• Geoffrey Huntley created a Pirates Bay-like platform that has 17 GB of NFTs, which he claims are all the NFTs on Solana and Ethereum blockchains. 
  • The developer says the project is an art that aims to show the absurdity of NFTs which he insists can be copied and reproduced contrary to popular belief.

 

Are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) just massively overpriced JPEG images? One Australian developer thinks so, and he has copied 17 gigabytes of NFTs from Solana and Ethereum blockchain and made them available for free, despite some of them selling for millions of dollars.

NFTs have become a multi-billion dollar industry and one of the fastest-growing sub-sectors of the cryptocurrency industry. They have been said to revolutionize the art industry, with every other major global brand piling in. Some of the brightest minds believe that they are the future of the industry and will come to even define other industries including real estate.

Read More: Google searches for ‘NFTs’ surpass those of ‘crypto’ as the digital collectible industry gains strong footing

Huntley disagrees. The developer has created The Billion Dollar Torrent, a collection of “all the NFTs on the Solana and Ethereum blockchains.” He uploaded this large file on NFT Bay,  a platform modeled after the infamous peer-to-peer search service Pirate Bay.

Glorified JPEGs? An attack on NFTs

NFT fans point to the use of blockchain to assign unique ownership rights to the images as one of the greatest benefits of NFTs. But what if someone could right-click and save the images – would they be as valuable? Would Beeple have sold an NFT for $69 million if anyone else could reproduce it and claim ownership of the new “fake” image?

In an interview, Huntley broke down why he believes NFTs are just glorified JPEGs.

Fundamentally, I hope through The NFT Bay people learn to understand what people are buying when purchasing NFT art right now. It is nothing more than directions on how to access or download an image. There is a gap of understanding between buyer and seller right now that is being used to exploit people.

NFTs sell for millions of dollars. As such, Huntley stands the risk of being sued for copyright infringement for taking ownership and sharing other people’s ‘art.’

However, as he said in the interview, “many artists are quite happy with the website. If someone wishes for content to be removed, the DMCA takedown process is documented in the footer of The NFT Bay.”

There’s a place for NFTs however, Huntley believes. Their value lies in authentication “much like Twitter’s blue verification checkmark.” But, unlike in the current setup, this can be achieved without blockchain, he says.