Hours ago, a website appeared online with the express purpose of hosting a nearly 20TB torrent (that’s terabytes, folks, the big boys of digital data measurement) containing every NFT available through the Ethereum and Solana blockchains.
The NFT Bay, whose name and overall design riff on iconic torrent database The Pirate Bay, is the work of one Geoffrey Huntley, an Australian software and dev ops engineer. In a frequently asked questions document written up for annoying reporters like me, Huntley describes The NFT Bay as an “educational art project” designed to teach the public about what NFTs are and aren’t, in the hopes that fewer folks get swindled by the technology’s innumerable grifters.
Image: Geoffrey Huntley
“Fundamentally, I hope people learn to understand what people are buying when purchasing NFT art right now is nothing more than directions on how to access or download an image,” Huntley explained. “The image is not stored on the blockchain and the majority of images I’ve seen are hosted on web 2.0 storage, which is likely to end up as 404, meaning the NFT has even less value.
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“[NFTs] are only valuable as tools for money laundering, tax evasion, and greater fool investment fraud,” wrote computer scientist Antsstyle in a scathing criticism of the technology, the long version of which is perhaps the most comprehensive breakdown of the ills posed by NFTs, cryptocurrency, and the blockchain on which they operate. “There is zero actual value to NFTs. Their sole purpose is to create artificial scarcity of an artwork to supposedly increase its value.”
