Trump's digital trading cards -- I don't get it

You act as if honesty isn’t a terribly important quality for maga trumpers…

and a screen shot wouldn't have the digital marker proving ownership. You buy these things not because you want the picture but because you want the investment. An expert forgery of Van Gogh's "Starry Night," or even a good-quality photo reproduction, would be just as beautiful hanging on your living room wall as the original, but art collectors want the originals because of their monetary value. If you owned the original "Starry Night" you could sell it for millions. NFTs are the same thing, only digital, but since you have to carry them around on your phone or your laptop and can't even hang them on your wall, their aesthetic value is negligible. So it's really just bitcoin involving art.

and ended being a thing 8 months ago, and Trump is trying to scam his most ardent followers.

The way digital trading cards work is that they are NFTs, "non-fungible tokens." They have a unique digital identifier that is recorded somewhere and can't be copied, which certifies ownership and authenticity. But you can resell them, which is supposedly what gives them value. So when you buy one of TFG's trading cards, you will be able to download it to your computer or phone, and there's some sort of tag on it that makes it impossible to copy. Now you can show it to all your friends from your phone. Or you can sell it, since of course it will be worth even more than you paid for it, right?

I don't get it either....

Ergo, part of NFTs’ worthlessness. 30 seconds. Done.

I understand they can make it hard to copy, but I'd think impossible is a big ask.

You won’t have the LICENSE to sell, use, etc., but it is easily copyable.

It is therefore worthless. Sure, someone can SUE if you use it. Ok, whatever. You gonna sue thousands of people for $99 each assuming you even know those people are copying your NFT? If you aren’t using it commercially, detection is difficult and it’s more work and expense to sue than they’d ever get back.

Ergo the more or less destruction of the NFT market. It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes, all over again. Except the very stable genius behind Trump Steaks decided to get into the market when it was all but dead. LOL.

A steak company???

if you know how, though impossible for the griftee who didn't know what they were getting. But yeah, NFTs are right up there with bitcoin as an investment to be avoided.

I don’t care what they claim. Show me any image, I can copy it and print it in great quality with impunity.

Will I have a license? Of course not.

Do I care? Of course not.

If I wanted to get an image, I’d get an image. Free. I’m not interested in reselling, if I did that. Trying to resell would open up a lot more liability under copyright law.

But literally, that is exactly what makes NFTs worthless. The only people who care about the blockchain are lose crypto bros who want to pretend that their Monopoly money is worth something in the real world.

The rest of the world points and laughs, and steals their images because it makes them mad. Which is HILARIOUS.

you clearly do not care (as you stated) so I am ending my interactions on this with you

cheers

maybe that could possibly matter for original pieces of digital art, I suppose. (And I still think it's mostly dumb, as the bored ape NFTs fracturing market shows us.)

But for these ridiculosities? Mass produced and sold?

LOL

collapsing, on balance.

Here is how many will be made:



if he is lying and tries to make more, he can be sued (good luck with collecting on THAT)

the entire thing is just a grift attempt and a con

a person would have to be a serious duncy git to spend a single dollar on any of it, but millions of Trumps fanbois/fangurls are duncy gits

and he's jumping on the NFT bandwagon after the bandwagon already crashed into an oil factory and was set on fire.

And I have every bit of confidence that he'll make money off of this from the rubes who think he's a genius.

via a closed beta account that my father gave to me in November 2002 (and that my parents monitored me on until I was 9 or 10 or so)

virtual currency too (Linden dollars, which came in the end of 2003)

and it all was called the metaverse, a term that has been around for over 30 years (I am 26)

none of this is new to me (albeit no true blockchain tech in terms of Second Life), in fact it has basically been a part of most of my life

SL uses this similar tech:



this is the brief history of blockchain:

… website

… No Trump Digital Trading Card will have more than 20 copies in existence!” Trump’s website says.

I believe you, but it doesn’t make sense. There are 45 cards. Even if there are 20 of each for sale (which is contrary to their claim), that means 900 total cards. At $99 each, this scam is only going to get him a little less than $90k? That’s not his style.

I must be missing something.

a maximum of 45,000 NFTs minted during the contest period. But some of the NFTs will be one of a kind. “Others will be limited to 2, 5, 7, or 10 copies. No Trump Digital Trading Card will have more than 20 copies in existence!

However, you bring up a good point. Let's say the average number of copies is 15. At that level, if I'm understanding this, they will need 3,000 unique designs, which seems to be quite a project.

But Donald isn't smart enough to do pranks. He is, however, stupid enough to try a bonehead NFT fundraiser.

Moronic! He will now be even more of a laughingstock.

For some reason people want to pay large amounts of money for digital drawings. It makes zero sense to me, but to a grifter like Trump there's no way he's going to pass up that opportunity.

I was going to post a Wikipedia link that explains Non Fungible Tokens but the site is barely loading, which is kind of scary

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217466370#post24

Yes, Wikipedia is loading now.

I'm going to make a guess that, after TFG made his announcement, thousands of MAGAs went to that page and overwhelmed the server. They've got a lock on the page now so unregistered randos can't edit it.

Simplest explanation is that there is something called the Blockchain, which is used with cryptocurrency. It is essentially an immutable ledger of transactions. Then there are NFTs (stands for non-fungible tokens) which are associated with digital files, not just images. These will show who owns the digital image when it is purchased or re-sold, etc.

You could copy the image by simply taking a screenshot of your computer screen, but they won't have the token in them so if there are any investors both savvy enough to realize this and stupid enough to think Trump Cards are a good investment, they won't buy copies.

Basically, the idea was that people thought owning digital images of art would be a good investment, but it wasn't, and the market imploded several months ago. The fact that Trump thinks this is going to be cash cow shows how bad a businessman he really is. In fact, one of the best cards that he could actually make would be him with a Beanie Baby in one hand and a Dutch Tulip in the other.

Now as for whether or not NFTs are worth it overall, I could see like maybe one company gathering data for another company and selling a spreadsheet of it through the Blockchain, and the token and the date it was sold would prevent - or make the first company liable - if they sold the same data to a third company as a possible use. I'm sure there are others. Just not art.

That is less money that his followers will have to buy guns and transportation.

Kevin McCarthey? Eric Trump?

Anything is possible at this point.

And it could be money laundering as well.

I'm not sure how payments are tracked, but given the lack of any meaningful oversight I wouldn't be at all shocked - shocked! to find out money laundering is going on.

Given that this is Trump, probably more than just one scam or crime going on.

Yes shocking isn't it.

Actually what would be shocking is if Trump ever did the right thing.
Or was on the up and up.

It is Trump after all.

You would think with all the prosecutors after him, he would clean up his act.

Even though anyone can take a screenshot of the trading card, there is only one owner of "the original" which has a digital footprint and is tied to what is called the "blockchain" to prove ownership.

I personally think that NFTs will have several uses in the future, but right now, they are in their infancy, and are mainly used to own these jpeg NFTs which are essentially worthless unless for some reason a value is assigned to the original because of its scarcity.

NFTs are like anything else...if people feel that they have value, then there will be a market for them. Kind of like when Beanie Babies were selling for thousands of dollars. People said the "rare" ones were worth that much, so a market was created.

That's about it. I know they are NFTs, but even the whole NFT market is based on some bullshit.

They will buy a bucket of shit, as long as it’s his authentic shit. Wait…is that an idea for his next big annoucement???

There must be something coming out in the news soon.

Hidden watermark with something like: #1 of 500 series

Meanwhile any representation shown of it can be used to make a copy.

AND WHO CARES?

I DON'T DO YOU?