
Scenes from the First Rare Digital Art Auction - kawera
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/01/23/much-pepe-scenes-first-rare-digital-art-auction/
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gioele
Finally David Thorne will be able to get its spider back:
[http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html](http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html)

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tomasien
Hey all - I was the organizer of the Rare Digital Art Festival, cool to see
this on Hacker News! I'm happy to answer any questions about the event, rare
digital art, etc.

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goldenkey
Digital art in unencrypted form can never be rare. It will only be rare if it
is painted by a homomorphicly encrypted algorithm that contains vector or any
infinitely scalably primitives. This would ensure that screencaps never
capture the "real" thing at the heart of the asset. Clearly, this takes a lot
more work than what was done here. But it is the only pure way to not scam
people on assets that can be easily cloned.

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tomasien
The assets can never be cloned because the asset is not the file. It is the
blockchain asset cryptographically signed by the artist. Just as you can make
a photocopy of a book but can't clone a signed, first edition book so it is
with rare digital art.

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goldenkey
Didn't need an explanation. The asset is NOT an asset. "This pipe is not a
pipe!"

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miketery
Somewhere in all this we need to study people's willingness to do things they
don't understand. Humans have been creative risk taker as well as sheep
through out time. I wonder how many of these people are creative risk takers
and how many are simply followers.

What motivates people to do this? Is it fear of missing out? Is it the
potential to be a part of something new? Is it greed?

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tomasien
All of the above, but I would add in many cases people truly do want to own
the art because they admire the artist or admire the creation. There is some
intense creativity going on in the space right now.

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rocky1138
This is a great way to make a lot of money but doesn't provide a lot of value.
In fact, it destroys one of the most important parts about digital media: that
it can be instantly copied exactly. We need to continue teaching people that
it's perfectly acceptable to make exact duplicates of something, not head in
the opposite direction.

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tomasien
It actually doesn't destroy that - it assumes that quality will never change
and adds a new asset type to digital files. You end up with both
collectible/signed/authentic versions and the infinitely replicable copies. It
allows artists to implement scarcity without implementing DRM.

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stctgion
Implementing scarcity seems like a totally undesirable thing to do, unless
your only motive is money

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tomasien
Yes - artists deserve to be able to make money from selling scarcity and
authenticity. 100%. If they can do that while not restricting access, it is
the best of both worlds.

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thisacctforreal
This is a great project, thank you :)

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holdenc
It's amazing that someone paid six figures for a cryptographically-assigned
virtual cat. I would ask though, is this the future of art collecting? Or, a
by-product of the crypto hype wagon?

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Gargoyle
It's both a product of crypto-hype and one of several futures of art
collecting.

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awesomepantsm
Except the value of a CryptoKitty or Rare Pepe is unlikely to continue to be
worth anything in a few years, because let's be honest, it's not very
interesting art.

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vuln
That's your opinion. Art is a matter of perception.

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jccalhoun
Walter Benjamin is rolling over in his grave.

