. You're the one "misunderstanding economics."
Re:There are people with way too much money (Score:5, Insightful)
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why, because you're jealous? Hell, the top 25 percent are paying almost 90 percent the taxes, you're practically a freeloader on those making $87K or more, which isn't even that much income. Thought slashdotters had good IT jobs with more money than that...
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It's not about jealousy. It's about a society that let's a gap widen between the very bottom and the very top. If those at the bottom of our society had reliable, affordable access to housing, food, childcare, healthcare, etc, a lot fewer people would be up-in-arms about the ultra rich and what they do with their money.
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The statistic you're missing is that the top 25% are holding more than 90% of the wealth and income.
So yes, they should be paying more than 90% of the taxes because they're making most of the money. However, as a proportion of the income, the lowest 25% p
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Now, when you are numbering tax payments, would you mind adding other bills, there are to be paid - and who of the parties are beneficiaries of these, being in the overall control of the arrangement. Do you think, you make lot of choices whom and how much you could be paying? Not so much, when you are cornered by the system. With middle class being washed out progressively, it's not about increasing of the options for the majority of those aspiring, quite contrary.
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But since they get more than 50% of the income, they're getting a substantial discount on their taxes.
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er no, it's an income tax and they're paying higher percent of income.
Seems you're thinking people should be taxed on what they own, not income? Like raid the pension and retirement funds?
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Actually, the richer you get the more of your income magically becomes "capital gains", taxed at a lower rate.
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No, the definition of what is "capital gains" is absolute and applies to everyone, nothing magic about it. You want some "capital gains" of your own? Then make smart investments.
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It's a different game when you make millions and have a high end accountant. Most of us couldn't even afford the accountant fees, but at the high end of income it's cheaper than the taxes.
No need to believe me, ask Warren Buffett [cnn.com].
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You are silly, having CPA do your state and fed taxes itemized is less than $300.
Unless you squish burgers or bag groceries you can have accountant do your taxes, though most of us do fine with $20 tax prep software which has guarantees.
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I said high end accountant. One that does a hell of a lot more than fill out 2 forms once a year.
Do click that link I gave you.
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...and that shouldn't be the case. Tax the rich instead of letting them waste money on stupid crap like that (because it's money that'll eventually end up in tax havens of in the hand of mafias).
An interesting question is "what if the government started selling this shit?" and basically created a tax on stupid rich people.
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...and that shouldn't be the case. Tax the rich instead of letting them waste money on stupid crap like that (because it's money that'll eventually end up in tax havens of in the hand of mafias).
An interesting question is "what if the government started selling this shit?" and basically created a tax on stupid rich people.
It's called gambling. But it also works for stupid poor people.
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Yeah, especially that. At the time I made the comment I thought I should have said "legalized gambling", which does include tax revenues, but indirectly, whereas state lotteries are pure stupidity taxes. But poor people are more desperate to "buy" the illusion of hope.
Market Manipulation (Score:2)
What are the odds they're either the same people, or related to the people, currently manipulating the used video game market?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
the 70's (Score:5, Informative)
In the 70's it only cost a few dollars and you got an actual rock.
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Personally, I went with a wild rock. It's not like they were rare :-)
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But then you had to venture out of the basement and actually catch a wild rock.
I wonder if even P T Barnum... (Score:2)
... would be surprised by the number of total suckers that crypto currencies and NFTs seem to have brought out of the woodwork.
Reminds me of Universal Paperclips. (Score:3)
You know - one of the 'duller' versions of cookie clicker.
You create a dummy account.
You pay yourself for $uselessitem.
You create another dummy account.
You pay yourself more for $uselessitem.
You repeat with minimally novel numbers to create a trend and get small-scale web journalists to pick up a press release.
If you're lucky, some real person jumps in, or some larger scale journalists pick on on the story.
It's upscale panhandling, built on scaling markets.
It works because there's such a large percentage of money in worldwide retirement funds than historical norms.
It's so much money, that it can't invest in anything real and get a non-embarrassing percent return on that investment. Not land, not goods, not debt - all the 'good' bits in those markets are already overinflated.
It's a market that absolutely demands scams and illusions of value to satisfy expectations of return.
Now - if it put those resources into creating infrastructure and value that could scale up maximally - then sure, it would benefit everyone and create new markets that could work to satisfy investors better over time - but that's not sexy, and it will lose market managers their jobs in the meantime.
So... scams and illusions hold the value, and fill the news.
Because riding speculation bubbles is pretty exciting. And many larger investors aren't left with much other choice.
Ryan Fenton
I have a picture of some garbage ... (Score:2)
that I snapped in my back garden. Who is going to offer me something for it ?
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If you can make an NFT of it, I can sell it.
NFTs (Score:2)
Time to start a booger collection. I'm going to offer a NFT of each booger and one for the entire set.
I have here a pile of shit (Score:2)
It's shit from a shit I took after eating gumbo. Then I realized that I hate gumbo, so it will be the only shit I ever took that contained gumbo.
By the logic of this moron, I guess that pile of crap is worth 1.3 billions, since there's ever only going to be a single one. Not a hundred. Just one.
Lisa SImpson (Score:2)
no purpose? (Score:3)
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Just like the art market.
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Well at least you still get the painting. Which you keep locked up in a free port, but still. With NFTs you really don't get anythign at all.
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With NFTs you really don't get anythign at all.
Doesn't that make it ultimately contemporary?
Laughs aside, it is speculation purified and most obvious.
All the meaning and value is in the eye of the beholder, probably in pumping up the myth of the crypto values, and probably in decoupling of funds with more obvious to account bearing forms of the value.
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At least that's what good art does, and it's also at the core of how we judge it.
Barnum was Right (Score:1)
A fool and his money are soon parted.
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Reading this, are you re-thinking life choices? (Score:2)
It will be *spectacular* to watch this all collide (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the cryptocurrency craze won't go anywhere anytime soon.
Was Hunter Biden the photographer? (Score:2)
He's the only one I am aware of who can get this kind of money for dreck.
Digital De Beers model (Score:2)
If this is money laundering, canâ(TM)t quite figure out the angle.
More likely itâ(TM)s a digital de beers model; create an artificial shortage and an artificial demand, jack the prices up, and profit.
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I just copied it (Score:4, Funny)
proof you don't need brains to get money (Score:3)
Is it actually a picture? (Score:2)
This is why NFTs are worthless.
Scarcity isn't enough to create value. (Score:2)
I mean, kudos to whoever came up with it, they just got people to spend huge amounts of good money for a turd on a wire, and did so without any hint of deception. They took the "Pet Rock" concept and stripped away all the costs (box, marketing, little book of jokes, shipping...) except those for the website and the time it t