Crypto art

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking about this piece by everest pipkin on crypto art:

...in a digital context scarcity must be constructed – there is nothing that demands the next block in the blockchain be harder to make than the last. If anything, the opposite should be true – computers grow ever more efficient and powerful. This means any scarcity is artificial, a process that demands ever more energy, ever more resources lost to continue to operate and return, for no other reason than to insure that tomorrow it will be even more expensive – which makes the wastefulness of today a good investment.

This is why cryptocurrency is valuable. There is nothing high-tech about it. There is no miracle. It is simply futures speculation without the speculation – no guessing required, because we know it will be more wasteful tomorrow; it is baked into the tech.

If you’ve heard the abbreviation "NFT" over the past few days but missed this post then it’s a mighty fine explanation of what it is, how it works, and the threat it poses to us all.