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Comment by udbhavs | Hacker News Reader

Yes, that is another debate. My comment was more of a response to the many others I've seen debating whether NFT implies ownership of the art or what happens if the server hosting the image goes down (less of a problem if IPFS is utilised). My point is, it's irrelevant. And it never implied ownership of the art, so people who try to pass it off as such are woefully misunderstanding the technology and are probably scammers, and the people buying them are idiots. Cryptokitties, cryptopunks etc. are only valuable because they were the first ones doing these things, sort of like the "million dollar webpage" back in the day. There is literally no point in making an NFT without utility now, unless the minter is someone popular and in that case the NFT is a bet on their fame rising in the future and becomes a speculative asset (just like regular celebrity art).

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It is not a different debate, though. If, as you say, there is literally no point in making an NFT without utility now, yet being an NFT does not distinguish NFTs' utility from the alternatives, then what is the point? It is just that which follows in the quote: ...unless the minter is someone popular and in that case the NFT is a bet on their fame rising in the future and becomes a speculative asset (just like regular celebrity art).

Using NFTs offloads asset management to a generalized third party solution so you don't have to implement your own marketplace and trading, the decentralized claim being the main thing making it viable (otherwise you'd just be handing over the keys to your digital warehouse to some random entity). Whether that is desirable or the right fit for your application is another question, but the tech clearly has differences.

> Cryptokitties, cryptopunks etc. are only valuable because they were the first ones doing these things, sort of like the "million dollar webpage" back in the day.

Exactly. A few original JPEG NFTs will survive, but 90% of the late comers and copycats will fail.

> There is literally no point in making an NFT without utility now, unless the minter is someone popular

Precisely. That ship has sailed and this is why you see a popularity of copycat NFTs JPEGs upon copycat JPEGs since that they know it is a scam. They are taking advantage of the market before it collapses just like the wild west of ICO scams in 2017. Now the SEC has put a stop to that and has regulated them as securities, [0] making unregistered ICOs as illegal. Similar regulations may happen to NFTs.

The only form of NFT that seems to have some value, valid use-cases and utility is a blockchain domain name which is likely to surpass the nonsense of useless NFT JPEGs.

[0] https://www.sec.gov/ICO

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