隱藏在NFTs背後的匿名換手交易
5,000 everydays artwork by Beeple, which was sold at Christies auction house for $69 million.Reuters
據路透社報導，Beeple的NFT作品《5000 Everydays》，在佳士得拍賣行以6900萬美元的價格售出。
Non-fungible tokens have taken the world by storm, becoming the hottest thing in the cryptocurrency market within only a few months. They are touted as a way to revolutionize the way digital art is bought and sold. But a closer look reveals NFTs are no more than a pump-and-dump scheme designed to make a few crypto insiders rich.
非同質化代幣（NFT）風潮席捲了全世界，在短短幾個月內就成為了加密貨幣市場上最熱門的標的。它們被吹捧為徹底改變數字藝術買賣方式的一種技術。但仔細觀察後會發現，NFTs背後只不過是一場製造市場漲跌的計謀，旨在讓少數內部人士變得富有。
NFTs are one-of-a-kind tokens that live on a blockchain. Whereas fungible tokens, like bitcoin, can be swapped out one for one, NFTs are unique and can be used to reference images, sound clips, videos, and more.
NFTs是區塊鏈上獨一無二的令牌。像比特幣這樣的同質化代幣可以一一平行交換，而NFTs是具備唯一標識的，可以用於引用圖像、聲音剪輯、視頻等等。
The speculative mania for NFTs peaked in March when Christie's sold an NFT linked to "Everydays: The first 5000 days," a digital collage by Mike Winkelmann (more commonly known as "Beeple"). The token claiming to represent the massive JPEG sold for $69.3 million with fees, paid for in ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain.
對NFT的投機狂熱在3月份達到頂峰，當時當佳士得拍賣行出售了一張名為《Everydays: The first 5000 days》的NFT作品，這是作者Mike Winkelmann（通常被稱為“Beeple”）創作的數字拼貼畫。該令牌代表了這次以6930萬美元成交的大型JPEG銷售，並且是使用以太坊區塊鏈的內嵌加密貨幣ETH支付的。
But the craze didn't begin there. Beeple NFTs were being pumped by crypto bros months beforehand, only to culminate in a large sale that brought a media storm to NFTs and the world's attention to a graphic artist who few people previously had ever heard of.
但這場投機狂熱並不是從這次拍賣開始的。在幾個月前，Beeple的NFTs作品就已經被加密愛好者們支持和追捧，最終以一場巨額銷售結束，給NFTs帶來了一場媒體風暴，以及全世界對這位平面圖像藝術家的新關注。
The true value of NFTs
The intrinsic value of an NFT is zero. When you buy an NFT, you are not buying the underlying object. You are buying an entry in a distributed database, which allows you to pass that entry on to someone else. There is also a bit of code in there that points to the digital object somewhere on the Internet, but that's basically it.
NFTs的真實價值
NFT的內在價值為零。當你購買一個NFT時，你並不是在購買底層物件。你正在購買的是分佈式數據庫中的一個數字入口，然後可以傳遞給其他人。這裡面還有一些代碼指向互聯網上某個數字對象。
An NFT doesn't convey copyright — or any legal rights at all unless there is a specific contractual agreement saying so. The digital artwork itself continues to live on the internet, available for anyone to admire, watch, listen to, or copy, without paying a penny to the owner of the NFT.
NFT不代表版權，或任何合法權利，除非有具體的合同協議。數字藝術品本身繼續存在在互聯網上，任何人都可以欣賞、看、聽或複制，而無需向NFT的所有者支付一分錢。
Jorge Stolfi, a computer science professor at the University of Campinas in Brazil, says the very idea of a digital collectible makes no sense at all.
巴西坎皮納斯大學的計算機科學教授Jorge Stolfi說，擁有數字收藏品的想法根本毫無意義。
"A purely digital artifact — a pattern of bits, like a JPEG image or an MP3 song file — cannot be a collectible, because it can be duplicated trillions of times, and every copy is exactly the same as the original. Not just similar or even identical, but the same thing," he said.
“純數字的藝術品——一種比特模式，比如JPEG圖像或MP3歌曲文件——不能被收藏，因為它可以復制數万億次，而且每個拷貝都和原來的完全一樣。不只是相似甚至相同，而是同樣的東西，”他說。
He likens NFTs to the International Star Registry . In 1979 Ivor Downie, a Canadian, had the idea of selling the stars in the sky. You gave him a few dollars, and he would pick a yet-unnamed star on an astronomical photo, and enter its coordinates along with your info into his company's ledger, thus making you the "owner" of that star.
他把NFTs比作國際行星註冊處。 1979年，加拿大人 Ivor Downie產生了售賣天空中星星的想法。你給他幾美元，他會在一張天文照片上挑選一顆尚未命名的星星，把它的坐標和你的信息一起輸入到他公司的分類賬上，這樣你就會成為那顆星星的“所有者”。
"Everybody ( well, almost everybody ) understood that the registry provided only pretend ownership, no legal right of possession of the star," Stolfi said.
Stolfi 說：“每個人（嗯，幾乎所有人）都明白，註冊中心只是提供了假的所有權，不是法律上的所有權。”
Here's the difference — while the price of stars on the registry never rose above $100, NFT prices have skyrocketed, so what's driving their value?
於是區別來了：雖然註冊表上的星星價格從未超過$100，但NFT的價格飆升，那麼到底是什麼推動了他們的價值呢？
Bidding wars
投標戰
A quick look at the NFTs selling for the biggest sums reveals that prices are generally the result of bidding wars between two crypto insiders — or one crypto insider and some anonymous agent, who nobody is able to identify.
The price of the NFT linked to Beeple's "Everydays" shot up because the buyer — who went only by "Metakovan" at the time, but wasrevealed to be crypto entrepreneur Vignesh Sundaresan — was locked in a bidding war with Justin Sun, the CEO of the Tron blockchain.
Metakovan placed the winning bid in the final moments of the auction , making him an instant celebrity, and bringing heaps of attention to another project he had been pitching — his B20 token, a way to fractionalize an earlier series of Beeple NFTs he'd acquired, in a strategic plan to triple or quadruple his investment.
瀏覽一下NFTs的最大成交價就會發現，成交價通常是兩個加密內部人士之間競價戰的結果，或者是一個加密內部人士和某個匿名代理之間，但沒有人能夠準確識別他們。
Beeple的NFT作品“Everydays”的價格飆升，當時最初買家只有“Metakovan”，但後來被發現是加密企業家Vignesh Sundaresan，與TRON區塊鏈的首席執行官Justin Sun陷入了一場競價戰。
Metakovan在拍賣的最後時刻中標，使他立即成為了名人，並引起人們對他參與的另一個項目的大量關注：B20令牌，這是一種用來碎片化他之前獲得的一系列Beeple的NFTs作品的方式，並戰略性地使他的投資擴大了三四倍。
It turns out, this wasn't Metakovan's first NFT rodeo. The Singapore native had been anonymously bidding up the price of Beeple NFTs starting in October. That's when Beeple — who previously sold his pieces for as little as $100 and had recently gotten a tip-off that NFTs were the thing — launched his first drop on Nifty Gateways, a specialized online marketplace.
The drop consisted of three pieces: " Politics is Bullshit ," a limited edition of 100, and two singles: "Crypto is Bullshit ," an obese President Trump wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and giving the bird while riding a bull; and "Crossroads ," a 10-second clip interpreting the 2020 election.
The NFTs for "Politics is Bullshit," a defecating bull with an American Flag painted across its side, initially sold for $1 each, but since April have resold for as much as $600,000 . (Many of these online marketplaces allow the artist to get a cut of future sales. In this case, Beeple gots 10% of that.)
Both single editions were snapped up by Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile , a long-time NFT collector, but the price was driven up by Metakovan bidding against him to push up the price of Crossroads. While someone known only as "Ozark" pushed up the price of "Politics is Bullshit."
結果證明，這並不是Metakovan參與的第一次NFT競價。這位新加坡人從10月份就一直在匿名競標Beeple的NFTs。就在那時，Beeple 在Nifty Gateways推出了他的第一份作品，這是一個專門的線上NFT市場，而Beeple之前以$100的價格賣掉了他的一些作品，在最近NFT才得到市場認可。
這份作品包括三個部分：《Politics is Bullshit》，限量版100個；兩個單品：《Crypto is Bullshit》，肥胖的總統特朗普戴著福克斯面具，騎著公牛餵鳥，還有《 Crossroads》，這是一段10秒的2020年大選的片段。
《Politics is Bullshit》，是一頭叛逃的公牛，兩邊塗著美國國旗，最初以$1出售，但自4月份以來轉售高達$60萬。很多線上NFT交易平台，會允許藝術家對未來的銷售額有一個提成。在這個作品中，Beeple就獲得了10%。
兩個單品都被長期NFT收藏家 Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile搶購一空，但Metakovan的出價抬高了《Crossroads》的價格。而一個被稱為“Ozark”的人推高了《Politics is Bullshit》的價格。
Rodriguez-Fraile ended up paying $66,666.60 — the exact same figure — for each of the items. (A mathematician who likes patterns and numbers, Rodriguez-Fraile claims to have started the unconventional bidding numbers.)
Four months later, Rodriguez-Fraile made $6 million when he flipped "Crossroads," for $6.6 million, selling it to an anonymous buyer , in a deal brokered by Nifty Gateway's art buying service. (He would not name the buyer, but told me it was someone "very known and respectable.")
Rodriguez-Fraile最終為每個作品都支付了相同的金額：$66,666.60。作為一位喜歡圖案和數字的數學家，Rodriguez-Fraile聲稱他已經開始採用非常規的投標數字。
四個月後，Rodriguez-Fraile賺了600萬美元，因為他以$660萬的價格，通過Nifty Gateway的藝術購買服務，將《Crossroads》賣給了一位匿名買家。他不願透露買家的名字，但他告訴我，這是一位“非常知名和受人尊敬”的人。
Anonymous buyers, friends, aliases
匿名的買家，朋友，化名
Wash trading — when assets are bought and sold by the same people to drive up the price — is a noted problem in cryptocurrency trading. As a result, the asset becomes attractive to naive investors, who think the price will continue to go up and up, or that they've just landed a fantastic deal.
Here is an example of how that might work. I mint an NFT, and I buy it from myself for $1 million, giving that NFT a value of $1 million based on its price history. I then sell that NFT at "half price" in a fire sale to someone who doesn't know any better. I've just made $500,000.
刷單交易，當資產被同一人買和賣來抬高價格時，這是加密貨幣交易中一個值得注意的問題。因此，這項資產對天真的投資者很有吸引力，他們認為價格會繼續上漲，或者他們剛剛達成了一筆很棒的交易。
下面舉一個這樣的例子。比如我鑄造了一個NFT，我花$100萬從自己手裡買走，於是根據它的價格歷史，這個NFT就定義為價值$100萬。然後我以“半價”把NFT賣給一個什麼都不知道的人。然後我就憑空賺了$50萬。
Will Cong, a Cornell University professor who wrote a paper on crypto wash trading, says the incentives to partake in wash trading in NFT markets and regular cryptocurrency markets are the same, but pinpointing the fraud is even more difficult.
"Even in traditional auction houses, buyers and sellers may request to be anonymous," he told me. "It's just the detective work here is even harder."
And that is the problem. Because NFTs are often bid by anonymous buyers, it is difficult to gauge exactly what the relationship is between the artists, the sellers, and the buyers — if some of them are even the same people, or if they have some pre-existing business arrangement.
康奈爾大學教授Will Cong寫了一篇關於加密刷單交易的論文，他說，NFT市場和常規加密貨幣市場對參與刷單交易的激勵是一樣的，但在NFT市場查明這樣的欺詐行為是更困難的。
“即使在傳統的拍賣行，買家和賣家也會被要求匿名，”他告訴我。 “只是NFT市場的偵探工作更困難。”
這就是問題所在。因為NFTs通常是由匿名買家出價的，所以很難準確地判斷藝術家、賣家和買家之間的關係，比如他們中的一些人是同一個人，或者他們是否有一些預先存在的商業安排。
When Metakovan, for example, bought up all 20 single editions in Beeple's 2020 Collection on Nifty Gateways in December for $2.2 million, he used aliases . And he gave 2% of the B20 token supply — an index fund representing the value of those NFTs — back to Beeple.
Even if initial sales of NFTs appear to be gangbusters, how will the value hold up when people go to resell their NFTs on secondary markets? That's the true test of whether the primary sales are real or just a bunch of crypto whales who know each other tossing money back and forth.
It's hard to gauge, however. The nonfungible market is highly illiquid. In liquid markets, like bitcoin, where there are lots of available buyers, you know where you stand. Whereas if you are selling your wares on an NFT marketplace, it may take weeks to realize you've been snookered.
例如，去年12月，當Metakovan以$220萬的價格，買下了Beeple2020年系列中的所有20個單品版本時，他使用了化名。他將B20代幣供應的2%，作為代表那些NFTs價值的指數基金，支付給了Beeple。
即使NFT的最初銷售看起來是熱情的，但是當人們在二級市場轉售NFT時，價值將如何維持呢？這是一場真正的測試，究竟最初的銷售是真實的，還是只是一群互相認識的加密鯨魚在左手倒右手。
然而，這很難衡量。 NFT市場的流動性很高。在像比特幣這樣的流動性市場上，那裡有很多靠譜的買家，你會知道自己的立場。然而，如果你在NFT市場上銷售你的商品，可能需要幾週時間，你才能意識到被欺騙了。
CryptoKitties — collectible, "breedable" cats on the Ethereum blockchain — were one of the earlier use cases of NFTs. They were a huge hit after their launch in late 2017, with one of the highest priced cats selling for $155,000 in ether.Six months later, prices were down 95% .
Similarly, buyers of NFTs will be left holding the bag, when people realize what people were convinced were collectibles, are better off being disposables
加密貓——以太坊區塊鏈上的可收集的、“可繁殖的”貓，是NFTs的早期應用案例之一。在2017年底推出後，它們獲得了巨大的成功，其中一隻價格最高的貓售價為$15.5萬。然而六個月後，價格下跌了95%。
類似地，當人們意識到那些被認為是收藏品的東西，最好只是一次性持有的時候，NFTs的買家們將會空手而回。
編譯：Charles
來源：Business Insider
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