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Comment by ericjang | Hacker News Reader

Interesting idea. But doesn't this rely on public acceptance of the "imbuing of the original object's essence into NFT?"

How do you encourage people to associate the act of destruction with an act of value transfer?

As a counterexample, an art vandal destroying a piece of art does not inherit the value of the art, even though the vandal and art interact in a culturally significant way such that the art ceases to exist after the interaction.

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First, I think there's a fundamental difference between a vandal destroying something they don't own, and the owner intentionally choosing to destroy it as an act of sacrifice.

Having said that, there actually is some power in the self sacrifice of engaging in a destructive act giving a person's message more power and attention (see Unabomber Manifesto as a prime example).

Second, at least a subculture of people already do accept destruction of real world things as an act that imbues the a digital entity with the real world scarcity. It's called proof of work, and bitcoin is constantly 'sacrificing' real world energy which imbues the token with value in many people's minds. Enough so make it a trillion dollar asset class.

What you described seems much more like cult insanity than anything else.

Someone did this with a Banksy print a while back, bought it, burned it, sold it as an NFT. And the NFT sold for several times the value that the print would have. That was back in the NFT frenzy days of early-this-year though.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/17/burnt-banksys-...

The reaction to burning the constitution would be overwhelmingly negative. Maybe like KLF's burning a million quid it would ultimately shake out as a powerful statement, but I sort of doubt it.

The fact that the NFT sold for more than the original print after the act suggests to me that the "sacrifice-value-transfer" is not an exact 1:1 process, since the resulting NFT had a different value. Yes, the owner is probably delighted that the NFT is worth more, but then I'd argue that "uploading a physical object's value to the digital realm" is no longer the right way to think about this.

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