Meet Larry, a very good boy, who will be added to the McKay household and possibly the subject of one of the first cat tweets you’ve ever experienced in the Ethereum blockchain.
Larry’s blockchain adventure is not his fault (quite the opposite, actually). This weekend, I finalized arrangements for Larry’s adoption and was so excited that I posted some of his on Twitter. provided with shelter photos; Larry is so photogenic and has received 1,500 accolades. It also caught the attention of Twitter user @FatRaccoon, who offered to buy the rights to my tweet for $ 50 in cryptocurrency Etherium, ether, through a process that is not yet completely clear, but involves a unique cryptocurrency technology called non-fungible token (NFT).
Blockchain is a system for creating immutable databases through a distributed cryptographic process – competing computer networks to solve complex math problems in a way that generates accurate records that cannot be changed retroactively. Theoretically it has many uses, but it is carried out mainly to convert the gross computing power into semi-imagined internet money (such as bitcoin and ether) accumulated by speculators who hope to become unimaginably rich with the same degree of non-effort as and a guy on Wall Street.
These cryptocurrencies are fungible, which means that they are indistinguishable – one bitcoin can be traded with another identical bitcoin. NFTs are small bits of data that are encoded on a blockchain (usually Ethereum) kind of like a cryptocurrency unit, but are instead totally unique. They are still tradable, which makes them a kind of signed baseball card.
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In theory, almost anything digital can be packaged and sold as NFT – comments on this article, random photos of my future cat uploaded to Twitter, NBA game clips, or works of art. It is the last use that has attracted the most attention lately. A number of artists have earned millions lately by selling digital art NFTs at amazingly high prices; buyers receive the blockchain-encoded trading card, rather than a physical copy of the art, which may not exist (depending on the terms of sale, copyright, and reproduction that would allow them to print an actual copy).
This does not prevent the circulation of additional copies of the artwork sold everywhere in .jpg or .gif format or anything else. What the buyer it really becomes it is less tangible: rights of praise, influence, a collector’s item or simply a new form of money laundering. And because of the meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies, just attaching words like “token” or “blockchain” or “proof of work” to random filth can increase its value.
Whether you trade cryptocurrencies or NFTs, the transaction must be permanently encrypted in the blockchain in general using a process called proof of work, the paper being the mathematical problems mentioned above. As the blockchain grows over time, so does the overall level of work that needs to be done to maintain it, which translates directly into more physical processors sucking in local juice. (often fossil fuel) power plant. This essentially means that by treating NFTs, you cram the planet into an oven.
This brings us back to Larry, or rather to the tweet that introduces him. @FatRaccoon said he offered to buy my post using a Twitter-to-NFT service called Valuables by Cent, as a joke.
“I feel like I own a part of the stupid world we live in now and it’s fun,” @FatRaccoon wrote on Twitter DM. “Buying tweets on the blockchain is apparently maximum online. Also cute cat. ”
“I expect the whole system to either collapse in a week or make 5 billion people immediately,” they added.
The legality of any of these is completely unclear to me. You can sell the “ownership” of a tweet, which simply by virtue of its post, gave Twitter a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use it? What does it mean if, as in my case, it contains copyrighted material that belongs to others? What happens if I delete the tweet? Similarly, the economy of the whole thing is absurd. (@FatRaccoon said that in the middle of the conversation with us, they received an apparently misleading phone call related to their registration for a cryptocurrency wallet.)
A common question on the Cent website is not exactly reassuring about the stability of the whole thing:
The tweet itself will continue to be shared on Twitter. What you buy is a digital tweet certificate, unique because it was signed and verified by the creator … Owning any digital content can be a financial investment, has sentimental value and can create a relationship between collector and creator. Like an autograph on a baseball card, NFT itself is the autograph of the content creator, making it rare, unique and valuable.
NFTs make digital content unique: you will be the only person who can claim ownership of an NFT you own. This means that you will have control over NFT, such as the ability to resell or distribute it, and will appreciate or depreciate in value just like any other asset.
But there is another problem. Remember the “work proof” thing? Well, the higher the NFT sale, the more work needs to be done to code it on the blockchain and the more “work” needs to be put into future blockchain transactions. For example, according to digital artist Memo Atken’s Tracker CryptoArt.wtf, trying to (approximately) approximately the general carbon footprint of the NFTs, recording the recent sale by the artist Grimes of 303 editions of a short video called Earth for $ 7,500 in cryptocurrency, each cost a total of 122,416 kWh of electricity. This is equivalent to the average total electricity consumption of a resident of the European Union over 34 years (probably one that does not sell NFTs) or an extrapolation of 79 tons of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere of our planet on slow death. Suffice it to say that environmentalists are not fans.
According to CryptoArt.wtf, Larry’s transaction used the equivalent of about 11 kilowatt-hours. It is the equivalent of the average electricity consumption of a European Union resident for a whole day – or about 34 kilometers of driving a gas-powered vehicle, a month of using a laptop or a week and a half of using a desktop computer. . My last electricity bill for my residence (a two-story unit with two occupants) was 628 kWh, or 22 kWh per day, which means that in essence added an additional 50% to my electric usage Monday.
These figures do not matter, as CryptoArt.wtf mentioned, the energy cost of “producing or storing works or even web hosting”. They also do not include the cost of energy reselling NFTand they don’t include the infinitesimal amount we just contributed to make the blockchain suggest even more juice in the future, which I assume is incalculable.
appear they argued that NFTs and blockchains in general actually account for a very small amount of global fuel consumption worldwide, and that it is greener than selling a dollar equivalent of cheaper merchandise, such as shirts and prints. The first defense is like insisting coal rolling it’s good compared to dang power plants, a lazy whataboutism that doesn’t address the fact that NFTs still have an impact on the climate. In the second scenario, the higher carbon footprint is due to the fact that people actually received hundreds of T-shirts, ie objects that exist in reality.
I asked @FatRaccoon about the waste, who told me, “I’ve been working in technology and I’ve been convinced for years that everything was a bookstore about to collapse, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to do that anytime soon. soon, so I might as well get into the grift as I can. If I become a rich guy, I promise I’ll donate 50% of my money to the environment. ”
I asked @FatRaccoon if I agree with my assessment that this seems to be “the result of an absolutely colossal process of stupidity.”
“What always attracts me is that he seems to be doing a lot of work for the end result saying, hey, this jpeg is now a jpeg,” they replied. “It just works because all the people who love this shit are so invested in it that they will never let it be worthless. Any rational financial system would have shut down Bitcoin, but our government is like eh, anything, and now it’s just chaos, gambling without rules. ”
“I cut down 10 trees so you can have this gif of LeBron in a sick beating,” FatRaccoon concluded. “If you ever sell it, we get some money and cut a few more trees.”
I apologize to Larry in advance for interfering in all this. However, if anyone feels the need to buy any of my tweets, I recommend this three-for-one package.