The Non-Fungible People vs Daz models
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I don't think anyone has a problem if somebody wants to spend a bunch of money on something they think is silly -- there's been lots of fads before and will be again.
The problem is that *this* fad comes at an extreme energy cost which impacts us all.
There is also the opportunity cost that the Daz community pays as well. Imagine all the money that is being used to develop, staff, create the NFPs and promote them. Imagine a world where those resources instead went to things like hiring a technical writer to document Daz Studio and create in depth SDK documentation so more innovative Daz Plugins could be made. Imagine a world where the discord instead provided intense training and support for the esoteric parts of Daz Studio like rigging and weight mapping so that new PAs could bring more interesting products to the market. Imagine the marketing instead for teaching new artists how to use Daz Studio how to make art, rebuilding the community with new people with fresh ideas...
That does assume that the project will show a net loss - otherwise it may well make more money available for (at least some of) the things you want.
I don't know exactly what it involves.
I'm sorry I'm a member of the old school. 2 years ago I dump money into commodities. Guess I made a good choice there. This doesn't sound like a good choice. EMP will surely wipe everyone out. Even ones with stocks like me. The good thing is Gold is my buddy and silver likes me also.
Side note My cat plays with a beanie baby.
And what happens when the NFT/NFP bubble bursts, because as with everything it will happen, it is just a matter of time.. I watched a video about how NFT's work and so on.. And from watching it I realized how many gullible people there are out there..
I'm still waiting for someone to explain why these, or almost any other NFT would ever increase in value.
Personally, I think a Gameprint character is much more of what an NFT should have been: truly unique because they're painted by hand, visually appealing, and physically limited in number. I could see someone spending a few hundred dollars on a well-made 3D miniature; I could even see myself spending $700 on a figurine of my own character if it were large and detailed enough (though it would have to be pretty big, lol).
This I don't see.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The NFT market is really meant for speculators and collectors ... not for the average person. Daz is entering the arena with a more useful product ( a functional 3D avatar ) which would have a buyer base of people who want that ... but it is locked into a system of speculators and collectors that will probably drive the price way to high for people who actually want to use it. For usability, it does not make sense for the price to go extremely high. For collectibility ... well ... the art speculation market does what it does ( some will win and some will lose ).
But you can make a virtual avatar with the Daz figures you've bought from the store. The only thing you can't do with them is resell them. See the character in my forum profile? That's my virtual avatar. And she's unique because she's spun from dials so nobody else has her but me (unless someone copies my artwork from DeviantArt or whever else I post my art, which is fine provided they aren't trying to claim it as their own or sell it...but even then, no other Daz user has that unique character preset to make more art of her...just me). If I grow tired of her, I just spin up another character.
Again, this would make more sense to me if Daz were selling characters that were not reproducable from assets purchased in the store. Meaning hair you can't find anywhere else. Skin you can't find anywhere else. Then it would make sense to me. But as I see it right now, the buyer is just paying the premium for the unique code/link (i.e. model number) and the right to resell the character bundle later (provided they can find someone willing to buy it).
If I make an investment, the assumption and hope is that I will get my money back, plus some. I don't see how anybody would make their money back with these things, plus some. That's all bearing on an initial buyer finding a person who would want to buy it from them, for $700+. This all just makes me think of that phrase "Well, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you." And also beanie babies.
Well, assuming that the whole project does make money, the sound business decision would be to pour more resources into it. This would improve earnings even more, rather than reallocating the resources to an area is which deemed less profitable.
Edit: But hey, both of us are veering dangerously close to the dreaded speculation zone, so not another peep from me!
NFTs are a new frontier for money laundering as well.
https://medium.com/yardcouch-com/how-to-launder-money-with-nfts-56f1789e5591
https://medium.com/@alacergroup/are-nfts-a-money-laundering-gold-mine-ea292a60c0ab
At some point, the NFT market will need to implement strong KYC and other anti-money laundering measures... driving out money launderers will impact NFT prices for sure.
If you look long enough, maybe, but I priced a figure 10 years ago and just the modeling with the textures was about $1600 USD. Rigging was going to add more to the price. I couldn't afford it but it was a totally fair price. You could probably find someone easily enough to do just a head sculpt on one of the DAZ 3D Genesis 8.1 bases for $700 though.
That's exactly the problem... that was the point of all things crypto... being un-taxable, being untraceable... regulate that and it's just unstable, invisible money that's too easy to lose (like forgetting or losing a password).
The crypto world's main draw is to not Know Your Customer and not care... unless someone rips off a crypto company, then they want the FBI and Interpol all over that... Socialize the costs, Privatize the profits.
Speaking of losing passwords... I laughed about that guy with several million in crypto that lost his password and is down to his last guess... then at a recent party, my wife's cousin admitted he purchased a couple of hundred bucks worth of Bitcoin very early on, which is now worth about $20-$50k which he'll never retrieve because the laptop where the info was got stolen not long after the purchase.
Did you hear about the guy in, I think, Denmark who had mined Bitcoin years ago and has what would now be worth billions on a hard drive? He accidentally threw it away instead of the one he intended to and is now trying to convince the government to let him go through the landfill to find it and they are not allowing it. Maybe if he keeps offering more money they will, who knows. I feel for the guy but had to chuckle as well. I don't think I've ever thrown out a hard drive just in case.
Why do we have to use crypto to buy the item? What reg 800 us dollars not good enough. (It's not the paper it's printed on), but it's physical. Anybody can make a crypto coin. It's getting people to buy it Which Daz seems to be trying to get their customers on board with, I don't like it.
As far as I know, all Daz products are licensed for royalty-free use (with the exception of the interactive license requirements). I see them in animation, ads, album covers, comics...that's the whole point. They're stock assets. If Envato sells me an "NFT font" for $700 and tells me I can use it on my very own website, that's just their service at a higher price point.
Thing is, I could almost get the appeal of these if they were truly unique. I've considered selling adoptables that include Daz character presets with 100% unique morphs and textures (at least before Daz did this and basically made it impossible for me to sell anything that requires linking people here or encouraging them to use the software, lmao. Thanks again!). But every one I've seen so far has been assembled from out-of-the-box assets, which means that 20k+ people probably own the same character as the one in your NFT, and the outfit they're wearing, and their accessories and hair. If the idea is supposed to be people using these as avatars, they will pay hundreds of dollars more to buy the same stuff most of us wait to grab when it's on sale for $15.
MelissaGT said:
And even then, the seller has to hope they find someone who has never heard of Daz and doesn't realize they can spend the same amount of money to build out a fairly decent library of assets they choose themselves! This feels gross.
I do think they are taxable in my country as soon as you sell them for profit it becomes a business and u have to pay on earnings.
(Edit by mod to take post out of quote)
I don't throw them away either. I have a file folder box full of them. When we get rid of a computer I pull the HHD(s) and either put them in the new computer or in the box they go. I feel for the guy but did he not consider backing up that kind of stuff onto some kind of DVD's or something that can't fail? Stupidity at its finest.
I never throw a hard drive out, not even one that's totally toast... in fact I take apart junk hard drives for those crazy strong magnets and other parts that are only useful to lunatics like me.
Hey, I never thought about grabbing the magnets out of them. I could use those, lol
Yes, it is free!! I never realized that - Now in my cart. Thanks Richard!!
I shouldn't have said un-taxable, that's more or less something that was part of the original hype years ago, it's not really true anymore...
More like "difficult to collect the taxes on" or "harder to trace"...
Technically they are taxable almost everywhere now, but the problem is it's mostly a grey area and mostly only honest people bother to pay the taxes...
(Its not like the hackers who ransom a hospital or power grid are concerned with paying taxes)...
Even in the U.S. it's fairly easy to avoid paying taxes if you really don't want to... Although transactions are almost transparent with Bitcoin and Ethereum, with others it's far easier to hide transactions altogether which is more or less the allure or the selling point of many less well known cryptocurrencies.
In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service is looking to quickly crack down on crypto cheats because it's become very obvious there is a lot of money to be collected and previously there were plenty of loopholes and ambiguity in the rules and even a lot of confusion for anyone who may have genuinely been willing to pay.
But it's still a selling point in the cryptobro world that if you know what you are doing, taxes aren't a big deal.
One way or another most governments are going to have to crack down and regulate all crypto, there is too much money to be had... and not only just because of taxes monies, but because of growing use in illegal activities, it's just a question of when, and what will be the tipping point.
Even to think in the age ones and zeros that crypto can't be traced is silly. Kudos to you who have a habit of keeping your drives. The rare earth magnets are the bomb
I'm glad to know I'm not alone in keeping all my hard drives! When I read that, I did question if I was alone in having a box of them sitting in my room.
But, is it really a functional 3D avatar? All those virtual worlds and games, do they accept a .duf character?
I would rather have a dysfunctional avatar for that price
Well let's see. A crypto-fan may be willing to buy a pre-fabbed 3D character with associated clothing, etc, for several hundred dollars because he'll be the sole owner. He could use it or sell it later at a profit. He's a speculator/gambler.
As long as it's not impressionable kids doing that, it's none of my business. My initial disgust was overblown, I guess.
As long as it lasts, some may actually profit. And Daz 3D will also profit, hopefully allowing them to continue providing great products and great sales for us, the actual hobbyists and artists.
Best of all, it has occured to me now that if any of those gamblers end up with huge losses, I'll at least be able to feel a bit of revenge. That crypto-business has wiped my chances of getting a decent GPU for the beautiful machine I have sitting here, still in boxes after a year of waiting to be built...
If I'm wrong here, please don't tell me. I need the schadenfreude!
How does it not make PA's "speculator/gambler" then? Or any other sales profession? We shell out thousands of dollars a year to create content, which we sell on Daz, in terms of updating software, PC's, operating expenses and such in the hopes of selling products for profit that you hopefully will buy. It's just as much a gamble to make money.
You're right frank, Just to show what a real collectible looks like. I haven't had them appraised since 2003. They were worth a pretty penny. Every year someone breaks a set, my set goes up in price. These are not reproductions like you find on eBay.