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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

They aren't using the word "fungible" correctly. These aren't non-fungible objects. They are fungible objects with a DRM scheme attached to them. It is a very good DRM scheme, authenticated via blockchain, but nevertheless is not fundamentally different than any other. The art can be easily copied, making the copies fungible. This is like paying millions for a the one "legitimate" steam key to a game that everyone else is playing for free. I want to meet these people. I have some bridges I need to offload.

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You’re completely wrong. It’s called “non fungible token” because a given token has unique metadata (DRM associated with the media). Thus, the tokens are not fungible with one another.

>> Thus, the tokens are not fungible with one another

So they are steam keys, verified by blockchain, but just numbers associated with a piece of art. Sounds like DRM to me. Fungible doesn't mean identical. Every US 100$ bill has a unique number attached. The bills are still fungible. The numbers are not identical but serve the same functional purpose, so they too are fungible. Nobody cares what number is on their money. One bill/number can be swapped for another without impacting any function. Fungibility.

"able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable." Oxford law.

They're called NFTs, not NFA. Even real-life artwork is fungible (consider the multi-million dollar appraisal industry, which exists in part to establish provenance of prospective purchases). You're not paying those exorbitant costs for the physical artwork (though it's nice that it comes along); you're paying for the story behind it, and what your ability to put wealth up for that story says about you and the artwork and artist.

DRM isn't a good analogy, because no one is prohibited from experiencing most NFTs. You can't legally watch a DRM protected movie or listen to a DRM protected audio file if you didn't buy the privilege. But you can look at NFT GIFs, JPGs, movies all you want without paying a penny.

Though the DRM analogy may work in applications that interact with NFTs. For example, games with unique items. The application would limit the full experience of a tokenized object to the owner alone. For example, only n00b5lay3r may equip the Golden Sword of Evisceration, because it's in their wallet.

That is DRM to enforce use/performance rights, to control where and how media is played or copied. CD/DVDs can have DRM on them to prevent copying but that doesn't prevent ownership transfers. Or they can have geographical limitations. Software DRM commonly prevents or limits ownership transfer. DRM is any digital control over any sort of IP right.

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