NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) Are the New Collectible

[LFC]

In October 2020, Miami-based art collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile spent almost $67,000 on a 10-second video artwork that he could have watched for free online. Last week, he sold it for $6.6 million.

The video by digital artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, was authenticated by blockchain, which serves as a digital signature to certify who owns it and that it is the original work.

It’s a new type of digital asset - known as a non-fungible token (NFT) - that has exploded in popularity during the pandemic as enthusiasts and investors scramble to spend enormous sums of money on items that only exist online.

Blockchain technology allows the items to be publicly authenticated as one-of-a-kind, unlike traditional online objects which can be endlessly reproduced.

“You can go in the Louvre and take a picture of the Mona Lisa and you can have it there, but it doesn’t have any value because it doesn’t have the provenance or the history of the work,” said Rodriguez-Fraile, who said he first bought Beeple’s piece because of his knowledge of the U.S.-based artist’s work.

“The reality here is that this is very, very valuable because of who is behind it.”

“Non-fungible” refers to items that cannot be exchanged on a like-for-like basis, as each one is unique - in contrast to “fungible” assets like dollars, stocks or bars of gold.

Examples of NFTs range from digital artworks and sports cards to pieces of land in virtual environments or exclusive use of a cryptocurrency wallet name, akin to the scramble for domain names in the early days of the internet.

[Bact PhD]

I’ve read pieces here and there the last few months on this. Is this the sort of application that blockchain technology is going to be most useful, as opposed to cryptocurrency per se? Particularly in an age where so much is digital, and with the rise of the deepfake, this may be the way to stave off the digital forgeries; Bitcoin may end up as the footnote in another’s quarter-century.

[LFC]

These things are still chugging along.

Two weeks ago, World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee sent an NFT of the web’s original source code to the auction block with a starting bid of just $1,000. Yesterday, Sotheby’s announced that the crypto asset sold for $5.4 million. The sum makes Berners-Lee’s work one of the priciest NFTs of all time.

The digital package included not just the source code but also a letter from Berners-Lee reflecting on the creation of the web, some original HTML documents, an SVG “poster” of thousands of lines of code, and a 30-minute visualization of the code being typed on a screen.

But there’s a twist. An eagle-eyed researcher pointed out on Twitter that the animation initially posted on the Sotheby’s site had errors in the code, possibly introduced when the person making the video fed the Objective-C code through an app or web service to produce the typing effect in the animation. Instead of angle brackets that are present in the code (< and >), the HTML codes for the symbols (&lt; and &gt;) appeared instead. On the poster, which was made by a Python script created by Berners-Lee, the brackets appear correct. Presumably, they are also correct in the code itself.

The code was corrected in later animations, raising questions about this particular NFT and NFTs as a whole. It’s unclear whether the video posted on the listing page for the auction was pulled directly from the animation originally included in the NFT, and we’ve reached out to Sotheby’s for clarification. But if it was, and if the later, corrected animation reflects what was actually sold, it could mean that the original NFT was scrapped and a new one was created.

[LFC]

I can't even.

The new must-have item in the world of NFT’s? Apes, apparently. On Thursday, the historic auction house Sotheby’s announced that a collection of 101 computer-generated NFT apes had sold for a whopping $24.4 million. While it’s not the most expensive NFT on the market (that honor goes to Beeple’s $69.3 million sale at Christie’s this past March), it’s still more than $24 million.

The aforementioned apes are known as the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of 10,000 unique NFT’s featuring, well, bored apes: bored apes in party hats, bored apes smoking cigarettes, bored apes wearing 3D glasses, you name it. Yuga Labs, the collective that rolled out the ape collection earlier this year, explains that each ape is “unique and programmatically generated from over 170 possible traits,” including their clothing, headgear, and bored expressions. And as the club’s website states, “all apes are dope, but some are rarer than others.”

[LFC]

"Non-Fungible Token" is the word of the year per Collins.

Perhaps the best thing to come from this year's widespread adoption of the term "Non-Fungible Token" (NFT) is greater public comfort with the word "fungible." What a perfectly cromulent word, fungible, even if it sounds like a foot powder.

Now, dictionary-maker Collins has picked NFT as its "word of the year" for 2021, mostly because people are making SRS $$$ from the blockchain-based tech. One of those people is of course the artist who goes by "Beeple"; his collection of 5,000+ everyday digital art pieces went for $69 million earlier this year, which every subsequent article on NFTs has been required to mention. This sale made Beeple one of the best-paid artists on earth. The New York Times did not love this, arguing that the gross-out and meme-based imagery of much of Beeple's work was puerile. Also, Beeple "struggles with flesh; as in many video games, the skins appear waxy and desiccated. It’s as if every remaining human in this cryptouniverse has scurvy, though maybe that is what happens when you subordinate your flesh to the screen." Yikes. While I agree that this was a pretty dumb way to spend $69 million, NFTs definitely have utility; for instance, just imagine how much fun it would be to buy this critic an NFT of a high-quality "OK Boomer" meme?

[LFC]

This makes it tough to keep breakfast down.

The First Lady Of Grift
Melania Trump is getting in on the NFT action.

The best part:

Trump’s first NFT offering is a watercolor depiction of her “cobalt blue eyes” called “Melania’s Vision.” She said it would provide “the collector with an amulet to inspire.” Each NFT will cost about $187.

• Trump says some of the proceeds from the sales will go toward helping “children aging out of the foster care system,” but her office didn’t respond to questions about how much of the proceeds will go to good causes.

• Petri: “Melania Trump’s new NFT is the perfect holiday g(r)ift“

• But but but …. what would Nancy Reagan say?!?

OK, I have to admit that I never heard the rumors about Nancy Reagan. That made the fight to keep my breakfast in place a bit harder.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 17, 2021 14:52:43 GMT LFC said:

This makes it tough to keep breakfast down.

OK, I have to admit that I never heard the rumors about Nancy Reagan. That made the fight to keep my breakfast in place a bit harder.

I find it funny.  

[LFC]

Dec 17, 2021 16:50:00 GMT goldenvalley said:

I find it funny.  

What, that Mrs. "Just Say No" used to be Miss "Just Say Blow?"

[goldenvalley]

Dec 17, 2021 18:45:23 GMT LFC said:

Dec 17, 2021 16:50:00 GMT goldenvalley said:

I find it funny.  

What, that Mrs. "Just Say No" used to be Miss "Just Say Blow?"

Nicely put!  Yes, and Nancy was a wanna be star and the Hollywood system being what it was, why would anyone think she was some prim and proper woman adhering to a Victorian standard of womanhood?

[LFC]

NFTs continue to be picked up as a source of cash by grifters.

Roger Stone, a longtime associate of Donald Trump, is auctioning off a copy of a 1990s magazine cover he says is signed by the former president as part of a larger fundraising campaign to pay for his legal defenses and medical bills.

“To Roger YOU ARE THE GREATEST!,” reads a Trump note in his distinct scrawl on the cover of a now-defunct trade publication: Real Estate New York. If the bid exceeds $20,000 dollars, the bidder gets the physical version of the magazine along with “one of only one” digital copy, which Stone marketed as an NFT, or a non-fungible token. NFT’s, which are essentially non-interchangeable digital tokens of a visual item, have shaken up the art world this past year with many being sold for millions. Former first lady Melania Trump recently announced that she too was entering the industry.

In an email, Stone said he believed Trump signed the magazine in 1999 and that it was “indeed real.” While Real Estate New York was a magazine, POLITICO was unable to confirm when or if Trump graced the cover.

Of course it doesn't mean their scams will definitely work.

As of mid-day Wednesday, there were zero bids for Stone’s item.

[LFC]

I ... can't ... even.

A reality TV star who sells her farts in jars has decided to stop selling them, despite making $1,000 per jar. But fans of her work shouldn’t worry too much. She’s still going to sell her farts as non-fungible tokens, more commonly known as NFTs.

Stephanie Matto, who appeared on the reality TV show “90-Day Fiance” and gained a huge following on TikTok, says she had to go to the hospital recently with gastric complications because she was eating so many high-fiber foods to produce more and more farts.

“I thought I was having a stroke and that these were my final moments,” Matto told the UK’s Jam Press about her unexpected trip to the hospital near her home in Connecticut. “I was overdoing it.”

Matto, who refers to herself as a fartrepreneur, started farting in jars and selling them online in November and documented the foods she was eating on TikTok to keep up her flatulence, like beans, protein muffins, and eggs. Matto was reportedly taking in roughly $50,000 per week through her highly profitable endeavor but it wasn’t long before the strain became too much.

[LFC]

A group blew a pile of money on what they thought were the rights to "Dune."

Late last year, a cryptocurrency-backed organization called Spice DAO won an auction for a rare copy of filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s pitch book for his never-made adaptation of Dune. The valuable collector’s item was expected to rake in between $30-40,000 at Christie’s, so when it was sold for a staggering $3 million, it was clear that something was up.

Created in the 1970s, the manuscript is one of just a few copies in existence. It features stunning storyboards (some of which are already available to view online) for Jodorowsky’s 10-hour adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 iconic novel of the same name. Though it was never made into a film, the experimental director’s ambitious vision captured the fascination of sci-fi fans and has had a profound impact on the evolution of the genre (it was even the subject of a feature documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune).

All of this is to say that while still an important cultural artifact, Jodorowsky’s Dune is not the same thing as Herbert’s Dune, whose rights are controlled by WarnerMedia. It should be obvious that owning one does not mean you own the other. And yet, as conveyed in a recent tweet about their plans for the purchase, Spice DAO appears to believe they now own the adaptation rights to Dune rather than simply a physical copy of Jodorowsky’s book. Suddenly, that eyebrow-raising bid makes a lot more sense.

Apparently they planned on producing NFTs but didn't really understand ... well, much of anything.

Before Spice DAO dropped $3 million on a rare copy of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s production book for Dune at Christie’s, the group tweeted its intention to “tokenize” the book.

It can’t do that.

The decentralized autonomous organization has since backpedaled, now saying (somewhat implausibly) that it never believed owning a copy of the book would equal ownership of copyright, with the attendant rights to reproduce the work in NFT form or prepare derivative works. The incident has nevertheless captured the attention of crypto skeptics, who point to the Spice DAO purchase as an example of what can go wrong when crypto enthusiasts get ahead of themselves.

The Wired link has this to say about NFTs.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, emerged from the anarcho-techno libertarian recesses of an internet where “normies” are the enemy and anything as insipidly mainstream as “the law” is to be treated with suspicion. 2021 was the year that NFTs burst into mainstream awareness, with the artist Beeple’s NFT Everydays: The First 5000 Days selling at the storied auction house Christie’s for $69 million—an unfathomable amount of money for an asset that, in an important sense, does not exist.

For some, this is why NFTs represent the ecstatic apotheosis of conceptual art. To others, NFTs are a collective delusion, or one more symptom of apocalyptic capitalism. Polarizing and perplexing, NFTs are nevertheless exploding in popularity, attracting investors who are excited about this new asset class but do not necessarily share the utopian impulses of the crypto artists who have been operating in this space for years. “There’s a new class of investors who are attracted to NFTs and meme stocks because they’re interested in stories,” says investment strategist Yuri Cataldo, “but I would classify NFTs as extremely high risk. It’s exactly like gambling.”

That makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and a culture clash seems inevitable as lawmakers begin to eye this volatile new market, contemplating regulation that will strengthen protections for consumers.

[goldenvalley]

The tulip mania in the mid 1600s made more sense to me than NFTs.  At least you got a tulip bulb for your money...not a picture of one.

[LFC]

The list of ridiculous NFTs continues to grow.

Colton Underwood has worn many hats during his media career — Bachelorette contestant, Bachelor in Paradise contestant, first virgin Bachelor lead, first gay Bachelor lead, Netflix reality show person, and now … NFT guy.

In January, the athlete-turned-reality-star-turned-influencer launched a project called Pocket Friends, a collection of NFT cartoon character animals, such as Sonya the duck and Betty the hamster. The friends, each of which is supposed to represent a “childhood struggle,” will live on the ethereum blockchain. Each character is supposed to appear in a book, and with 13,000 characters planned, that sounds like a lot of books.

People can’t get the NFTs yet, but if and when they are able, they’re promised access to a “variety of benefits,” including a writers room — presumably for those many books — voting (it’s not clear on what), and “special access to events and celebrities.” For now, they can hang out with the Pocket Friends team, including Colton, on Discord. On Discord, participants are encouraged to invite as many others as they can to earn a spot on the “whitelist,” a sort of VIP list, and take part in a Twitter meme challenge to help Pocket Friends get followers. It’s all about building the community — and getting in early.

Underwood, 30, is hardly unique in his attempt to use his semi-celebrity to try to hop onto the crypto train and parlay his social media following into buzz around some sort of NFT project. He’s not the only member of the Bachelor franchise, which shot him into fame, to do so, either.

There simply aren't enough faces or enough hands to palm them anymore.

[LFC]

This is one of the best descriptions of NFTs in the current "real" world that I've read. I can understand actual uses of NFTs but man, a lot of these things are just ridiculous.

[LFC]

World Wildlife Fund is getting in on the action to raise funds.

Got a bunch of cryptocurrency burning a hole in your digital wallet and want to own a piece of the wild? You’re in luck. The World Wildlife Fund UK announced this week that they will sell NFTs in the form of digital art of 13 endangered species, which they’re calling “non-fungible animals,” or NFAs. Thanks! I hate it so, so much.

In the grand scheme of things that have been NFT’d, a picture of a panda or a giant ibis is relatively tame. It’s definitely objectively more normal than an NFT of a robot who tried to warn us about the evils of capitalism, or NFTs of farts in a jar. Buying a digital picture of a gorilla through WWF’s marketplace will also give some of that (highly volatile) cash towards conservation. That’s certainly a better use of your money than blowing $500,000 for a statue of a goat with Elon Musk’s head, or paying similar sums for clipart of rocks, neither of which have any sort of charitable strings attached.

What’s a little grim about this particular project is that to make the art extra non-fungible, the NFTs—sorry, NFAs—are, per WWF, limited to the number of animals that are left in the wild. There are only 447 Baltic porpoises left, for example, so only 447 NFAs will be sold. A lot of the digital art itself is beautiful, but having it linked to a physical animal is gross; it feels like a tech bro version of people who shell out thousands of dollars to go on safaris and shoot endangered animals to decorate their walls while claiming it’s all in the name of conservation. The NFT space has proven time and again that it’s packed with ghouls intent on exploiting tragedy for a quick buck; I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these species going extinct would cause the value of the corresponding NFT to shoot up.

[LFC]

This is an interesting use of an NFT to add liquidity to real estate.

A home in Gulfport will be auctioned off Tuesday as an NFT.

It’ll be the first piece of U.S. real estate to be auctioned as a “non-fungible token”, said current owner Leslie Alessandra.

Palo Alto-based real estate technology company Propy will mint the property rights into a digital token and host an online auction. Bidding for the home at 6315 11th Ave. S will start at $650,000, according to Propy’s website. Bidders will pay using cryptocurrency. Last year, Propy sold TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington’s apartment in Kiev as an NFT.

Alessandra, a local real estate investor and founder of Tampa Bay blockchain company DeFi Unlimited, said she chose to list the home as an NFT to showcase the use of the evolving technology. An NFT is stored on a decentralized ledger known as the blockchain and is typically used for digital assets like music and art. In the case of the Gulfport house, it’s a digitally secure certificate of authenticity, similar to a deed.

“Is this just hype or is there a real world application? (The auction) is really to stimulate conversation,” Alessandra said.

Minting property rights into an NFT would allow owners to sell a home as quickly as a Venmo transaction, she said. It would accomplish that by putting ownership documents under a limited liability corporation. In short: The NFT is an LLC.

“You’re essentially just selling a company and a company owns that house,” said Christopher Vasilakis, a local real estate and virtual-reality expert.

[LFC]

Gizmodo covers 7 scam crypto and NFT projects just from February. It really is the cesspool of the investment world, possibly worse than Michael Milken's junk bond scam of the 80s because anybody can jump in on it.

The world of cryptocurrencies and NFTs is filled with scammers. And every month there seems to be more and more hucksters launching new crypto tokens and shilling ripoff apes.

Last month some of the biggest crypto scammers made off with over $4 million, and we showed you the biggest and weirdest scams of January. This month is no different. In fact, over $8.5 million was taken by scammers in some of the biggest NFT and crypto frauds of February.

Today we’re looking at some of the biggest rug pulls of the past month—cryptocurrencies and NFT projects set up by people who then made off with all the money that was invested. And this list doesn’t even include projects that got hacked, like when hackers stole $1.7 million in NFTs from OpenSea earlier this month. This is just the projects that were out-and-out frauds from the beginning. And sadly, we expect plenty of scams next month as well.

[andydp]

Feb 28, 2022 16:29:49 GMT LFC said:

Gizmodo covers 7 scam crypto and NFT projects just from February. It really is the cesspool of the investment world, possibly worse than Michael Milken's junk bond scam of the 80s because anybody can jump in on it.

The world of cryptocurrencies and NFTs is filled with scammers. And every month there seems to be more and more hucksters launching new crypto tokens and shilling ripoff apes.

Last month some of the biggest crypto scammers made off with over $4 million, and we showed you the biggest and weirdest scams of January. This month is no different. In fact, over $8.5 million was taken by scammers in some of the biggest NFT and crypto frauds of February.

Today we’re looking at some of the biggest rug pulls of the past month—cryptocurrencies and NFT projects set up by people who then made off with all the money that was invested. And this list doesn’t even include projects that got hacked, like when hackers stole $1.7 million in NFTs from OpenSea earlier this month. This is just the projects that were out-and-out frauds from the beginning. And sadly, we expect plenty of scams next month as well.

Never give a sucker an even break. WC Fields

A fool and his money are soon parted. Or, as the original Biblical proverb said: “There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.” (Proverbs 21:20 KJV)

[LFC]

Feb 28, 2022 16:59:47 GMT andydp said:

Never give a sucker an even break. WC Fields

A fool and his money are soon parted. Or, as the original Biblical proverb said: “There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.” (Proverbs 21:20 KJV)

Or as the great Philip J. Fry said:

[LFC]

I sometimes just read this stuff in awe as I slowly shake my head. I understand the case in concept. I just can't get my head around the profound insanity of this kind of NFT in the first place.

Late last year, Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie decided to run an NFT auction, selling off an image of the controversial character in which it was waist-deep in a pool, its ass-crack peeping over the surface. Everything that has happened since is exactly how you would imagine such an auction in the insipid Web3 space would go down.

Furie—who tried to “reclaim” the character in 2017 after it had become co-opted as a symbol of the far right—had formed a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or DAO called PegzDAO. On October 8 he auctioned off a single NFT representing the image above. At the same time, he reportedly stated that aside from the one being auctioned, there would be 99 more NFTs representing the same image, made and kept in the DAO’s possession and never put up for sale.

As Web3 Is Going Just Great reports, a man by the name of Halston Thayer went on to win the auction, spending the cryptocurrency equivalent of $537,084. He was no doubt thrilled with his unique purchase, until a couple of weeks later when PegzDAO released 46 of those other 99 NFTS—which, remember, represent the exact same image as the one Thayer paid half a million dollars for—for free.

As first posted by lawyer Rob Freund, Thayer has now decided to sue Furie and his associated companies, claiming that the free release “significantly devalu[ed] Plaintiff’s Pepe NFT to less than $30,000.” Considering we’re talking about an utterly worthless image that you are all free to right click and save for yourselves here, this is one of the funniest sentences I have ever read. The suit opens with:

This action arises from Defendants’ unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business practices, which includes their unfair, deceptive, untrue, and misleading advertising and wrongful actions with respect to an auction for a particular nonfungible token (“NFT”) that led Plaintiff and others to grossly overbid on the NFT. Plaintiff therefore brings this action for fraudulent inducement, intentional and negligent misrepresentation, unfair competition and unlawful business acts and practices, breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and unjust enrichment.

Thayer is seeking to have the full price of his original “investment” returned, as well as “punitive damages”.

[LFC]

NFTs sold by people without the rights to create them? That scam didn't take long.

Every morning, Joyce Lee says, she is afraid to check her Instagram DMs “because I might read from someone that my art was stolen again. This kind of art theft will never disappear as long as I keep creating art.”

While most of us have been baffled by what, exactly, NFTs are, for South Korean artist Joyce Lee, the rise of non-fungible tokens has been less a mystery than a threat. Over the past several months, her works of bubblegum-fantasy-pop-surrealist-erotica has been repeatedly stolen by NFT scammers who snatch screengrabs, alter them to some degree, then attempt to pass them off as their own. Now she’s engaged in what is tantamount to an ongoing game of digital whack-a-mole.

“Almost every day I receive direct messages from my followers notifying me that my artwork was used or monetized without my consent,” Lee explained via email from Seoul, where she’s currently exhibiting at Moowoosoo Gallery. “In most cases, I tell them to just forget about it and ignore them because I don't want to waste my time fighting with people online. Reacting to each case is too stressful.”

The enormity of one theft, however, forced her to take action.

“The scammer uploaded almost 100 pieces of my artwork at OpenSea and Rarible—which are the biggest NFT platforms—and was trying earning money. I could not concentrate on making my art at all and felt super nervous,” Lee said. “I had to get help from my IG followers to solve the problem ASAP and get back to my routine. Thanks to my followers’ support, two platforms took down the scammer’s account. Rarible didn’t respond to any of my official reporting at the help center on the site. Fortunately a follower of mine was a close acquaintance of a Rarible founder and let me know his personal IG handle. I sent him DM directly and the account was taken down immediately.”

All of this is a very new take on an old problem. Forgery and art fraud goes back to the Renaissance, and even the great Michelangelo once doctored a painting in order to pass it off as ancient and increase its value. (He was found out but got to keep the money.) But armies of IG followers coming to bat against global NFT platforms? Things have gotten decidedly 21st century.

[LFC]

Gizmodo produced another list of 6 crypto and NFT scams for March.

The cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace is filled with scammers. Investors lost over $1.7 million to grifters in March alone, with project founders draining all the liquidity in a given project.

To be clear, these aren’t crypto and NFT projects that got hacked. There were plenty of those in March, among them the largest in history—the Ronin Network was hacked for $625 million. These are crypto and NFT projects that were outright scams from the start, where the founders of the projects made off with a lot of money from unsuspecting investors.

This month saw less stolen by scammers than January ($4 million) and February ($8.5 million) but $1.7 million is still a sizable chunk of change to evaporate.

[LFC]

SUCK-KAH!

Crypto investor Sina Estavi bought an NFT of Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet ever for $2.9 million in March of 2021. And after a year of constant hype for NFTs, most people would naturally assume Estavi might be able to turn a nice profit on his investment by now. But most people would be wrong.

Estavi put the NFT up for auction last week, and bidding ended on Wednesday. The highest bid? Roughly $277 worth of the cryptocurrency Ethereum, at current prices, according to crypto news outlet CoinDesk.

Estavi had hoped to get as much as $48 million for the NFT and pledged to donate half of the price to charity. But that’s obviously not happening anymore. The crypto businessman has a couple of days to decide whether he wants to accept just $277 for his multi-million dollar investment. But we’d guess he’s just going to keep it.

The NFT in question, like all non-fungible tokens, is simply a digital contract stored on a blockchain claiming “ownership” through a hyperlink that points to a digital object—in this case, Dorsey’s historic first tweet. If that doesn’t sound exciting to you, you’re not alone. The average person still has a hard time understanding what they’re buying when they purchase an NFT. And when people discover it’s often just a receipt to something they can already see online, it sounds dumb.

[LFC]

Looks like Reddit is now harvesting cash from the gullible. For all I know they've been doing it for ages, it's just that this time they're doing it through NFTs / "no, not really NFTs."

It looks like an NFT, it sells like an NFT, but Reddit swears it’s just a “Collectible Avatar.” The website is launching a new collection of limited edition, artist-made, blockchain-backed, digital cartoon characters for purchase.

Dubbed “Collectible Avatars” in Reddit’s blog announcement, the online art pieces are, in fact, NFTs. After all, each one comes with a unique blockchain identifier, so they fit the definition. In an email to Gizmodo, a Reddit spokesperson did admit “they are NFTs,” but explained that the site is opting “to focus on communities and the value they receive rather than the underlying technologies.” To be fair, as far as NFTs go, they’re a little different from what you might expect.

For instance, the avatars will initially be sold at a fixed price, ranging from $9.99 to $99.99, not at auction (though that model doesn’t necessarily apply to future possible secondary sales). “Reddit charges a total fee of 5% to cover minting and related blockchain fees, as well as to support the creator program,” the spokesperson said, but the rest of the sales cost goes to the artist.

Then, there’s the fact that buyers can only enact initial purchases using standard fiat currency, not crypto, Reddit further told Gizmodo. And though all the digital doodads come with a license that allows the owner to use their avatar art inside and outside of Reddit, it’s not as expansive as other NFT licenses— which effectively give owners character-rights. Plus, artists will receive royalties from all secondary sales.

Finally, multiple Redditors will be able to purchase different mints of the same avatar. In the initial run, the company told Gizmodo it’s releasing 90 different designs, though “10s of thousands” of avatars will be for sale in the first phase, explained the spokesperson.