The Illusion of More

Talking NFTs and Grift with Neil Turkewitz & David Lowery

Episode Summary

In this episode, I talk to artists' rights activists Neil Turkewitz and David Lowery about the scope and nature of fraud in the NFT trade--and why NFTs are yet another false promise to help independent artists in the digital age. 

Episode Notes

• 01:04 - What the hell is an NFT?
• 04:42 - Neil on ripoffs of visual art at OpenSea et al.
• 08:55 - David on the HitPiece ripoff.
• 14:15 - is it all just fraud?
• 20:20 - environmental impact.
• 22:16 - reasons why NFTs might have come about.
• 26:09 - a solution for artists?
• 32:33 - any legitimacy at all?
• 35:57 - regulation by federal or state agencies.
• 39:11 - there is no there there.
• 44:13 - scope of investment already in NFTs.
• 50:50 - crypto as emergency currency.

Read Neil Turkewitz's interview with artist bor, a member of the activist group @NFTTheft, and read his follow-up piece about the scope of fraud on the site OpenSea.

Read David Lowery's post about the HitPiece NFT ripoff. 

Read Aaron Moss's post about HitPiece at CopyrightLately.

Check out Molly White's blog Web3 is going just great.