Indie store itch.io comes out swinging against NFTs

Quoting: Nezchan

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: ArtenBitcoin alredy established as legitimate curency. It's legal tender in El Salvador. Another country reportedly make it legal tender this year.

Yeah, I heard about the El Salvador thing. So . . . does anyone actually use it as legal tender? Go into the supermarket and pay with crypto? Lay a smidgen of a bitcoin on a street vendor for some tacos?
A loopy president can declare anything he wants. Doesn't make the problems with trying to use Bitcoin for normal transactions disappear.

As I understand it, the crypto thing in El Salvador hasn't exactly been running smoothly. Which seems to be par for the course, to be honest.

This source look biased for me. To be clear I don't say adoption of bitcoin in el salvador is perfect, government wallet app (chivo) is horibly buged, so most problems what I know are software bugs and probably we can blame rushed release, not bitcoin itself. chivo - chivo transaction work good, onchain transaction also, but Lightning Network payments (instant cheap transactions) has been horrible what I last heard from people who has been in Salvador in person(couple months back).
On other side, with different wallets for example Bitcoin Beach wallet(other El salvador wallet, mostly used in El Zonte), or any international wallet, like Phoenix wallet you don't have this problem (if you don't interact with chivo via LN).

Here you have video from youtuber who has been in el salvador and never used bitcoin before, so he is in similar situation as somebody who never used credit card and try use it in country with language barier for first time, he even not know about LN and paid everythink onchain (horibble idea, comparable to international bank payment from internet banking instead of credit card. On other side when we consider Chivo bug, maybe it's good choice, but they don't use chivo in El Zonte...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seB8nECSB10

Quoting: GuestNFTs are nothing but really really really bad non-standardized fiat currency created for free by scammers.

itch.io is exactly right, anyone or any company trying to push it is a scammer and should be boycotted at the very least.

For currency you need atleast some fungibility. NFT does not have it, so it's not curency. It's also not enforced by government - it's not fiat.
On "anyone or any company trying to push it is a scammer" I disagree, you can look at lightnite.io It use some form of NFT, and i don't see it like scam. It's Battle-royale game with items as NFTs. (When it's been on steam they had Linux listed i think... but i don't see linux listet in minimal requirments... )

Good on itch.io.

Folding Ideas' video sums up my thoughts pretty well. IMO NFTs are basically a scourge, and as far as I'm concerned smart contracts taint the Ethereum (and Bitcoin soon I guess) blockchains irrevocably. I still haven't heard a legitimate use case for NFTs that isn't already a solved problem (digital ownership via licenses tied to user accounts) or predicated on a completely unrealistic scenario.

I'm relatively bullish on Bitcoin becoming a kind of digital gold, and monero looks slightly promising as an actual viable currency, but other than that I've pretty much made up my mind to wash my hands of this whole crypto thing.

I feel no ill will towards anyone, and I'm open to having my mind changed, but it's really incredible how infinitely bad crypto is unless you own a 400k ape NFT or you're the 0.1% who manage to sell the bag.


Last edited by superboybot on 8 February 2022 at 12:10 pm UTC

Quoting: superboybotGood on itch.io.

Folding Ideas' video sums up my thoughts pretty well. IMO NFTs are basically a scourge, and as far as I'm concerned smart contracts taint the Ethereum (and Bitcoin soon I guess) blockchains irrevocably. I still haven't heard a legitimate use case for NFTs that isn't already a solved problem (digital ownership via licenses tied to user accounts) or predicated on a completely unrealistic scenario.

I'm relatively bullish on Bitcoin becoming a kind of digital gold, and monero looks slightly promising as an actual viable currency, but other than that I've pretty much made up my mind to wash my hands of this whole crypto thing.

I feel no ill will towards anyone, and I'm open to having my mind changed, but it's really incredible how infinitely bad crypto is unless you own a 400k ape NFT or you're the 0.1% who manage to sell the bag.

Bitcoin already has primitive form of smart contracts there - you can do timelocks and multisig transaction with it (it's used for LN for example), but there are no plans for implement turing complete ethereum like smart contracts into bitcoin itself (Not sure, but they suposedly has been in bitcoin long time ago, but Satoshi removed them for security reasons before bitcoin going public).

Only option for NFTs with bitcoin are second layers build on btc blockchain (RGB on development), or sidechain (Liquid).

For general purpose turing complete smart contracts have another usecase - stablecoins like tether. You can create USD, Eur,... on blockchain of Ethereum/solana/... blockchain (or on RGB layer), so you get monetary property of fiat money and transferability of crypto, which is one of good thin you want if you live in 3. world with hight inflation but without access to banking services with foreign currency. It has been used in Venesuela alogside bitcoin what I know by citizens.

For monero case, i like it, but there are problems with scalability because privacy model. Cryprography is to hard.
- Transactins are too big, so blockchain for same number of transaction need more diskspace and nodes need more power to verify it.
- Another problems are hardware wallets (ok, smartpohones don't have it). They have problems to sign transaction (Trezor model T can sign it, Trezor One does not, because insufficient system resources, there is suposedly way how do it, but they did not have time to implement it yet).

Because of this, Bitcoin with LN is by my opponion better suited also for curency usage, you have privacy (you send money via TOR like network with opened channels to target wallet without direct conection, everybody in path know only the previous node and the next node. However, it does not know the first or end node of the payment path.), LN transaction are also quick, comparable to credit card (you don't need wait to block by mined, into blockchain are writen only open and close transaction, with opened channel which you have opened for monts or years you can do milions of transaction to every other node conected to same network)


Last edited by Arten on 8 February 2022 at 1:45 pm UTC

I'm glad most are opposed to NFTs. Next up: Let's kick out micro-transactions too. And gambling boxes. Get back to actual gameplay in games. That would be nice.

Quoting: PangaeaI'm glad most are opposed to NFTs. Next up: Let's kick out micro-transactions too. And gambling boxes. Get back to actual gameplay in games. That would be nice.

If you play just indie games, your wish is already true

Though more seriously it seems that in case when maximizing profit. Based on that list it seems like that if something is too unpopular, there's no guarantee it will be gone for good (only exception is if legislation forbids it) . And there will be always more things to try. Only alternatives that I can see are to sell more copies of the game or rise the price of the game, which in turn means that it will sell less. Though the question is how much profit is enough?

As customer only options seem to be complain loudly and not buy games that use those methods.

Quoting: Anza

Quoting: PangaeaI'm glad most are opposed to NFTs. Next up: Let's kick out micro-transactions too. And gambling boxes. Get back to actual gameplay in games. That would be nice.

If you play just indie games, your wish is already true

Though more seriously it seems that in case when maximizing profit. Based on that list it seems like that if something is too unpopular, there's no guarantee it will be gone for good (only exception is if legislation forbids it) . And there will be always more things to try. Only alternatives that I can see are to sell more copies of the game or rise the price of the game, which in turn means that it will sell less. Though the question is how much profit is enough?

As customer only options seem to be complain loudly and not buy games that use those methods.

I agree with this. But people are usually buying games because they want to play them and they take loot boxes, microtransactions and other gambling mechanics as necessary evil. You still can't go over the top, because the gamers will just want refund or just not buy your game. This happened with the Star Wars: Battlefront for example.

It's much worse in case of F2P games, when the gaming mechanics are slow and frustrating on purpose, because you want the people to buy something to make it less frustrating. But plenty of gamers get used to have games for free. :-/