[miracle2k]

But in the non-NFT world, artists are selling prints of their work, and have been doing so for decades - hardly a fad! Those can be fairly expensive for the top tier, and they work the same way: You trust the artist will not inflate the supply of the same work with additional prints later on.

[deckard1]

yes, but you can't just recreate a print at high quality unless there happens to be a digital image of it floating around.

Here's Beeple's $69 million artwork in full resolution (warning: 300 megs!):

https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUw...

The metadata for the IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmPAg1mjxcEQPPtqsLoEcauVedaeMH81WXDPvPx...

Because a token is public we can all see the contents. Now, you could theoretically just put the hash in there without the content existing on the IPFS (or elsewhere), and then give the owner the content after the sale via a separate channel. But now you've got the problem of how to verify what you're buying is the real deal. Furthermore, it complicates resale (not that IPFS will save you there, IIRC if you're the one storing content on IPFS and the only one, then it's possible you just stop hosting it and the data vanishes).

[miracle2k]

I might be able to recreate it well enough. I might be able to pay a cheap poster in a museum shop! I can probably recreate a Wall Drawing by Sol LeWitt (since they being frequently recreated anyway), and I can certainly glue a banana to a wall.

It all leads back to the question of why we value the original in the first place. People have all kinds of answers to this - why it's different for "real" art - but those points usually don't hold up to scrutiny.

There is something about physical things that a digital image is lacking, for sure. But most of the value we ascribe to things, even to the Mona Lisa, is totally arbitrary, a collective illusion.