经济学人下载:NFT引爆币圈,难道是下一个风口?(2)

The bumper Beeple sale, plus the arrival of ever more creators, means a mania that has been largely confined to crypto and techie circles could move mainstream. The global NFT market grew from a few tens of millions of dollars in annual sales a few years ago to over $300m in the past month alone, according to Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm. NFTS mesh with the massive network effects of social media and meme culture, notes Sam Hart of the Interchain Foundation, a Swiss backer of blockchain infrastructure. There has been little time to educate buyers, he says. 

Beeple的超级大拍卖，加上越来越多的创造者横空出世，这意味着一种主要局限于加密和技术圈的狂热可能会转向主流。风险投资公司安德森·霍洛维茨基金的数据显示，全球非功能性金融产品市场的年销售额从几年前的几千万美元增长到了过去一个月的3亿美元以上。山姆·哈特来自瑞士的一家区块链基础设施支持者Interchain Foundation，他指出，NFTS融合了社交媒体和meme文化的大规模网络效应。连教育买家的时间都没有，他说。

The pitfalls are being called out by a few crypto experts. One worry is that broad crypto-enthusiasm may be what is really behind soaring NFT values. It has not gone unnoticed that the buyer of Beeple's "Everydays" is Metakovan, a professional crypto investor. Christie's got its $69.3m in Ether, a cryptocurrency. 

加密专家们道出了一些隐患。一种担忧是，广泛的加密热情可能是NFT价值飙升背后的真正原因。值得注意的是，Beeple的《每天》的买家是专业加密货币投资者Metakovan。佳士得以以太币(一种加密货币)的形式拿到了6930万美元。

Some compare the NFT craze to the boom in initial coin offerings, a form of crowdfunding in which firms issue digital "coins" in return for a payment, in 2017-18, which turned to bust soon after. The soaring prices of many NFTS, reliant on ephemeral buzziness in places like Clubhouse, a hot new audio app, could quickly collapse. Celebrities including Lindsay Lohan jumping on a trend that was meant to be about helping penniless artists is, some reckon, another ominous sign. The upfront costs of "minting" NFTS are low, meanwhile, meaning potentially unlimited supply. (For now NFTS' huge carbon footprint, owing to energy-intensive blockchain transactions, is not transparently recorded.)

一些人将NFT热潮与2017-18年“首次代币发行”(一种众筹形式，公司发行数字“硬币”以换取支付)的热潮进行了比较，但不久代币发行便陷入萧条。依赖于俱乐部会所等热门音频应用程序的许多NFTS飙升的价格可能很快就会崩溃。一些人认为，包括林赛·罗韩在内的名人加入这股旨在帮助身无分文的艺术家的潮流是另一个不祥的征兆。与此同时，NFTS的前期“制造”成本很低，这意味着潜在的无限供应。(目前，由于区块链交易的高耗能，NFTS巨大的碳足迹并没有被透明地记录下来。)

A final uncertainty around NFTS' value is that they can in practice be separated from the digital good to which they are tied, undermining their worth. A creator can change the image even after sale. One crypto artist recently "pulled the rug" on some NFTS to highlight the flaw. A series of colourful digital portraits suddenly metamorphosed into pictures of antique carpets. But the art market has always been prone to dodgy dealing. Picking NFTS looks akin to sorting real Rembrandts from those daubed by mere followers. 

围绕NFTS价值的一个最终不确定性是，它们在实践中可能会与与之捆绑在一起的数字商品分离，从而削弱它们的价值。创作者甚至可以在出售后改变图像。最近，一位加密艺术家在一些NFTS上“搞破坏”以突出这一缺点：一系列五颜六色的数字肖像突然变成了古董地毯的图片。不过，艺术品市场发生不正当交易一直是家常便饭，挑选NFTS就像是将真正的伦勃朗作品与那些仅仅是追随者随意涂抹的画作分门别类。