The Morality of Everyday Things: An Everyday Philosophy Podcast · Ant and Jake

Are NFTs a Scam? - Replay

·1 hr 5 min·4 clips

NFT artists can set a 10% take rate on every resale, which changes the incentives around price and trading.

1. The Morality of Everyday Things episode “Are NFTs a Scam? - Replay” frames NFTs as “the future of art or a pyramid scheme.” 2. The hosts are Ant and Jacob, longtime friends and business partners who say they run stash.com and treepoints.green and studied at Oxford. 3. The episode asks whether NFTs are a business model, a bubble, or a disguised scheme built on hype. 4. The hosts first define a Ponzi scheme as using new clients’ money to pay old clients. 5. They define a pyramid scheme as a top-layer recruitment structure where only the people near the top make money. 6. They add bubbles as a separate model and cite Tulip Mania in the Netherlands around 1600. 7. They argue that bubbles still have some underlying value, while Ponzi and pyramid schemes create little or none. 8. They define NFTs as non-fungible tokens that can represent ownership of unique items. 9. They compare a blockchain to a public Excel sheet or database that everyone can access and agree to change. 10. They use a million-share cap table and Companies House to show how ownership records can be centralized or distributed. 11. They say NFTs are secured by the Ethereum blockchain and rely on private keys for authorization. 12. They explain that Bitcoin is fungible, while an NFT is unique and non-interchangeable. 13. They quote Bill Gates’ 1996 line that “anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they want.” 14. They say Gates also warned that creators would need a fair way to get paid online. 15. They cite 90% of Spotify streaming royalties going to the top 1.4% of musicians and 1% of Twitch streamers earning more than half of revenue. 16. They point out that Google and Facebook accounted for more than half of digital ad revenue in 2020. 17. The tone is conversational and explanatory, with one host often defining terms while the other interrupts with examples. 18. The pacing moves from internet history to blockchain mechanics to art-market incentives without changing the studio format. 19. People curious about NFTs, web3, and internet business models. 20. People who want a pure tech-news recap without philosophy.

As heard by us

A brisk philosophical take on whether NFT hype looks like art, ownership, or a scheme built on rising prices.

The episode treats NFTs as a useful test of an old money question: when does hype become a story people tell themselves? It approaches the topic as a serious debate about the future of art, or as a pyramid or Ponzi-style scheme, and it stays focused on ownership, context, and…

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Why you'd press play

If you want a skeptical, plain-English argument about NFTs without the jargon fog.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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