CT Blue

I’m fairly computer literate. When I got my first computer, a TI-99, I spent quite a few hours learning to program, and eventually, when I graduated to a PC, wrote programs I used at the office to actually do useful things, like auto dial my phone from an address book I wrote.

But I confess that I couldn’t begin to explain what a Blockchain is, though I understand it allegedly is intended to keep purchases of cryptocurrency both secure and private, though recent events have suggested that it’s not really capable of either.

I’m even more bewildered by NFTs, pieces of computer “art” that exist only as pixels, stored somewhere in the internet and allegedly “belonging” to only a single person. What has been particularly bewildering is the fact that people have been willing to spend many thousands of dollars for “art” that looks like badly drawn cartoons that you’d be lucky to get ten dollars for if it was painted on canvas and you actually physically owned it.

So I was a bit pleased to read this post at Vice this morning. Here’s the introduction:

Arguably no piece of software has been more central to the most recent crypto craze than MetaMask. With tens of millions of users, the digital wallet system has become the main access point to Ethereum, the blockchain that has given rise to stablecoins like Tether, play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity, metaverses like Decentraland, and NFT projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

But after a precipitous crypto crash that has affected projects and people alike, the co-founders of MetaMask are now warning that the crypto ecosystem they helped create is currently an unsafe casino prone to Ponzi-like operations and exploitation.

It’s always nice when someone who should know reinforces your own beliefs, and I was particularly pleased with how one of the MetaMask founders described NFTs:

“…a form of a direct-to-consumer sale of an imaginary good”.

That’s precisely how I’ve conceptualized it to myself ever since I first read about them. People have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for things that for all intents and purposes have no independent existence. What I find most amazing about this is that it proves what a great country this is. Where else could anyone stupid enough to spend that kind of money on an imaginary piece of trash art have enough money to do so?