Digital Art sales

[grain elevator]

All the better! Great potential for much more than art. Although probably at the cost of a lot of computing power needed.

It doesn't prevent distribution. It makes copyright transfer and trading much more versatile.

 

[radiant]

All the better! Great potential for much more than art. Although probably at the cost of a lot of computing power needed.

Yes, it can be used for quite a few things!

That is the biggest downfall of this; you need to maintain the blockchains and those take huge amount of energy. That has caused chinese to take ower the bitcoin as they can harvest cheap energy & buy the graphic cards before those enter to western world. If someone says bitcoin is "free" it is a big lie

 

[Auer]

https://www.techspot.com/news/88870-nfts-why-people-paying-millions-own-them.html

 

[RalphLambrecht]

What do people think about this? Is this the future for digital art sales?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56362174

One can only hope.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Yes, it can be used for quite a few things!

That is the biggest downfall of this; you need to maintain the blockchains and those take huge amount of energy. That has caused chinese to take ower the bitcoin as they can harvest cheap energy & buy the graphic cards before those enter to western world. If someone says bitcoin is "free" it is a big lie

Why do blockchain and bitcoin take huge amounts of energy?

 

[radiant]

Why do blockchain and bitcoin take huge amounts of energy?

You have to have computers in network that agree the transactions. See this chapter on wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Energy_consumption

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

You have to have computers in network that agree the transactions. See this chapter on wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Energy_consumption

The article provides the energy used but not the reason. Why? What is going on when bitcoins are "mined". Where and how is the energy being expended?

 

[removed account4]

from what I remember watching on NOVA or some sort of PBS special years ago
people set up computers in series and solve some sort of equation ( I think maybe this is something else IDK)
and as portions of the equations are being solved pieces of bit coins are dispensed...
https://www.investopedia.com/tech/how-does-bitcoin-mining-work/
I remember reading about how people were buying old decaying buildings in countries where electricity was cheap
and they had a gaggle of chained computers all chugging away.
the problem with bitcoin is
https://www.newsweek.com/man-accide...108m-trash-says-theres-no-point-crying-726807
https://people.com/human-interest/man-forgets-bitcoin-password-makes-peace-with-220-million-loss/
I have a hard enough time remembering my password is pasword1234.

How do you brag about your $68 million dollar artwork if you can't hang it on your wall? What good is the pickup expression, "Would you like to come over to my apartment and see my etchings?" What do you do? Pull out your iPhone and flash it at people. The whole thing is just silly. For a million, I'll email all my Flickr pictures to anyone who pays.

there was an engineer nearby to where I grew up, he and his wife have the biggest gravestones in the chestnut hill cemetery (the same one where mercy brown the legendary vampire is buried)
anyways after the wife passed away the caretaker was getting everything ready to be sold at auction or sold in a big estate sale extravaganza and he came across a few paintings that were in the basement (not sure if they were in the vault or in tubes or ... ) and he alerted experts seeing they seemed fancy and it turns out they had been stolen and missing since the 1920s, and then there is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum_theft

even with non virtual artworks people can't show others what they have, personally I'd rather have a nifty NFT or a solid gold tweet, at least you can show someone on your iPhone 4 the cool bling you own.

(still looking for the double die, red cent and 43 copper pennies )

 

[MattKing]

The article provides the energy used but not the reason. Why? What is going on when bitcoins are "mined". Where and how is the energy being expended?

Computers capable of doing extremely high numbers of calculations use a lot of electricity, and create a lot of heat, which needs to be dissipated, which uses a lot more electricity.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Computers capable of doing extremely high numbers of calculations use a lot of electricity, and create a lot of heat, which needs to be dissipated, which uses a lot more electricity.

Well, our computer do a lot of computations too without all that energy. What is bitcoin doing that uses so much? What do they mean by "mining"?

 

[Arthurwg]

I would love to see this picture in person. But as far as I can tell, and IMHO, it's complete garbage. Still, money is not what it used to be.

 

[MattKing]

Well, our computer do a lot of computations too without all that energy. What is bitcoin doing that uses so much? What do they mean by "mining"?

The "mining" involves doing massive amounts of calculations - far, far, far more than the type of use that you are putting your computer through.
Unless you are doing gene sequencing, ray tracing for lens design and calculation of optimal escape velocities for your space craft - all at the same time!

 

[MattKing]

One of the ways to deal with tasks that require huge amounts of computing power is through distributed computing. Way back in 2004, Sean helped organize APUG to contribute to such a task through this fascinating (and now most likely quite dated) Sticky thread in the Lounge: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/the-apug-folding-team-its-free-its-a-charity.2782/
Think of how much electricity all those 2004 era computers must have used!

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The "mining" involves doing massive amounts of calculations - far, far, far more than the type of use that you are putting your computer through.
Unless you are doing gene sequencing, ray tracing for lens design and calculation of optimal escape velocities for your space craft - all at the same time!

I understand your point. But why does it take so many calculations. After all, the whole banking system in the world is complicated and very involved. But what is blockchain doing that requires so many calculations that it's burning up the electricity?All they're doing is transferring data from one place to another encrypting stuff? RIght? Wrong?

As an aside, where are these coins? They're not real, just electronic 0s and 1s in memory somewhere? Who controls them? The whole thing seems so iffy. I guess the banking system is similar. If someone wiped out the memories, we'd all have to start over again from nothing, like my photos in my computer. Banking stores 1s and 0s too. So I guess it's similar. There's something to be said holding cash under your mattress or real gold.

 

[MattKing]

There's something to be said holding cash under your mattress or real gold.

Only for as long as society arbitrarily agrees to assign value to what is otherwise either stamped pieces of metal, ink printed on fancy paper, or an interesting type of metal that can be pretty and has some mildly useful properties, but is otherwise of little inherent value.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Only for as long as society arbitrarily agrees to assign value to what is otherwise either stamped pieces of metal, ink printed on fancy paper, or an interesting type of metal that can be pretty and has some mildly useful properties, but is otherwise of little inherent value.

But gold has value as a metal for thousands of years. It's jewelry and is needed in electronics. Bitcoin has no inherent value. You can't wear it, eat it, hang it, drive it. Its inherent value is about equal to one of my photos in Flickr. I remember US currency years ago before Nixon took us off the gold standard. The currency said on the left that it was redeemable in gold, or was it silver. Silver Certificates they were called also. Now it just says Federal Reserve Note and backed up by nothing, not worth much more than bitcoin.

 

[MattKing]

Gold is less practical value than copper, except that we artificially assign a higher price to it.
It is that assignment of value, and our acceptance of that value that matters - it is the same with paper currency, or the banking records where most of that value is evidenced.
Monetary values are really no different than religious beliefs, except they are much more useful when commonly shared.
If someone is willing today to value one bitcoin at $60,300.10 USD (today's price) and give you that sum in USD for the bitcoin you have in your computer, why is that any different than someone being willing to give you $60,300.10 USD for $75,239.45 Canadian Dollars in your Canadian dollar bank account? (that is today's exchange rate).

 

[cliveh]

One of the ways to deal with tasks that require huge amounts of computing power is through distributed computing. Way back in 2004, Sean helped organize APUG to contribute to such a task through this fascinating (and now most likely quite dated) Sticky thread in the Lounge: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/the-apug-folding-team-its-free-its-a-charity.2782/
Think of how much electricity all those 2004 era computers must have used!

I let folding use my computer for a good cause and would suggest others do the same:-

https://foldingathome.org/

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Gold is less practical value than copper, except that we artificially assign a higher price to it.
It is that assignment of value, and our acceptance of that value that matters - it is the same with paper currency, or the banking records where most of that value is evidenced.
Monetary values are really no different than religious beliefs, except they are much more useful when commonly shared.
If someone is willing today to value one bitcoin at $60,300.10 USD (today's price) and give you that sum in USD for the bitcoin you have in your computer, why is that any different than someone being willing to give you $60,300.10 USD for $75,239.45 Canadian Dollars in your Canadian dollar bank account? (that is today's exchange rate).

Gold and copper both have inherent value. Gold is more expensve because it's more scarce. We could use copper as money except you need too much of it to be worth anything. Due to gold's scarcity, smaller amounts are worth more. So it's easier to store and carry around. We use to have silver coins, I think the dime ad quarter. But the cost went too high so now they use a cheap composite. It's true that our currencies are no longer backed by gold. That's why because of the printing, their value has depreciated over the years and getting worse. Bitcoin has no inherent value at all. It's price is going up on the geater fool principal. as long as you can find someone who thinks its worth more. But at some point that ends and like musical chairs, you'll be left without a chair and it will be worth nothing.

 

[Sean]

Some blockchains require a lot of energy, they have a consensus mechanism known as "Proof of Work", but other next generation chains opt for consensus such as "Proof of Stake" which requires very little energy. Also, some go on about the mass energy consumption of Bitcoin, but last I read up on it, all electronic devices in the USA in 'sleep mode' use more energy than Bitcoin. I suspect eventually fusion energy or such will power chains like Bitcoin and it will be a non-issue. NFTs seem interesting in the way they could copyright the work and provide a long term revenue through ongoing future transactions. I see it better suited to objects in video games and VR.

 

[BAC1967]

Did this person buy the art or the rights to the art? I can look at it online in the same way as the person that bought it but I don’t have to pay millions. I can buy a song on an LP for a few dollars or listen to it on the radio for free but the rights to the song may cost a fortune. If they bought the rights to the art there may be a way to monetize that.

 

[Down Under]

After reading all these posts, something the showman P.T. Barnum once said came to mind...

To me the sad part of all this 'nouveau' is that it will just further devalue computer art as collectable and/or investment, much like digital photography badly devalued good photography from 2005 onwards when it took off an an 'art' form and every second snapshooter suddenly reinvented themselves as an 'artist'. Many until then profitable photo markets quickly went down the proverbial gurgler - literally overnight my stock photo sales which had funded my travels and gear since 1966 went the way of the passenger pigeon and the Tasmanian tiger. Many other good photographers I know also had this happen to their markets. Now most of our analog gear sits gathering dust and weevils in our camera cabinets.

In the end this fad like so many others will pass and maybe evolve into something new. The goal appears to be mostly to part cashed-up but naive collectors from their money.

So call me cynical, but. But.

 

[MattKing]

It's true that our currencies are no longer backed by gold.

They never really were.
They were restricted to the amount of gold on hand, but the actual, non trading as a commodity value of the gold was and is far less than its artificial value as a market construct.
The gold doesn't have the value. Artificially inflating its price and rigorously protecting the market that upholds that price is where the "value" comes from.
It is like diamonds.
The world is awash with diamonds. But distribution is artificially minimized. Other than for some use in industry, the price for a diamond is entirely a construct of an industry whose entire purpose is maintaining an artificially high price on them.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Gold is less practical value than copper, except that we artificially assign a higher price to it.
It is that assignment of value, and our acceptance of that value that matters - it is the same with paper currency, or the banking records where most of that value is evidenced.
Monetary values are really no different than religious beliefs, except they are much more useful when commonly shared.
If someone is willing today to value one bitcoin at $60,300.10 USD (today's price) and give you that sum in USD for the bitcoin you have in your computer, why is that any different than someone being willing to give you $60,300.10 USD for $75,239.45 Canadian Dollars in your Canadian dollar bank account? (that is today's exchange rate).

You're right that fiat currency not backed up by gold or other valuable stores of wealth is just as useless as fiat bitcoin backed up by nothing too. Of course, the US dollar was at one point backed up by gold. That's where it got it;s original value. We had most of the gold in the world. The dollar is also the reserve currency of the world and has had a long history of being used as a currency. But you're right that it could become worthless and maybe it will if we keep printing.

Currency has the added value of trust in the government that prints it. Bitcoin has only been around ten years, and it also isn;t a good medium of exchange. Few will accept it. Would you accept payment in bitcoin for your photos not knowing what it's value will be when your customer pays you? You can't run a business that way. What if it drops 25% the day you get paid? You wind up losing all profits for your pictures. That doesn't happen with currency. Bitcoin's a speculative digital asset like the digital artwork we're discussing here. If it loses favor with the public, you lose your investment. What if the government declares it illegal to protect the country's currency? You can't cash it for gold or other valuable real assets. You could exchange it for dollars or other currency. But only if you can find buyers who are willing to do that or who won't do it at a huge discount to what you originally paid for it. You're gambling.

This is why they call real estate real. Regardless of the value of currency, you always have the land. It's real.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

After reading all these posts, something the showman P.T. Barnum once said came to mind...

To me the sad part of all this 'nouveau' is that it will just further devalue computer art as collectable and/or investment, much like digital photography badly devalued good photography from 2005 onwards when it took off an an 'art' form and every second snapshooter suddenly reinvented themselves as an 'artist'. Many until then profitable photo markets quickly went down the proverbial gurgler - literally overnight my stock photo sales which had funded my travels and gear since 1966 went the way of the passenger pigeon and the Tasmanian tiger. Many other good photographers I know also had this happen to their markets. Now most of our analog gear sits gathering dust and weevils in our camera cabinets.

In the end this fad like so many others will pass and maybe evolve into something new. The goal appears to be mostly to part cashed-up but naive collectors from their money.

So call me cynical, but. But.

Those attics are filled with Beanie Babies too.