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Not just for gamers: New Nvidia Studio drivers deliver 30-bit color for Photoshop
Not just for gamers: New Nvidia Studio drivers deliver 30-bit color for Photoshop
I never thought I'd see the day: Until today you had to spring for a pricey Nvidia Quadro workstation graphics card to properly view your shiny ray-traced renders or accurately grade HDR video in professional applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Premiere. Now that 30-bit support comes down to more affordable GeForce and Titan cards. And not just the RTX models -- "across all Nvidia product lines and GPUs."
The latest Studio driver announcement from Siggraph comes in conjunction with news of more laptops added to its RTX Studio roster, though most of them were revealed at the Studio launch. There are two new Lenovos: the Y740 15 Studio Edition and Y740 17 Studio Edition, variations of its Legion Y740 gaming laptops but with better screens for creative work.
Photoshop's "30 Bit Display" option is no longer a dummy checkbox for GeForce.
Screenshot by Lori Grunin/CNET
Photoshop has long given you the option to turn on a 30-bit color pipe between it and the graphics card. But if you enabled it on a system with a consumer-targeted GeForce or Titan graphics card, it didn't do anything. That's why there's always been such confusion as to whether you could display 30-bit color with a GeForce card. I mean, there's a check box and you can check it!
But Photoshop and Premiere use OpenGL to communicate with the graphics card, at least for color rendering, and the specific API calls to use deep color have only worked with Quadro cards. That can sting when you spent over $1,000 on a GTX 1080 Ti.
In its briefing, Nvidia made it sound like 30-bit-on-GeForce was a brand new idea inspired by Studio users' requests. Does that mean the company was intentionally ignoring all the previous pleas -- such as this one from its own forums in 2014?
It's possible Nvidia decided that it had bigger professional fish to fry with Quadro, including AI and big data, and decided that the advantages of letting GeForce support a previously limited-to-workstation capability would boost the professional credibility for its new Studio marketing push. That seems especially likely given the adoption of AMD's graphics on almost every hardware platform, as well as its high-powered exclusive partner, Apple.
Or maybe it's to allow game designers to work on an Nvidia graphics card that can actually play games without having to pay hundreds extra just to get the extra color depth, since GeForce and Titan hold up pretty well in the midrange 3D-acceleration department.
To properly take advantage of this, you still need all the other elements -- a color-accurate display capable of 30-bit (aka 10-bit) color, for one. The ability to handle a 30-bit data stream is actually pretty common now -- most displays claiming to be able to decode HDR video, which requires a 10-bit transform, can do it -- but you won't see much of a difference without a true 10-bit panel, which are still pretty rare among nonprofessionals.
That's because most people associate insufficient bit depth with banding, the appearance of visually distinguishable borders between what should be smoothly graduated color. Monitors have gotten good at disguising banding artifacts by visually dithering the borders between colors where necessary. But when you're grading HDR video or painting on 3D renders, for example, dithering doesn't cut it.
And the extra precision is surely welcome when your doctor is trying to tell the difference between a tumor and a shadow on his cheap system. From Nvidia's own white paper in 2009: "While dithering produces a visually smooth image, the pixels no longer correlate to the source data. This matters in mission-critical applications like diagnostic imaging where a tumor may only be one or two pixels big."
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Lower Prescription Drug Prices: How Cost Plus Drugs Could Save You Money
Lower Prescription Drug Prices: How Cost Plus Drugs Could Save You Money
As high as inflation has been lately, prescription drug prices have soared even higher. The cost of prescription drugs has increased 35% since 2014, according to Healthcare Finance, compared with 19% for all goods and services.
Some 18 million Americans can't afford their prescriptions, according to a 2021 Gallup survey, and 10% of adults actually skip doses as a way of cost-cutting. A National Health Interview Survey report shows that more than five million Medicare beneficiaries struggle to pay for prescription medication.
To help alleviate the burden, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban launched the Cost Plus Drug Company in early 2022. The online marketplace offers prescription drugs at prices that are far lower than most retail pharmacies and even many discount sites.
"It's just wrong that people have to choose between eating, their rent, and taking their medications or buying their medications in the United States of America in 2022," Cuban told PBS in June. "It's just wrong. And it was obvious there was not going to be a political solution."
The newly signed Inflation Reduction Act gives Medicare the chance to negotiate drug prices for the first time ever -- but only on a limited number of medications. A June 2022 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that Medicare could have saved $3.6 billion in 2020 if it purchased prescription medications through Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs.
How does Cost Plus Drugs work, why are its prescription drug prices so cheap and how can you take advantage of its low prices? We'll give you all the details.
What is Cost Plus Drugs?
Cost Plus Drugs was started in January by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and radiologist Dr. Alexander Oshmyansky, now the company's CEO.
"When I see an industry that is just so convoluted and messed up like the pharmaceutical industry is, I saw it as a great opportunity," Shark Tank investor Cuban said on The View in February, "and that allows us to charge much, much less."
The Cost Plus Drugs site was launched with the aim of avoiding pharmacy benefit managers -- intermediaries who negotiate drug prices with manufacturers on behalf of health insurance providers. PBMs have come under criticism for pocketing negotiated savings, as well as for a practice called "spread pricing" -- charging payers like Medicaid more than they pay the pharmacy for a medication and keeping the difference (or "spread") as profit.
Shortly before its launch, Cost Plus Drugs created its own pharmacy benefit manager, allowing it to provide medications to companies with health plans. But Cuban has promised Cost Plus Drugs' PBM will be "radically transparent" in negotiating drug prices and will not employ spread pricing.
What medications are available at Cost Plus Drugs?
As of Aug. 23, Cost Plus Drugs offers 338 drugs including medicines for high cholesterol, kidney disease, mental health, diabetes, arthritis, migraines, allergies, cancer, HIV and many other conditions.
Cost Plus Drugs sells the top 10 most prescribed generic drugs in the US -- atorvastatin, levothyroxine, lisinopril, metformin, amlodipine, metoprolol, albuterol, omeprazole, losartan and simvastatin -- as well as many of the top 50 most prescribed medicines. Although Cost Plus Drugs warns that some medicines have limited stock due to supply chain issues, a random check of 50 of its 337 medications found all of them were available.
The company is constantly expanding its inventory and provides a form for submitting requests for new medications. On The View, Cuban said that he hopes to be selling 2,000 medications by mid-2023.
How much lower are Cost Plus Drugs prescription prices?
Drug prices in general will vary considerably based on the provider and PBM. Cost Plus Drugs provides a comparison of a listed retail price and its own price for every medicine it sells.
Some of the savings are remarkable: 30 tablets of the generic version of the bipolar disorder medicine Abilify (aripiprazole) retails for $678, compared to the same amount and dosage for $6 at Cost Plus Drugs.
"It's wrong that people have to choose between eating, their rent and taking their medications," Cuban told PBS in June.
Garrett Ellwood/NBAE/Getty Images
However, retail prices of prescription drugs can skew higher than what many people actually pay. Discount online pharmacies like GoodRx, Blink Health and SingleCare already provide coupons that can lower prices considerably. Even so, prices at Cost Plus Drugs compare favorably.
For example, a box of 30 tablets of the generic version of Zegerid -- commonly prescribed for acid reflux -- currently sells for $20 at Cost Plus Drugs. Blink Health sells generic Zegerid for $86, much lower than a listed retail price of $2,073, but four times more than Cost Plus Drugs.
The savings appear to be real for many prescription drugs. Thirty tablets of the generic version of the heart medication Toprol XL (metoprolol succinate) go for $3.90 at Cost Plus Drugs, compared to $24 per 90 pills (or $8 per 30) at Costco.
The generic version of the antidepressant Pristiq costs $18 at Cost Plus Drugs. Discount pharmacy GoodRx sells it for $25, the next lowest price we could find online. That's far lower than the average retail price of $290, but more than Cost Plus Drugs.
At CVS, a three-month supply of 20mg of generic Lipitor (atorvastatin), a commonly prescribed medication for high cholesterol, costs $362 without insurance.
At Cost Plus Drugs, the same three-month supply sells for $6.
The company is also in the process of constructing an $11 million, 22,000-square-foot facility in Dallas to manufacture its own versions of generic drugs, which could lower prices even further.
The price of atorvastatin at Cost Plus Drugs is much lower than the quote we received from CVS.
Cost Plus Drugs/Screenshot by Peter Butler/CNET
How do I order prescription drugs from Cost Plus Drugs?
First, you'll want to view the list of medications available at Cost Plus Drugs to see if it has the prescription drugs you need. If it does, you'll need to create an online account, verify your email address and enter basic information about your health history and any current medications you are taking.
After you're registered with Cost Plus Drugs, you can provide your doctor with a paper form that includes all of the information they'll need to submit your prescription.
Alternatively, you can ask your doctor to write a prescription that includes your name, email address, date of birth and any medications you take. The National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) Provider ID for Cost Plus Drugs is 4940208 and its telephone number for prescriptions is 833-926-3384.
Your doctor can also fax your prescription information or the paper form to 650-683-9775.
Why are prescription drugs so cheap at Cost Plus Drugs?
Unlike the mysterious calculations behind drug pricing at traditional pharmacies, Cost Plus Drugs uses a transparent method -- the wholesale price Cost Plus Drugs pays for the medicine plus a 15% markup, a $3 pharmacy fee and a $5 shipping charge. Prescriptions are filled by the pharmacy services startup Truepill.
On the company's mission page, Cuban specifically calls out the price of albendazole, a drug used to treat hookworm, which continues to thrive among poorer communities in the Southeast US. (In a 2017 paper, researchers found more than one-third of the people in one Alabama county were infected with hookworm disease.)
Normally, albendazole costs on average $441 for its daily dose of two tablets, which could be taken for up to 30 days. At a wholesale price of $26 plus $4 markup and $3 pharmacy fee, Cost Plus Drugs can sell those two tablets for $33, plus $5 for shipping. Multiply that $408 in savings for two tablets by 30 days and you're talking about a potential difference of $12,240.
Does Cost Plus Drugs take health insurance?
Cost Plus Drugs does not currently accept any health insurance. The site claims that "even without insurance, our prices are less than what you would pay when using your insurance at a typical pharmacy."
The company does work with some pharmacy benefit managers, though, and allows the use of prescription drug discount cards for their members. According to the Cost Plus Drugs website, PBMs that work with Cost Plus Drugs can have members pay the listed price on its website or the insurance co-pay amount, whichever is lower.
For more on drug prices, learn how California is planning to make its own insulin to counter rising costs and how the Inflation Reduction Act will lower prescription prices and subsidize the healthcare marketplace.
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OnePlus to combine its mobile operating system with Oppo for 2022
OnePlus to combine its mobile operating system with Oppo for 2022
OnePlus phones are set to get a major makeover in the software department over the next year due to the company's integration with sister brand Oppo. On Monday, the company announced its plans for "OnePlus 2.0," which will see an evolution of its mobile operating system to fuse the companies' software offerings.
This unified and upgraded global operating system will take the "fast and smooth" and "clean and lightweight" elements of OnePlus' OxygenOS and the "reliable" and "feature-rich" parts of Oppo's ColorOS to create a fresh experience for OnePlus phone users. The company has already begun to combine the two, finishing the codebase integration in June, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau said in a media briefing last week.
OnePlus and Oppo are gradually being brought closer together by their shared parent company, Chinese conglomerate BKK Electronics. The two phone brands started integrating some teams last year when Lau took over product strategy for both OnePlus and Oppo.
Lau said the integration was already providing a more stable experience overall, adding that the two focus areas (stability and strong features) for the the OS were "not conflicting" in his view. "I'm confident that this will be something that will be an experience to surprise and delight all of you," he said.
The refreshed OnePlus OS will first be available on the company's next flagship phone, due to launch in 2022. Later next year, the company will also push out a major Android update that will bring the integrated OS to existing OnePlus devices.
Other developments from the company include a renewed focus on camera technology in its phones as it continues its partnership with photography company Hasselblad, and an expanded global product portfolio that will be tailored to individual regions.
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Download the latest Windows ISO: How to create a Windows 11 install USB drive
Download the latest Windows ISO: How to create a Windows 11 install USB drive
Windows 11 will start rolling out to eligible devices today, but not everyone will get it right away. The free update brings plenty of new features, complete with a new start menu, widgets and a refreshed interface. Even the Microsoft Store is getting a big update (though don't expect to see Android apps right away).
Launches are bound to run into issues and bugs. Sometimes, those issues may force you to reinstall Windows 11. An easy way of doing that is by using a USB installation drive that has a copy of Windows 11 on it. With the update safely stored on a flash drive, you can reinstall it at any time, should any issues get bad enough that your only option is to reinstall the update.
You can also use a USB drive to make it easier to install Windows 11 on multiple computers, or to quickly set up a virtual machine to make testing possible without risking your personal data.
Microsoft has updated its Media Creation Tool to include Windows 11. You can download the ISO image straight from the source and flash to a USB drive yourself.
To create a Windows 11 installation drive, you'll need an empty 8GB USB drive, a Windows PC and up to a few hours of your time. You can download the system image using a Linux computer or Mac, but we're going to focus on using a PC for this guide. Below are the steps you'll need to follow.
Download the latest Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft
To download the Windows 11 ISO image you'll need to create a USB bootable drive. First, visit the Download Windows 11 page. You'll see a few other options for installation, but you're looking for Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO).
Scroll down the page until you see a dropdown labeled Select Download. Click the dropdown and then select Windows 11, then click Download. Next you'll be asked to select a language, then click Confirm again, followed by clicking on the 64-bit Download button to finally begin downloading the ISO. It's a fairly large file at 5.1GB, so depending on your internet connection, it may take some time for the download to finish.
Once the download finishes, your work isn't completely done. You need to burn that ISO image onto a USB drive. And to do that, you'll need some extra software. Don't worry, though, it's an easy process.
With the ISO finished, this is how Rufus should look before you flash Windows 11 to your USB drive.
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
How to flash Windows 11 to your USB drive
To turn a standard USB drive into an installation drive, you'll need to use a program called Rufus. It's the same app that Microsoft itself uses in its guide for creating a Windows 10 bootable drive. Visit the company's website to download and install Rufus, which should only take a few seconds. It's a small program.
Plug in your USB drive and open Rufus. Select your USB drive using the Device dropdown. Remember, anything on your thumb drive will be erased during this process -- so make sure it's empty or you have everything you need off of it.
Under Boot Selection select Disk or ISO image and then click on the text that reads SELECT and pick the ISO file you created in the previous step.
There's a section in Rufus labeled Image option with several different settings -- leave everything as the default. The same can be said for format options unless you want to change the name of the USB drive to something like "Windows 11 install" or along those lines.
Click Start when you're sure all of the options are set. You'll again have to wait while the program does its job, but it should be a much quicker process than downloading and creating the ISO. It took just over 15 minutes on a Surface Pro X for me.
You can now install Windows 11 with ease.
Sarah Tew/CNET
What to do with a Windows 11 installation drive
Once Rufus finishes, you can remove the USB drive from your PC and either keep it somewhere safe in case you need to reinstall Windows 11 on your PC, or you can plug it into another PC and use it to install Windows 11 by opening the drive and double-clicking the setup.exe file. A few seconds later, a Windows 11 installation screen will appear, walking you through the rest of the process.
Alternatively, you can try and use the USB drive as a bootable installation drive. However, this is where things get even more complicated, due to Windows 11 requiring Secure Boot, and the USB drive we just created not being compatible with that feature. I suggest waiting for Microsoft to release an official tool, but if you insist, I found a guide that walks you through the extra steps of making a bootable USB drive that's compatible with secure boot on Tom's Hardware, starting at step 11.
Curious what all the fuss is about Windows 11? We have your back. There's a big interface redesign making its debut that includes a centered Start menu, but don't worry, you can move it back to the left corner if you want. And, finally, if you've ever had the desire to use Android apps on your PC, well, Microsoft is making that possible.
Android 12 Has Some Tricks Up Its Sleeve, But You Have to Know Where to Look
Android 12 Has Some Tricks Up Its Sleeve, But You Have to Know Where to Look
Android 13 is now available for certain Google Pixel owners to install, but Samsung Galaxy, Motorola and other Android users will have to wait until later this year to get their hands on Google's latest mobile software update. However, there is still a ton to explore on Android 12, which most people are still running on their Android phones.
Read more:How to Download Android 13 Beta 2 on Your Phone Now
Whether you own a Pixel 6 Pro or a Samsung Galaxy S22, you can find a number of hidden settings and features on Android 12 that can completely change how you use your Android device.
In this story we'll show you how to recover accidentally deleted notifications, use your phone with only one hand and more. Check out what Android 12 has to offer below.
If you want to learn more about how you can improve your Android experience, check out these seven tips to improve your Android's performance and how to save battery with Android's built-in dark mode.
Android 12 keeps your notification history a tap away
Do you ever clear out a notification without reading it? I do it all the time. Android has offered device notification history for some time now, but you either had to know where to look, or you had to install a third-party app to see it.
In Android 12, all you have to do is scroll to the bottom of your notification shade, where you'll see a new History button. Tap it, and you'll see recently cleared notifications as well as alerts from the last 24 hours.
If you see Manage instead of History, that's because Notification History isn't turned on. Enable it by tapping on Manage, then select Notification History and slide the switch to the On position.
You now have quick access to your past notifications.
Screenshots by Jason Cipriani/CNET
Android 12 makes big phones feel smaller
A new one-handed mode in Android 12 may not be a headlining feature, but it's one that could make a big difference in how you use your phone. This is especially true if you're using a phone with a big display, like the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
The new one-handed mode moves the top half of whatever's on your screen to the bottom half, making it easier to tap a quick settings tile or a notification. To use it, place a finger on the small bar at the bottom of your phone's screen and swipe down. It may take a few tries, but once you get the gesture figured out, it's easy to reproduce.
Before you can do that, though, you'll need to turn it on: go into the Settings app, type in One-handed mode and toggle the feature on. Depending on which Android phone you have, this feature might have different settings you can toggle off and on.
Left: Google Pixel 6 Pro. Right: Samsung Galaxy S22.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNET
There's a dedicated gaming mode in Android 12
If you play a lot of games on your Android device, you'll be happy to know that Google added a dedicated gaming mode to Android 12. When it's turned on, your phone will do things like automatically turn on do not disturb when you start playing.
But you'd never know the mode existed if you didn't venture deep into, of all places, your notification settings. More specifically, go to Settings > Notifications > Do Not Disturb > Schedules. Once there, check the box next to Game Mode to turn it on. Next, tap on the Settings gear icon to and toggle both items.
In my experience testing it, game mode doesn't work in every game (looking at you, Asphalt 9). It does work in Call of Duty Mobile, however. When it's active, you can do things like force your phone to optimize itself for gaming in a single-tap or view your device's current frames per second.
Use the new Game Mode in Android 12 to boost performance or live stream on YouTube.
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
Android 12 has a new app layout option
The app grid on your phone's home screen normally ranges for a 4x4, 5x5 or 6x6 grid (or similar combinations). However, in Android 12 on the Pixel, there's a new app grid option that's downright funny at first glance -- 2x2. I assume this is limited to just Pixel phones, but hopefully, other phone-makers adopt it, as it's a huge accessibility feature for those in need of larger app icons.
Switch to the new 2x2 layout with a long-press on your home screen, then select Wallpaper & style > AppGrid > 2x2.
This 2x2 app grid feature is only available on the Google Pixel.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNET
For more, check out the best Android phones and Samsung phones to buy in 2022, every reason why you should give Pixel phones another chance and how the Pixel 6 with its Tensor chip is more exciting than the iPhone 13.
This story is part of Home Tips, CNET's collection of practical advice for getting the most out of your home, inside and out.
Air purifiers are fairly straightforward appliances with minimal installation and upkeep. Still, you want to make sure your unit continues to work correctly -- and lasts as long as possible. That's why we're going to walk through the process of cleaning a plug-in portable air purifier here, so you know how to keep yours in good shape as it takes on the allergens in your home.
Read more:Best Air Purifiers
How to clean an air purifier
I took a look at user guides for Honeywell, Winix and Levoit air purifiers to come up with this cleaning overview. Here are the basic steps to follow to clean your air purifier:
Unplug your air purifier
This is always the first step. Make sure your air purifier is unplugged before you begin.
2. Check the filters
Most air purifiers come with two different filters: a prefilter and a HEPA filter. Some even have a third filter. Each manufacturer's recommendations will vary in terms of cleaning the filters. Honeywell, Winix and Levoit all say not to wash or otherwise clean their HEPA filters, but instead to replace them regularly.
Levoit suggests replacing its HEPA filter every six to eight months, while both Honeywell and Winix say their units last up to one year.
Levoit's prefilter should be cleaned every two to four weeks with a gentle brush or vacuum. You can wash the Winix prefilter every few weeks; just make sure it's completely dry before you put it back. And Honeywell says not to wash it's prefilter at all, but instead to replace it every three months.
3. Wipe off the air purifier
All of the manufacturers I checked suggested wiping off the air purifier with a dry cloth about once every few months. Do not use water or any cleaning solvent to clean off your air purifier.
4. Store the filters when not in use
If the air purifier isn't going to be used for a month or more, Honeywell says it's best to remove and store its filters in tightly sealed bags.
One final note
Keep in mind that the specific cleaning requirements might vary slightly depending on the brand and model of air purifier you purchase. Make sure to check the printed or online user's guide that comes with your air purifier to confirm its maintenance needs. Regardless, your air purifier will need some sort of upkeep and it will likely follow the information detailed above (or very close).
Take a look at our guide on where to install your air purifier to get more information on how to position it in a room so it runs optimally.
NFTs explained: Why people spend millions of dollars on JPEGs
NFTs explained: Why people spend millions of dollars on JPEGs
Take a quick look at the image to the right. What, if anything, could convince you that image is worth $9 million?
Richerd/OpenSea
What you're looking at is an NFT, one of the first ever created. It's part of the CryptoPunks collection, a set of 10,000 NFTs released in 2017, a time when much of the world was still finding out what bitcoin is.
Most likely you've already rolled your eyes, either at the $9 million figure or at the very idea of NFTs themselves. The response to nonfungible tokens hasn't changed much since March when they first started exploding. The public at large has reflexively dismissed them as environmentally harmful scams. The bigger the sale, the more brazen the injustice.
Which brings us back to the above pixelated chap. Its owner is Richerd, an affable Canadian software developer. He started building cryptocurrency software around 2013, but eventually tired of it. After discovering NFTs earlier this year, Richerd bought CryptoPunk #6046 on March 31 for $86,000 in what he said was the biggest purchase he'd ever made in his life.
Richerd, who has over 80,000 followers on Twitter, last month claimed that his CryptoPunk was priceless to him and wasn't for sale no matter the price. The very next day his determination was tested when an offer came through for 2,500 ether, or $9.5 million. It was made not because Richerd's CryptoPunk is worth that amount -- similar NFTs now go for about $400,000 -- but rather because his bluff was very publicly being called. It was a challenge, but it was still a legitimate offer. If Richerd clicked "accept", 2,500 ether would have flowed into his wallet.
Richerd rejected the offer.
"Well, obviously, the day before I said 'I'm not selling it for any price,' so if I sell it for that price, I'd be going against my integrity," Richerd told me over a Zoom call. "On top of that, I've used this CryptoPunk as my profile pic, as my brand. Everyone knows that's me."
Not too long ago, Richerd's explanation would have sounded insane to me. How divorced from reality would someone need to be to offer eight figures on a picture that looks like a Fiverr job? How scandalously misguided would a person need to be to rebuff that offer? After I spent a few months researching and following NFTs, however, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. In fact, it makes a whole lot of sense.
There are 10,000 NFTs in the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. Here are three examples. The middle one is owned by Jimmy Fallon.
Yuga Labs
Bitcoin millionaires
Here is one quick fact that explains why NFTs are bought for the equivalent of a CEO's salary: Bitcoin is estimated to have made over 100,000 millionaires. It's no surprise that NFTs became a phenomenon in March. That's when bitcoin hit $60,000, up over 500% from just six months prior.
When you see a headline or a tweet about some preposterous sum being spent on an NFT, it's easy to become bewildered over how absurd that purchase would be for you. What's easy to forget is that very expensive things are almost exclusively bought by very rich people -- and very rich people spend a lot on status symbols.
Take Bored Ape Yacht Club, for example. It's a collection of 10,000 ape NFTs, all with different traits that make some rarer than others. Rare ones have sold over for over a million bucks, but common variants go for around $200,000. (At the time of launch back in April, BAYC developers sold the NFTs for $190 each.) BAYC, owned by the likes of Steph Curry and Jimmy Fallon, is what you'd call a "profile pic collection." The main purpose of the images is to be used as your display photo on Discord, where most NFT business goes down, or on Twitter, Instagram or wherever else.
To recap: $200,000 minimum for a profile picture.
In isolation, that's insane. But place it on a spectrum of how wealthy people spend money, and it becomes less staggering. You can right click and save a JPEG, so why spend money on it? Well, you can buy a nice house in a safe neighborhood almost anywhere in the world for $1 million, yet celebrities regularly snap up $20 million mansions. You can find a fashionable dress for under $500, yet brands like Chanel build their business on selling ones for 20 times that amount.
Up to 100,000 people became millionaires when that green line shot skyward.
coinmarketcap.com
We accept that rich folks buy extravagant items offline. Is it so inconceivable they would buy extravagant things online, too?
"In the real world, how do people flex their wealth?" said Alex Gedevani, an analyst at cryptocurrency research firm Delphi Digital. "It can be buying cars or watches. How scalable is that versus if I buy a CryptoPunk and use it as my profile picture?"
Obviously, status symbols aren't specific to the rich. All of us indulge in some way or another, be it buying a $20,000 new car when a $7,000 used vehicle will do, or buying a $30 T-shirt when Walmart sells basics for under $5. What most status symbols have in common is that they have a specific audience in mind. The banker sporting his Rolex and the chief executive stepping into her Bentley don't care that I think either of those purchases is excessive. They have a small but powerful group of people they're trying to influence. So, too, with NFTs.
In the case of Richerd, he runs his own business, Manifold, where he helps show digital artists like Beeple how they can use blockchain technology to make art that could only exist as NFTs. Being a part of the most sought-after NFT collection helps in those circles. And when he says his brand is built on his Punk, he's not exaggerating -- a group of investors even named their organization after him.
"Anybody who owns a CryptoPunk believes certain things," Richerd explained. "Either you've been in the community for a long time so you believe in what these are, or you've paid a lot of money to get in, which shows conviction.
"I want to show my conviction. This is one of those projects that makes you put your money where your mouth is."
A bit of trouble
NFTs are polarizing. There's a small group of people who believe in the underlying technology (tokens that prove ownership of a digital good), but there are many more who regard it as a hoax. Just as the second group struggles to see any value in NFTs, the first group can sometimes be defensive about the technology's imperfections.
And make no doubt about it, there are a lot of issues with NFTs.
First is the confounding inaccessibility. There's a reason software developers tend to do well in crypto and NFT trading: Setting up blockchain wallets and other required digital apparatus is difficult. Even just buying and selling can be perilous. Send money to the wrong wallet address by accident, and it's gone forever.
Then there are the fees. Imagine you're interested in dipping your toes into nonfungible waters and you have $1,000 you're willing to lose. If you're minting a new NFT during a public sale you'll usually spend between $120 and $400. Not too bad -- until you factor in the transaction fees. Most NFTs are built on the ethereum blockchain, which is notoriously inefficient. The more people using ethereum, be it through trading altcoins or buying NFTs, the higher the fees. At a good time you'll spend about $100 per transaction, though double or triple that amount is common. Suddenly that $1,000 doesn't go very far.
This is especially troublesome for NFTs, which are infamous for causing "gas wars." It's possible for 100,000 people to buy shiba inu coins at once, since there are a quadrillion in circulation. But when 10,000 people try to buy an NFT, it results in a massive spike in transaction costs as some users outbid each other to speed up their purchase. It may only last a minute or two, but a lot of damage can be done in that time. People spending over $10,000 on a transaction fee isn't rare. People losing $1,000 on a failed transaction isn't, either.
This is what it looks like when someone spends $4,000 on a failed transaction. It's rare, but not rare enough.
Etherscan screenshot by Daniel Van Boom
Ethereum's inefficiency also contributes to the other major criticism of NFTs, the massive amount of energy they consume. Note that this is something of a semantic issue: NFTs aren't bad for the environment as much as ethereum is. Other networks, like Solana, use a fraction of the power. Ethereum developers are expected to implement an upgrade next year that will make mining it consume 1% the energy it currently does. At this moment though, while no one can say precisely how much energy ethereum consumes, we know it's a lot. (Bitcoin, despite getting all the headlines, is even less efficient than ethereum, which is why almost nothing is built on its blockchain.)
And finally, there's the fact that most people trading NFTs are doing so to make a profit. Scams are everywhere, and prices are volatile. Most of the people who create, buy and sell NFTs are ignorant or uninterested in the technology. If there is a technological leap taking place, it's likely to be obscured by the dizzying price movements.
"I'd call it a bubble," Gedvani said, "because the amount of speculators that are entering the market is outpacing genuine creators."
But a bubble can pop and leave something better in its wake. Think of Pets.com. It had a peak valuation of $290 million in February 2000 but by November of that year, as the infamous dot-com bubble began to burst, it had already closed shop. It's used as a cautionary tale for speculative trading in bubbles. But the impulse to invest in Pets.com evidently ended up being justifiable. That particular venture was misguided, but the e-commerce trend it was flicking at was legitimate. Seven-figure pixel art may not be forever, but proof of digital ownership, which is what NFTs are really about, may be.
A big 2022
Where NFTs will end up is anyone's guess -- and anyone who claims to know is probably trying to sell you something. What we do know is that the amount of people buying NFTs is almost definitely about to grow.
It's estimated that around 250,000 people trade NFTs each month on OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace. In the short term, CoinBase will soon open its own NFT marketplace, for which 2 million users are on the waiting list. Robinhood has similar plans.
More importantly, giant companies that already make money outside of the crypto space want in. Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go, has just announced a game in which players can earn bitcoin. Twitter and the company formerly known as Facebook plan to integrate NFTs into their platforms, and Epic Games says it's open to doing so too. Envision a world where instead of buying skins in Fortnite, you buy an NFT for those skins that you own -- meaning you can trade it for outfits and weapons in other games, or sell it once you're done with it. (Epic said it won't integrate such a mechanic into Fortnite, but that may not stop competitors.)
Richerd reckons the flood of people soon to enter the NFT marketplace will create a broader diversity of digital products sold for different audiences. Your neighbor might not want to spend $200 -- much less $200,000 -- on a profile picture, but maybe they'll be willing to spend $10 on a one-of-a-kind skin, or on a product in Facebook's Metaverse. But though the space may change, he remains confident that CryptoPunk #6046 is safe for a while yet.
"Even if every NFT falls," he said, "CryptoPunks will be the last one."
