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Comment by Ekaros | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, analogy I just came up. This would be same as buying piece of paper with name of the art work and then signature by artist(possibly fake). So some value, but on average not really. Unless artist was very popular and those signatures were exceedingly rare...

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You're buying a receipt.

correct me if I'm wrong, but a receipt dressed up in a brochure that in most cases is being marketed as "art". The address to this brochure doesn't change but the "art" at the end of it can change without your notice?

Another analogy: you own the pointer not the value stored in memory.

I'd argue it's more similar to buying a signed copy of a book by an author. It doesn't prevent them from printing more copies, but it is also worth more than an unsigned copy.

More like a torn out page with signature, without the book. The book itself is nearby, but another person holds it in his hands and can open it for you when requested.

the author's signature has value because the author has a very limited amount of time in his life to give out signatures. moreover not only it takes time to sign stuff but it also takes effort. these two combined, plus some subjective personal feelings about the author and their importance, give value to a physical signature. digital signatures on the other hand are effortless and automatic, the author doesn't have to do anything beyond generating a public key pair once

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