Why? It's the same thing as buying art, or baseball cards, or anything that relies on scarcity except instead of having a real-world thing you just have an abstract token. We already do that with money, why not do it with the rest?
You either become or hire an expert art imitator to imperfectly recreate that same piece of art or you can't have it. vs - I have an NFT for a png - I also want that PNG
You download that PNG
Ownership is just a social construct. Society now recognizes cryoto keys on the blockchain as a form of ownership. The attitude of “just copy the JPEG” is a little bit like the Native Americans who were happy to trade Manhattan for beads because they thought it was ridiculous that anyone could “own” land.
The world has fundamentally changed. You might not like it. You might think it’s stupid. You might even think that it will snap to its senses sooner or later. But the reality is this is the world we live in now, and scoffing at the new reality doesn’t change the facts that JPEGs of monkeys on the blockchain are now worth more than Picassos.
It really doesn't.
> The world has fundamentally changed
It really hasn't.
If I was the first person to record that I knew this information, that's a pretty good proxy to proof that I created it. That makes me the author, artist, or inventor of this information.
If other people find this information valuable, then they might want to pay me because I released this information. Because I was the first person to sign the information on the blockchain, they know the right person to pay.
So the blockchain provides a way of tracking the author of information, which is not controlled by any company or government.
Most NFTs that I've seen are incredibly flimsy-looking digital 'pieces', if I can even call them that. Their value itself is just as questionable, considering the artsts are unknown, the art is not a limited edition, and the cost to reproduce it is zero.
Maybe the market for NFTs is purely the '1000 true fans' types, the followers who will always pay for what you put out. But the majority of people are unlikely to have that relationship with the artist, even if they like what they saw on a transient Twitter post one day.
Sure, if you want to have that T-shirt, or support the artist, or something. But the goal of NFTs is to guarantee the uniqueness of what you bought, usually (probably 99% of the time) because people want to invest in them. So a T-shirt won't do.
I see NFTs as the "ultimate abstraction" of all speculation. It's not anymore about the value of the thing itself, it's just that you can buy it, prove that you have it and resell it.
> Most NFTs that I've seen are incredibly flimsy-looking digital 'pieces', if I can even call them that. Their value itself is just as questionable, considering the artsts are unknown, the art is not a limited edition, and the cost to reproduce it is zero.
I agree with that, but still, you can speculate on the NFT so some people will do that. Again, I don't think the cost to reproduce being zero is a problem for NFTs. If you could make a copy of any Picasso painting for free, people would still buy and sell the original for millions.
> Maybe the market for NFTs is purely the '1000 true fans' types, the followers who will always pay for what you put out. But the majority of people are unlikely to have that relationship with the artist, even if they like what they saw on a transient Twitter post one day.
I think the artist doesn't even matter. NFTs today are a bit like shitcoins, some people just want to speculate/gamble.
I'm really crypto-skeptic in general, mostly because I can't see a use for any of those things. But I can see why the concept of NFTs is useful.
And then NFT's just add a whole new special layer. Again, what I suggested above was perhaps a way to parlay this very stupid thing into something perhaps less stupid (the ultimate goal being to find a way to support artists, but one that "relies on scarcity" in a way at least might get more people other than "obviously stupidly rich people with money to burn" involved.)