A tweep (someone from Twitter) asked me to write about the ongoing war between NFT owners and people who simply screenshot the profile pictures (PFPs) or right click and save it. It’s a pretty interesting chain of events from the comment section to the quoted replies, everyone seems to have a think piece or a “valid” reason why their side is better than the other. While one side is arguing that people should stop saving their PFPs because they didn’t purchase it, the other side is saying paying somewhat ridiculous amounts of money for a simple image is the biggest horse shit known to man.
Lol, no. This…this was the biggest horse shit known to man: THE GREAT HORSE MANURE CRISIS OF 1894. So stop your whining.
First off, i’d like to say both sides are a bunch of babies who collectively don’t know what NFTs are. So let’s start from there. You see, NFTs are now commonly being propagated as digital art, even though they are more than that. NFTs come in a number of forms and variations such as:
digital content (music, videos, images, books, etc)
game collectibles
digital real estate
domain names
investments and collateral
legal documents and signatures
tickets and invoices
even physical items
So they go beyond profile pictures and right clicking. These items are called non-fungible because you can’t replicate them and you can’t say you own one until you show proof of ownership. Proof of ownership can also be validated on the blockchain. I also think this is a good time to say that NFTs are powered by the Ethereum blockchain and the code that validates and stores the information an NFT comes with is called a smart contract. Unlike the lot of you arguing over PFPs.
Check this: 1 ETH is 1 ETH anywhere, but your Bored Ape NFT is the only version there is. If you for some reason see a beautiful piece of real estate that’s worth 1 ETH on Decentraland and you want to buy but don’t have the money, you can exchange your Bored Ape NFT worth 1 ETH for that piece of real estate. What this means is when the transaction is finished, you no longer own that Bored Ape NFT, what you now own is digital real estate, of which the proof of ownership is your NFT.
Same goes for who sold you the real estate.
You can send me some ETH here: 0xe7b4C3F14243E880d7A9c09Cb03740BA9cC50e6f
Now that we have cleared the understanding of NFTs, i’d like to talk to us about profile pictures that are NFTs. I think it’s cool. Shows the world you own one unique thing no one else has. Assuming you did buy an NFT, say a domain name, and you’re given a PFP as proof that you own “chefskiss.eth” for instance, even if someone else saves that image and uses it as their PFP, it doesn’t mean if someone sends some ETH to your domain name that it will go their wallet. IT’S YOURS. Think of it this way, you own a jacket with a blue $500 note in it and someone decides to make that exact jacket, print and all. Sure, they own the very same jacket but do they have the blue $500 note you have in your pocket? No. Case closed.
The beauty of NFTs is that you can not only verify who owns what., you can also see who sold what and who bought what. Right from the blockchain! That way if three people claim they own a cryptopunk because it’s their twitter PFP, simply tell them to drop their public addresses and run it on the blockchain. You’d see who’s lying.
I hope this clears things up? Let’s focus on the red markets and my bleeding portfolio. I don’t want to see grown men saying “saved your NFT” or “he stole my PFP”, EVER AGAIN.
Cheers and happy dipping!