Meet Larry, a very good boy, an upcoming addition to the McKay household, and possibly the subject of one of the very first cat tweets that lives on forever in the Ethereum blockchain.
Larry’s blockchain adventure comes without his own fault (actually the opposite). This weekend we finalized arrangements for the adoption of Larry, and I was so excited that I tweeted about his tweet shelter provided photos; Larry is so photogenic and got 1,500 likes. He also drew the attention of Twitter user @FatRaccoon, who offered to buy the rights to my tweet for $ 50 in Etherium’s cryptocurrency, ether, via a process I’m not quite sure yet, but it involves a unique cryptocurrency technology called a fungible token (NFT).
The blockchain is a system for creating immutable databases via a distributed cryptographic process – competing computer networks to solve complex math problems in a way that generates accurate records that cannot be changed retroactively. It theoretically has many uses, but is mainly used to convert raw computing power into semi-imaginary internet money (like bitcoin and ether) by speculators hoping to become unimaginably rich with the same amount of effort as a man on Wall Street. .
Those cryptocurrencies are flexible, which means they are indistinguishable – one bitcoin can be exchanged for another identical bitcoin. NFTs are small pieces of data encoded on a blockchain (usually Ethereum) as a unit of cryptocurrency, but is instead completely unique. They are still negotiable, which makes them like a signed baseball card.
G / O Media can get a commission
In theory, almost anything can be digitally packaged and sold as an NFT – comments on this article, random photos of my future cat uploaded to Twitter, clips of NBA games, or works of art. This is the last use that has attracted the most attention lately. A number of artists have recently made millions by selling NFTs of digital artwork for incredibly high prices; the buyers get the trading card encoded by blockchain, rather than a physical copy of the art, which may not exist (depending on the terms of sale, the copyright and reproduction rights that enable them to issue an actual copy) pressure).
This does not prevent additional copies of the sold artworks from circulating in .jpg or .gif format or whatever. What the buyer become real is less tangible: bragging rights, influence, a collectible, or simply a clever new form of money laundering. And due to the meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies, their value could skyrocket by using only words like ‘token’ or ‘blockchain’ or ‘proof of work’.
Whether you are trading cryptocurrencies or NFTs, the transaction must be permanently encrypted in the blockchain in general using a process called ‘proof of work’, the work of which is the above mathematical problems. As the blockchain grows over time, the overall level of work that needs to be done to keep it going increases, translating directly into more physical processors sucking up juice from the locals. (often fossil fuel) power plant. This essentially means that you are snatching the planet into an oven by trading in NFTs.
That brings us back to Larry, or rather the tweet with him. @FatRaccoon said he offered to buy my mail using a Twitter-to-NFT service Valuable values by Cent, as a joke.
“I feel like I now own a part of the dumb world we live in and it’s fun,” @FatRaccoon wrote on Twitter DM. Buying tweets on the blockchain is apparently a highlight online. Also cute cat. ”
“I expect this whole system to collapse within a week or make 5 million billionaires right away,” they added.
The legality of this is completely unclear to me. Can you sell ‘ownership’ of a tweet that simply gave it to Twitter based on the post? global, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use it? What does it mean if, as in my case, it contains copyrighted material that may have belonged to another? What happens if I delete the tweet? Likewise, the economics of this whole thing are absurd. (@FatRaccoon said that during the conversation with us, they received a scam that was apparently related to registering for a cryptocurrency wallet.)
A frequently asked question on the Cent website is not exactly reassuring about the stability of this case:
The tweet itself will continue to live on Twitter. What you buy is a digital tweet certificate, unique in that it is signed and verified by the creator. Owning digital content can be a financial investment, holding sentimental value and creating a relationship between collector and creator. Like a signature on a baseball card, the NFT itself is the creator’s signature on the content, 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 have control over the NFT, as well as the ability to resell or redistribute it, and will value or appreciate it, just like any other asset.
But there is another problem. Do you remember the thing of ‘proof of work’? Well, the bigger the NFT sale, the more work needs to be done to code it on the blockchain, and the more ‘work’ needs to be done in future transactions on the blockchain. According to digital artist Memo Atken’s CryptoArt.wtf Tracker, who is trying to (approximately) approach the overall carbon footprint of NFTs, the recent recording artist Grimes of 303 editions of a short video 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 European Union resident over the course of 34 years (presumably one that does not trade NFTs), or an extrapolated 79 tons of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere of our slowly dying planet . Suffice it to say that environmentalists are not fans.
According to CryptoArt.wtf, the Larry deal used about 11 kilowatt hours. This equates to the average electricity consumption of a resident of the European Union for a whole day – or about 34 kilometers of driving a gas-powered vehicle, one month of using a laptop, or a week and a half of the computer use. My last electric bill for my home (a two-story unit with two occupants) was 628 kWh, or 22 kWh per day, which means that I essentially added an extra 50% my electrical usage on Monday.
These figures, as noted by CryptoArt.wtf, do not count the energy costs of ‘production or storage of works, or even web hosting’. It also does not include the energy costs of resale of the NFT, and it does not contain the infinite minimal amount I just contributed to make the blockchain suck even more juice in the future, which I assume is incalculable.
Defenders argued that NFTs and blockchains generally make up a very small portion of global fuel consumption, and that it is more ecological than selling an equivalent dollar of cheaper manufactured goods such as shirts and prints. The first defense is like insisting coal roll is good compared to the dang power plants, a lazy consideration that does not pay attention to the fact that NFTs still have a toll on the climate. In the second scenario, the higher carbon footprint is because people got hundreds of t-shirts, i.e. objects that exist in reality.
I asked the question of waste to @FatRaccoon, who told me: ‘I work in technology and have been convinced for years that it was a house of cards that collapsed on the spot, but it does not look like it will do any time soon , so can just as well get in the claw while I can. If I become a rich man, I promise that I will donate 50% of my money to the environment. ”
I asked @FatRaccoon if they agree with my assessment that it seems to be the “result of some process of absolutely colossal stupidity.”
“What keeps me going is that I seem to be doing a lot of work for the end result to say, hey, this jpeg is a jpeg now,” they replied. ‘It only works because all the people who love this shit are invested in it that they will never be worthless. Any rational financial system would have shut down bitcoin, but our government is like eh, whatever, and so it’s just a mess, no gambling. ”
“We cut down ten trees so you can own this poison from LeBron in a sick dunk,” FatRaccoon concluded. “If you ever sell it, we’ll get money and cut down some more trees.”
I apologize to Larry beforehand for confusing him. However, if anyone needs to buy one of my tweets in the future, I highly recommend it three-for-one bundle.