"Merry Christmas": First SMS Sells for Over 100,000 Euros in Paris Auction (reuters.com) 55
The first text message ever sent, reading "Merry Christmas," was sold on Tuesday for 107,000 euros ($121,000) as a 'Non-Fungible Token' at a Paris auction house. From a report: The text, which was sent on Dec. 3, 1992, was put up for auction by the British telecoms company Vodafone. Vodafone engineer Neil Papworth sent the SMS from his computer to a manager in the United Kingdom, who received it on his 2-kg (4 lb) "Orbitel" telephone -- similar to a desk phone but cordless and with a handle.
My 100k donation to all of you! (Score:4, Funny)
Merry Christmas
Re:My 100k donation to all of you! (Score:5, Funny)
Right clicked and saved.
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I just photoshopped my timestamp to 1892, beat that!
What website can I upload NFT of this to, especially if that website lists ALL NFTs in existance!
No. Just no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody sold the first text message ever sent. They sold a link to text that reads the same as the first text message ever sent. This is ridiculous.
Re: No. Just no. (Score:2)
Merry Christmas. - let's start the bidding at $250,000
Re:No. Just no. (Score:5, Informative)
A fool and his money are soon parted.
The best think about NFTs is you can almost always find an even bigger sucker. At least until the market is saturated with every flavor of garbage that nobody can practically sell. These bubbles are to be expected in a market that is built entirely on speculation that produces no useful work and creates no useful content.
Even DIVX [wikipedia.org] was better in that you could own a DVD until the laser to read it caused it to chemically degrade, creating artificial scarcity. NFT attempts to create scarcity but I believe it fails to do so because while an individual token can be unique, there is hardly any limited on how many bits of flotsam can be wrapped up and pawned off in this system.
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Why can't I come up with a good scam like this? Am I just to good hearted of nature that I just think there is nobody dumb enough to fall for this stupid shit?
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Anyone can make an NFT. The ability to pull off the scam of selling it requires having the preexisting wealth, fame, or connections to find a “mark”.
It’s not much different than anything else sold as art. I saw some plexiglass record players with RGB lights installed in them sell for some crazy price because the creator was a somewhat famous “artist”. If you or I crammed some Christmas lights inside a record player and put it on eBay, we’d be lucky to break even.
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I think you are confusing DivX [wikipedia.org] with DIVX [wikipedia.org].
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Yeah, I was. I forgot DIVX players had a dial-up modem in them to check some database every time you played them.
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DIVX discs didn’t self destruct, it was just a variant of the DVD format with server-side DRM. In hindsight, DIVX only flopped because the reliance on physical media made it inconvenient. Turns out, people are more than willing to drop money on DRM encumbered movies that you don’t actually own, so long as the transaction process never requires the separation of ass from couch.
As someone else already replied, the self destructing format was FlexPlay. As I recall, that flopped because the selec
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My suspicion is that this is the typical modern art business, not so much "sucker" stuff. I.e. you can let these things appreciate in value in accordance to opinions of the experts, then donate those to a charity and offset the value as determined by the experts on your taxes in a lot of countries.
And since experts are the NFT organisers, you know that valuations will grow at least for a while. And if this establishes itself in the same way that modern art business established itself, it's likely to become
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Did they not even include the text itself in the token?
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Nope. Just a link to a website that includes the metadata to a link that includes an image of the text.
Bombproof, and copy-proof. No way any of that fails sometime in the future.
Re:No. Just no. (Score:5, Funny)
No it is not useless. You can print it out, get it framed, and display it alongside a hash proving to everyone that you gave the person who sent the text $100k. That is verifiable, indisputable, legally binding, non-fungible, bona fide, solid proof that you're an idiot.
NFT are the new autographed cards. (Score:3)
Nobody sold the first text message ever sent. They sold a link to text that reads the same as the first text message ever sent. This is ridiculous.
NFT are simply the internet digital equivalent of autographed trading cards.
- Anyone can right-click and download a copy of the digital art piece. It's digital, it is copyable ad infinitum (or at least so long as you have the tiny storage capability it takes)
- Anyone can buy a trading card. It's a mass-printed piece of cheap card-board anyone get buy one at the shop.
- But that special NFT has some subjective value to some people, much more than the actual (free as in beer) digital data associated with the t
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The difference is that a signed baseball card is actually different than a digital copy. A digital copy of an NFT is no different than the original. I can see the exact same thing.
Samething. (Score:2)
The difference is that a signed baseball card is actually different than a digital copy.
Depends on your perspective. To me it's still the same piece of card, with exactly the same picture of some idiot I don't care about printed on it.
The only difference being that there's some ink splortched on top.
Don't care. But some people are ready to pay big money for that extra ink.
A digital copy of an NFT is no different than the original. I can see the exact same thing.
Yes, literary the same SHA256SUM of the digital asset.
But one copy comes on top with that with an authentication signature on some blockchain for bragging rights that the buyer has paid money for that copy.
Neither of us does
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Nobody sold the first text message ever sent. They sold a link to text that reads the same as the first text message ever sent. This is ridiculous.
I read that very small media can actually live in the blockchain. In that case, you're buying the text "Merry Christmas" that someone typed into an editor. Much better.
"First SMS Sells" ?! NO IT DID NOT ! (Score:1)
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It's about as close to the same phenomenon of getting obsessed over an 'original print' of a book as you can get in the digital world. Even books still actively in print and available as digital copies to arbitrarily many people often go for large amounts of money just by happenstance of being one of the first prints.
I of course can't imagine personally going for such a thing and I think baseball cards, stamps, and all that are rather silly to pay exorbitant sums, but it's not like NFTs are the first time
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It's funny how the magical thinking of ape brains allows the passage of time, a record of some sequence of events, to imbue a collection of molecules with some metaphysical (and as a result, monetary) value.
They debate the conservation laws of those metaphysics (The Ship of Theseus) as if there's some insight to be gleaned beyond the limits of their superstitious thinking.
Of course, with physical objects there might still be something unique to be gained, the historical knowledge chemical composition of pig
No it didn't (Score:1)
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FUCKING . . stupid as to pay for a
THING . . . that is nothing,
must be the 21st century
* Merry Christmas *
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"That's an ORIGINAL Picasso!" Who cares? My reprint is literally identical, and I'm not out millions of dollars.
QFT. I have several large digital prints of paintings. The paintings are of my great-great-grandfather's sailing ship, and were originally owned by distant relatives. When they died, the art went up for auction. One of them may (or may not) have been done by a famous painter of seascapes. I was kinda sad I missed the opportunity to spend $80k or more for it, until I realised that the digital image the auction house sent me could be enlarged to a reasonable size and framed. Now, I have that painting on my wa
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My reprint is literally identical, and I'm not out millions of dollars.
No, your reprint isn't "identical". There are inevitable colour variations and potentially other changes in details to the extent that and bad reprints can be wrong enough to really distort the artists vision, for example making things that should be visible hidden or even the opposite. The original of a painting is directly created from the artist and has more chance (bearing in mind decay over time) of showing what the artist wanted it to show. That is a real reason it has more value than a print.
NFTs h
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No, your reprint isn't "identical".
Totally fair. I shouldn't have used the term "literally". For someone like me, a good re-print is 100% acceptable. But I'm not the target market for collectable art. Well, collectable anything really. If I buy something art-y its because I had a blank wall and needed something on it. From 5 feet away I likely couldn't tell you the difference between a good print and the real thing anyway.
That is a real reason it has more value than a print.
Also, 100%, if we're talking the difference between a $100 print and a $1000 reproduction, or even a $2000 original.
here comes the personally offended (Score:1)
here comes the personally offended - complaining why this stupid NFT shit is being made, and some stupid cunt spending money on that shit...
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And the people whining about NFTs probably paid a ridiculous price for a comic book, baseball card, painting, or whatever bullshit they enjoy.
Perhaps, but at least they can actually hold it in their hands and show it to you as they brag about it (and they likely paid a lot less in most cases).
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The piece of cardboard is an object that exists in a limited number of copies, in a physical state that may (or may not be) as close to brand-new as possible.
NFTs are just pointers to virtual objects. So basically, people are not even buying the rights to data, they're paying the rights to metadata.
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The piece of cardboard is an object that exists...in a physical state that may (or may not be) as close to brand-new as possible.
And, in and of itself, is inherently worthless. It has no more intrinsic value than the box you poured your cereal out of this morning. Both are just cardboard and ink.
in a limited number of copies
That is incorrect. You, I, or anyone else with the proper equipment can produce as many of them as you'd like. It's the authenticity that makes it valuable. An AUTHENTIC Babe Ruth baseball card is wildly valuable to someone. The one I printed in my basement is worth less than the piece of cardboard I printed it on. In that sense, the NF
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As they say in France... (Score:3)
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Christmahanakwanzikadan.
That ain't workin', that's the way you do it (Score:2)
Money for nothin', ETHs for free.
NFTs are stupid and pointless (Score:2)
I can barely see the value in having to pay for crap like virtual objects and gear in games, but this NFT nonsense and especially the way people think it works - this has to be stopped.
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Wait, why should it be stopped? It's up to people if they want to blow their money on stupid shit. They'll pay tax on the transaction after all. Would you want them to hoard their cash or spend money on something even more stupid like buying off a politician?
There's a famous quote about this... (Score:3)
Possibly dumb, but real question (Score:3)
Can't I take the media pointed to by some expensive NFT, make a copy, maybe even alter it slightly in a way that doesn't noticeably change the media, and create a new blockahin entry pointing it that copy, then I own it?
Is it something like there needs to be a cert of authenticity (outside of the blockchain I guess) that says "I so and so sold you the NFT to the REAL version of my work and here's the hash..."?
Dear /. Please... (Score:3)
In Other News (Score:2)
Sweet (Score:2)
It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to open my eyes every morning to see it mounted under glass on my wall.
A non-fungible token of a non-fungible token. (Score:2)
I'm going to sell a non-fungible token of the non-fungible token of the first SMS message sent.
Then I'm going to sell a non-fungible token of the non-fungible token of the non-fungible token of the first SMS message sent.
Then I'm...