Some thoughts on value.

in LeoFinance3 years ago (edited)

Messing around in cryptocurrency gets you to thinking. It kickstarts the old noggin.

What is value?

One thing that reoccurs to my noggin is the concept of value. When first getting into crypto I asked online for help as to how to explain bitcoin to someone. A response that was received advised to start by talking about money. I thought then that that was an odd response. It was not. As I learned about crypto, I learned that that was a terrific response.

The crux of the "talk about money" explanation, at least in this sense, is that "money" has no value when it's just ink printed on paper. Infinity paper money means no value to that paper. It's a pretty simple concept.

I wrote a while back about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book I read years ago and can't shake from my head. The gist of the post, and book, was that quality matters. The same may be said of value. We each evaluate quality in our own right and assign value accordingly. That book begins with the quote:

“And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good—
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”

We don't need to ask anyone else if that painting has value or not. If we like it, it does. If we don't like it, it still might have value because somebody else likes it.

NFT value and a little NFT story (and a song)

Some recent NFTs I made brought back the idea of value to me. More specifically, value is a subjective thing. Some people will place value on something, others will not. I suppose this is nothing ground-breaking. The old adage, "One man's trash is another man's treasure has been around forever." But, here's the scenario that came to mind for me...

I've enjoyed making NFTs using AtomicHub.io. The endeavor has been entirely for the fun of it and the joy of creativity. For the holiday season, I made up a little song called "Christmas Puppy" | animated music video. No laughing at my singing! I tried.

I gave them away to anyone who offered an address. The supply was initially infinite. Being a bitcoin fan, this bothered me. Infinite supply? Humbug! This isn't fiat currency! I planned to cap the supply on Christmas day (and did, at 76).

A couple of days before Christmas, I went to a Telegram channel that seems to specialize in (1) announcing airdrops and (2) talking jibberish, trash and nonsense about NFTs. Maybe those are in the wrong order, not sure. I posted a link to claim a free NFT. I posted a link to https://nefties.com/puppy for anyone else interested in getting one. The NFT claim link stayed, the web link was immediately deleted by a mod and I was banned for 12 hours for excessively posting something-or-other. I'd published a few similar ones, maybe three or four, over the week prior.

Anyhoo, that's fine. It's their channel, their rules. I'm okay with that. The odd thing to me was at the same time, there was a weird thing going on where people would post suicide memes. Not sure why. Didn't care to read why. Apparently, this was funny (?). Each user tried to post a funnier, more clever meme of a suicide, but a funny suicide so that's okay. Hmm. My post had no value. It was spam. But dem memes had value! Hmm.

Some of my Christmas Puppy NFTs that I'd given away started popping up on the AtomicHub marketplace. People who'd asked for one received one. Most hodled them, some sold them. The pennies began to rake in. The Christmas Puppy eventually sold for 1 solid WAX, about 4 cents! The Christmas Puppy NFT was mooning!

So, whereas one mod saw the NFT as valueless spam to be banned, others saw value to sell and buy.

People are funny.


As a by-the-way, if anyone wants a free NFT, I give them away all the time to get people started. Visit https://nefties.com/start and I'll give you one.


Not on Hive? The #1 benefit of Hive...*YOU own your content and YOU earn the rewards your that content generates.* [Learn more](https://hiveonboard.com?ref=crrdlx) or consider using my referral link to [get your free account here](https://hiveonboard.com/create-account?ref=crrdlx).

:)

Sort:  

As you pointed out: Value is very subjective. But value can become a little less subjective. When large enough amount of people believe in some value, that value becomes more the reality, something that will have value for a considerable time. For instance our currencies we use in our daily lives. That represents a certain value that most of us value no matter what (in boundaries of course and over time we may change our views). NFT is kinda funny to me at the moment. Many see it as a way to make money. Even those who can't create real value; Maybe the Meme guys and girls belong to that category, I don't know, I didn't see their work. I see enough crypto fans around who buy any type of NFT, thinking it may become worth something at one time. I suppose, quite a few new crypto millionaires around who can spend good money buying a whole lot of NFT's. So, yea, I think because of this situation and realities, many shitty NFTs are created. And n the pool of shitty content, real content just sinks down the bottom. Sad, but the reality today.

Wish you all the fun with NFTing your work! :)

So true about people buying NFTs for the sake of it. I made a few NFTs that were nothing more than advertisements, like paper flyers to be handed out. It was odd because people lined up their addresses to be given the ad NFT. I gave them out, like handing out flyers announcing the circus coming to town. Then, those silly ads were being sold on the market!

As something of a statement, I made a "coin" I called HORScoin or horse coin. The premise was that, in their NFT excitement, people would line up to receive a "horse apple coin"...a piece of manure. I did a write up on this but my web host went kaput. My argument was that even horse manure has value (which it does as fertilizer). Anyway, I still give those away and some of them actually sell! Value comes in the weirdest way. See https://wax.atomichub.io/explorer/asset/1099513043420

Then, those silly ads were being sold on the market!

You take a positive approach view here which is super. But think of this: Some users got the NFT for free from you, and then try to sell it. Why the hell take the NFT then? Respect levels are sometimes sub-zero.

I still give those away and some of them actually sell! Value comes in the weirdest way

Hahahaha and Really? and again Hahahaha ... This crypto universe is hilarious, not only at times, but it becomes more and more standard Hahahaha I opened the page in an browswer tab for me to look into it sometime later. Runing out of HIVE-time for the day 🤪