A Lotus Cars NFT marketplace??? JFC

Is this batshit crazy?

  • Yes, and it's sad.

    Votes: 25 71.4%
  • No, it's dumb but they mean well.

    Votes: 7 20.0%
  • It's awesome! Also, I gambled my kid's college fund on Bored Apes.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I don't know what an NFT is.

    Votes: 3 8.6%

  • Total voters
    35

Porter

Emira Addict
Joined
Aug 6, 2021
Messages
2,356
Reaction score
4,291
Location
DC/Virginia, USA
Emira Status
Emira Owner
This is a very, very bad sign about what is going on within Lotus.


I mean, what in the actual *F* is going on inside that company that someone thought an "NFT marketplace" was a good idea? Is Lotus suddenly being run by a bunch of alt-right libertarian crypto bros? A crew of amphetamine-addled 20-somethings from the bowels of Reddit and 4Chan who were just desperate to run a pyramid scheme? What will we find on the Lotus website next, a pro-Brexit ideological manifesto?

This is not good business (or even reasonable personal judgement) and it makes me question whether my deposit on an Emira is wise.

1656212288335.png
 

Mangoose

Active member
Joined
Jun 13, 2022
Messages
33
Reaction score
72
Location
Ontario, Canada
I'm not sure who they're marketing to with this, but I'm pretty certain it's not the same clientele that purchases Lotus vehicles.

It's odd... I would think that these crypto/NFT gimmicks could pose significant reputational risk to an established brand like Lotus.

But frankly, I don't care very much and it has absolutely no bearing on the purchase of my Emira.
 

eriegz

Emira Maniac
Joined
Jan 29, 2022
Messages
1,154
Reaction score
2,888
Location
Canada
Emira Status
Emira on order
Unfortunately every sports car / supercar manufacturer is doing this now. Lamborghini, Corvette, etc...

* Minting NFTs, that is, not making NFT marketplaces, which is one level stupider yet.
 

EspritGuy

Emira Addict
Joined
Aug 14, 2021
Messages
1,772
Reaction score
2,408
Location
DFW
Emira Status
Emira Owner
This is a very, very bad sign about what is going on within Lotus.


I mean, what in the actual *F* is going on inside that company that someone thought an "NFT marketplace" was a good idea? Is Lotus suddenly being run by a bunch of alt-right libertarian crypto bros? A crew of amphetamine-addled 20-somethings from the bowels of Reddit and 4Chan who were just desperate to run a pyramid scheme? What will we find on the Lotus website next, a pro-Brexit ideological manifesto?

This is not good business (or even reasonable personal judgement) and it makes me question whether my deposit on an Emira is wise.

View attachment 6954
Allows access to a number of interpretative dance routines so your wallet can be as porous as the Eletre.
#Nice-Fn-Try
 

kitkat

Emira Addict
Joined
Mar 5, 2022
Messages
2,170
Reaction score
4,095
Location
USA
Emira Status
Emira on order
While I personally think the concept of the metaverse is pretty cringy, I can see why companies like Lotus and other car mfg are minting NFTs. They want a presence in the metaverse wherever it might go relatively early on. If advertising and marketing shifts from social media focus to metaverse and web3, these companies want to be in that space.

Another part of it is Lotus likely wants to shift their marketing from a driver’s car brand to a lifestyle brand. You see plenty of other companies doing this, like BMW and collaborations with Kith.
 

EspritGuy

Emira Addict
Joined
Aug 14, 2021
Messages
1,772
Reaction score
2,408
Location
DFW
Emira Status
Emira Owner
While I personally think the concept of the metaverse is pretty cringy, I can see why companies like Lotus and other car mfg are minting NFTs. They want a presence in the metaverse wherever it might go relatively early on. If advertising and marketing shifts from social media focus to metaverse and web3, these companies want to be in that space.

Another part of it is Lotus likely wants to shift their marketing from a driver’s car brand to a lifestyle brand. You see plenty of other companies doing this, like BMW and collaborations with Kith.
NiFTy
 

DerTheDer

Emira Maniac
Joined
Feb 12, 2022
Messages
1,120
Reaction score
1,181
Location
USA
Emira Status
Emira Owner
Wait, so I can spend 100k on a photo of an Emira instead of buying one?! COUNT ME IN! So stupid.
 

NickR

Emira Fanatic
Joined
Oct 25, 2021
Messages
482
Reaction score
873
Location
Devon UK
Haven’t heard much in the way of positive vibes regarding NFTs. If Lotus want to promote lifestyle rather than cars then go for something meaningful related to brand. High performance electric boats or something
 

digilotus

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Nov 12, 2021
Messages
1,909
Reaction score
3,866
Location
Australia
Emira Status
Emira Owner
Perhaps Lotus could give all Emira FE non-refundable deposit holders a free personalised NFT including a photo/video of their chosen Emira colour and specification!
 

kitkat

Emira Addict
Joined
Mar 5, 2022
Messages
2,170
Reaction score
4,095
Location
USA
Emira Status
Emira on order
Perhaps Lotus could give all Emira FE non-refundable deposit holders a free personalised NFT including a photo/video of their chosen Emira colour and specification!
Minting those may take a while based on Lotus comms bandwidth.
 

Lotustoronto

Emira Addict
Joined
Nov 13, 2021
Messages
1,809
Reaction score
2,413
Location
Toronto
Emira Status
Emira on order
I personally look at NFT's no different than how we looked at sports player cards, or collecting stamps.

It is a hobby to 95% and to some it will be a job that can produce income. Now the prices ppl pay for certain NFT's is insane! But if you look at it from a pure hobby perspective than it makes more sense. I remember as a kid having a huge collection of soccer (footie to ROW) jersey's. Now I still have some, but my kids don't know or care who most of the player's were. Nostalgia will be different for everyone, maybe it's record's, cd's, sports cards, stamps, rocks or for this generation is it NFT's?
 

ksegg

Emira Fanatic
Joined
Dec 9, 2021
Messages
333
Reaction score
510
Location
Atlanta, United States
I still find crypto/NFT's to be scammy ponzi "get rich quick" schemes.

Whatever happened to just working hard and just saving money. Worked for my parents, and it works for me.

The greatest lesson my Father ever taught me growing up is "There is no such thing as a free lunch in this world".
 

EspritGuy

Emira Addict
Joined
Aug 14, 2021
Messages
1,772
Reaction score
2,408
Location
DFW
Emira Status
Emira Owner
I still find crypto/NFT's to be scammy ponzi "get rich quick" schemes.

Whatever happened to just working hard and just saving money. Worked for my parents, and it works for me.

The greatest lesson my Father ever taught me growing up is "There is no such thing as a free lunch in this world".
Perhaps..... you haven't roamed the aisles at Costco on a Saturday morning and stuffed yourself on the free food samples?
Now, that's good eat'in
 

eriegz

Emira Maniac
Joined
Jan 29, 2022
Messages
1,154
Reaction score
2,888
Location
Canada
Emira Status
Emira on order
I personally look at NFT's no different than how we looked at sports player cards, or collecting stamps.

It is a hobby to 95% and to some it will be a job that can produce income. Now the prices ppl pay for certain NFT's is insane! But if you look at it from a pure hobby perspective than it makes more sense. I remember as a kid having a huge collection of soccer (footie to ROW) jersey's. Now I still have some, but my kids don't know or care who most of the player's were. Nostalgia will be different for everyone, maybe it's record's, cd's, sports cards, stamps, rocks or for this generation is it NFT's?
This is how I used to view NFTs too, right up until early 2022, when I finally learned more about the tech and the industry / marketplace.

Basically, the tech itself is garbage. The NFT assets themselves aren't even stored in / on the block chain (because the storage costs would be astronomical); they're stored on some other third-party server, just like any image on the internet. So you're literally just paying for a URL to that asset, and / or a certificate saying you own that asset, and that's it.

And then I won't even get into the myriad pump-and-dump / rug pull schemes that are running rampant, or the way that NFTs are integrated into "play to earn" schemes to take advantage of people in developing countries (its own rabbit hole).

And I'm not just someone who's prejudiced against NFTs or crypto, either. In fact, my buddy and I first got into Bitcoin mining together back in 2012, and last summer I was even one interview stage away from getting a job with a Vancouver-based NFT company (of course, that was before I learned all of the sordid details I mentioned above)!

I'm a tech person to my core, but I'm rooting for crypto & NFTs to die.
 

Lotustoronto

Emira Addict
Joined
Nov 13, 2021
Messages
1,809
Reaction score
2,413
Location
Toronto
Emira Status
Emira on order
This is how I used to view NFTs too, right up until early 2022, when I finally learned more about the tech and the industry / marketplace.

Basically, the tech itself is garbage. The NFT assets themselves aren't even stored in / on the block chain (because the storage costs would be astronomical); they're stored on some other third-party server, just like any image on the internet. So you're literally just paying for a URL to that asset, and / or a certificate saying you own that asset, and that's it.

And then I won't even get into the myriad pump-and-dump / rug pull schemes that are running rampant, or the way that NFTs are integrated into "play to earn" schemes to take advantage of people in developing countries (its own rabbit hole).

And I'm not just someone who's prejudiced against NFTs or crypto, either. In fact, my buddy and I first got into Bitcoin mining together back in 2012, and last summer I was even one interview stage away from getting a job with a Vancouver-based NFT company (of course, that was before I learned all of the sordid details I mentioned above)!

I'm a tech person to my core, but I'm rooting for crypto & NFTs to die.
Fair enough, I never purchased or planned to purchase NFT's and never got into crypto. Let's just say it's not something I would invest in, and would look at it purely as a purchasing something disposable.
 
OP
Porter

Porter

Emira Addict
Joined
Aug 6, 2021
Messages
2,356
Reaction score
4,291
Location
DC/Virginia, USA
Emira Status
Emira Owner
  • Thread Starter
  • Thread starter
  • #20
Nostalgia will be different for everyone, maybe it's record's, cd's, sports cards, stamps, rocks or for this generation is it NFT's?
It's not a generational thing. Most of the people involved in NFT transactions aren't particularly young.

I still find crypto/NFT's to be scammy ponzi "get rich quick" schemes.
Yup. The majority of transfers and transactions are from basically 3 classes of people.
  1. Speculative investors, which tend to be people with a ton of disposable income who want to gamble in new and weird ways, which mostly excludes the young. Gen X is featured prominently in this group. They love markets that are full of easy marks, and this is absolutely that. Some of the people in this group are marks themselves because they think they're smarter than they are, because they grasped the gambling aspect but didn't really understand the mechanics of how risk in an unregulated market operates.
  2. Celebrities, clueless rich people, and other high profile lifestyle types who have been hooked into the "luxury beanie babies" collectible aspect, I guess because they think it's edgy, like a Banksy mural that you can send by email. They are mostly very dumb and don't understand the technology very well - see news items about Seth Green for proof of this.
  3. Criminals. NFTs allow high value "art" trading as a proxy for criminal services rendered, just like they used to do with actual physical art. Since art is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it, a criminal can "buy" a bad painting from another criminal for $100k and nobody can say it's not worth that much money... and only the criminals know that $99k of that art deal was to pay for a murder for hire, or for a crate full of drugs, or for some other criminal activity. NFT trading allows these people to do the same transactions right in the open, but without the inconvenience of art gallery or auction commissions, and without needing to move any physical art around in the world. The whole scenario is tailor-made for laundering money and creating a paper trail for the transfer of funds that gives beautifully documented plausible deniability in court.
This is how I used to view NFTs too, right up until early 2022, when I finally learned more about the tech and the industry / marketplace.

Basically, the tech itself is garbage. The NFT assets themselves aren't even stored in / on the block chain (because the storage costs would be astronomical); they're stored on some other third-party server, just like any image on the internet. So you're literally just paying for a URL to that asset, and / or a certificate saying you own that asset, and that's it.

And then I won't even get into the myriad pump-and-dump / rug pull schemes that are running rampant, or the way that NFTs are integrated into "play to earn" schemes to take advantage of people in developing countries (its own rabbit hole).

And I'm not just someone who's prejudiced against NFTs or crypto, either. In fact, my buddy and I first got into Bitcoin mining together back in 2012, and last summer I was even one interview stage away from getting a job with a Vancouver-based NFT company (of course, that was before I learned all of the sordid details I mentioned above)!

I'm a tech person to my core, but I'm rooting for crypto & NFTs to die.
Yes. Thank you.
 

Similar threads

Top