Comment by MaxBarraclough | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MaxBarraclough | Hacker News Reader

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> I mean what is the value of having NFT's at all? Fraud and price inflation might be solvable problems, but it still seems like you have the core issue that there's no underlying value to the asset at all.

I think the analogy to baseball cards works very well. Owning an NFT generally doesn't grant you copyrights over the underlying work of art. Owning a baseball card doesn't mean the athlete now works for you. They can both still have value as collectible items, if that's something that interests you.

The problem is when people start talking about NFTs as if it entitles the holder to ownership of the underlying thing. It's possible to own a work of art, either physically or in terms of copyrights. NFTs are neither.

When Dorsey sold an NFT of the first ever tweet, that didn't entitle the buyer to copyrights or even the ability to delete the tweet. It's purely a collectible that derives value from official endorsement and scarcity. That's not something that interests me personally, but it all seems above board. The problem is when I read Dorsey sold the first ever tweet. He did not. He sold an NFT.

Yeah I think it's quite different from baseball cards. There the authenticity of the physical item is quite a part of the value proposition. People want to own the the actual original which was part of the print run in whatever year. Reproductions have no value, and things like the physical condition of the card play a huge role.

With an NFT there's nothing besides the notion of ownership which separates the owner of the NFT from anyone else who has access to the digital asset.

I'm not saying there's nothing interesting about the notion of digital ownership, but someone would have to figure out a way for that ownership to actually mean something, which has not been achieved in the current iteration.

> There the authenticity of the physical item is quite a part of the value proposition.

It's exactly the same for NFTs. Dorsey's NFT sold for $2.9 precisely because it was 'issued' by him, and there's the implicit promise that he won't sell another NFT associated with that same tweet. If you or I tried to sell NFTs to that tweet, nothing would happen to the tweet, but we wouldn't find willing buyers.

> I'm not saying there's nothing interesting about the notion of digital ownership, but someone would have to figure out a way for that ownership to actually mean something, which has not been achieved in the current iteration.

Ownership of digital goods is the domain of copyright law.

> It's exactly the same for NFTs. Dorsey's NFT sold for $2.9 precisely because it was 'issued' by him, and there's the implicit promise that he won't sell another NFT associated with that same tweet. If you or I tried to sell NFTs to that tweet, nothing would happen to the tweet, but we wouldn't find willing buyers.

There's nothing tangible here What does the "owner" of the tweet actually have that nobody else has? It's an incredibly abstract sense of ownership which doesn't even have any social consensus as far as whether it actually exists or not.

> There's nothing tangible here

Tangible strikes me as an imprecise word. In a sense, all sorts of things are intangible, from copyrights to money. Does a bitcoin count as intangible?

> What does the "owner" of the tweet actually have that nobody else has?

It's plainly Dorsey's tweet, not mine, and not yours. Dorsey wrote it, published it on his account, has the ability to destroy the tweet, and presumably owns the copyright. It's the same thing with baseball cards, they're valuable because they're official, and the community has to defend against counterfeits.

> It's plainly Dorsey's tweet, not mine, and not yours. Dorsey wrote it, published it on his account, has the ability to destroy the tweet,

I think that's the point. With a baseball card, I clearly own the physical card, and can put it in the spokes of my bicycle if I want to.

You mentioned the owner of the tweet is the Dorsey and I agree. If so, then what right did the NFT owner purchase? None as far as I can tell.

Right. It doesn't entitle the holder to any rights, it's purely a collectible.

Again, owning an NFT doesn't mean you own the underlying work, and owning a baseball card doesn't mean the athlete works for you.

The idea of the floating signifier comes to mind. [0]

> With a baseball card, I clearly own the physical card, and can put it in the spokes of my bicycle if I want to.

Sure, but they both share the property of scarcity, and in the same way. The originator could in principle dilute the scarcity by issuing more (printing more baseball cards or issuing more NFTs for the same underlying asset). Is there anything of interest that changes by making it physical? I suppose the ability to destroy, but I think that's about it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_signifier (not a great article in my opinion but I don't know of a better one)

Also, I made a typo earlier: Dorsey's NFT of course sold for $2.9m, not $2.9.

scarcity is only the supply side of the equation.

next year if everyone decides NFTs are nonsense then the demand side of the equation could collapse to zero.

scarce things are only valuable if there's demand for it. things which are only unique are not inherently valuable unless humans decide that uniqueness is also valuable.

> next year if everyone decides NFTs are nonsense then the demand side of the equation could collapse to zero.

...

> things which are only unique are not inherently valuable

Of course. Just like baseball cards. Put more broadly, all value is contextual; there's no such thing as inherent value. In a survival situation, a bottle of water has more value than a gold bar.

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