same! as an artist nfts really boil my blood and to hear starbucks was planning to get into them was so upsetting 🫠

short answer: NFTs are a scam. they're a form of cryptocurrency that nobody can verify, often "minted" on stolen works of art, and that have very harmful environmental consequences because of the energy they consume.

long answer: remember those companies in the 90s that sold "certificates" which stated you owned a star? there were even tons of late-night infomercials for a while. anyway, those companies made millions of dollars for a handful of people who disappeared with the money not long after, leaving zero records of "ownership" that were never cross-checked or logged in any kind of database. if you tried to look up who "owns" (or paid thousands of dollars for a certificate of) a certain star, you'll likely never find an answer.

NFTs are like that, you're paying for a literal certificate, not the artwork or digital file itself. it's like someone selling you a piece of paper with your name scribbled on it saying that it's the deed to the mona lisa, but in order to see that you own it you need to know that the certificate is kept in a utility closet in the basement of the museum on a certain shelf behind a specific gallon of bleach. nobody will ever know except you and you will have just handed over your house and life savings for a piece of paper. oh and it was sold by someone who doesn't even work for the museum and who never even owned the mona lisa in the first place. and also you can't bring that paper to any official in charge of safekeeping the actual mona lisa because they'll laugh you out of the building.

Non fungible token

1. It's the digital equivalent of a paper receipt: valueless, almost entirely meaningless until several people agree on it's meaning and value. The fact that cryptobros convinced people that a receipt is worth paying for is hilariously asinine.

2. It's still just a receipt: there's no protection for the item you're purchasing. If I buy a cup, that's my cup. I can use it, I can display it, and part of purchasing the cup for some people is having a limited edition item. What exactly is an NFT for? You can get whatever is being sold, such as artwork, for free. It's not difficult.

3. Environmental disaster. We STILL don't have 100% recyclable/compostable cups, a promise Starbucks made over a decade ago, so... Let's encourage vast overconsumption of electricity?

4. It's not free to implement. When stores are struggling for enough labor to serve business need, not even thinking about sanitation, we're investing into a veritable hype bubble.

So it's the equivalent of paying to collect Starbucks graphics, except if you pay for it it costs a ridiculous amount of energy and diverts money from the core business model that is currently struggling hard, and you don't have to pay for it to still have the art/digital thing it says you own.

Maybe Starbucks should wait until ETH is actually on proof of stake. They've been saying they're moving to proof of stake for years and have not made any changes. Plus proof of stake isn't completely energy-neutral, it's just better than mining. Starbucks supposedly cares so much about sustainability and yet is getting into something that is burning the planet.