[rleahy22]

- I have a piece of art - I too want that piece of art

You either become or hire an expert art imitator to imperfectly recreate that same piece of art or you can't have it. vs - I have an NFT for a png - I also want that PNG

You download that PNG

[dcolkitt]

This is like saying, I now own a million BTC because I forked the Bitcoin blockchain and moved all of Satoshi’s holdings to my wallet.

Ownership is just a social construct. Society now recognizes cryoto keys on the blockchain as a form of ownership. The attitude of “just copy the JPEG” is a little bit like the Native Americans who were happy to trade Manhattan for beads because they thought it was ridiculous that anyone could “own” land.

The world has fundamentally changed. You might not like it. You might think it’s stupid. You might even think that it will snap to its senses sooner or later. But the reality is this is the world we live in now, and scoffing at the new reality doesn’t change the facts that JPEGs of monkeys on the blockchain are now worth more than Picassos.

[user-the-name]

> Society now recognizes cryoto keys on the blockchain as a form of ownership

It really doesn't.

> The world has fundamentally changed

It really hasn't.

[recursive]

Are you saying someone's going to stop my from downloading the JPEG with guns?

[rchaud]

Everyone will follow the rules. You wouldn't download a car, would you?

[yellowapple]

Knock knock. It's the MPAA.

[squabble]

The blockchain allows me to cryptographically prove that I knew some information at a certain time.

If I was the first person to record that I knew this information, that's a pretty good proxy to proof that I created it. That makes me the author, artist, or inventor of this information.

If other people find this information valuable, then they might want to pay me because I released this information. Because I was the first person to sign the information on the blockchain, they know the right person to pay.

So the blockchain provides a way of tracking the author of information, which is not controlled by any company or government.

[Zababa]

Copies of art usually have not that much value because the value is in possessing the original.

[rchaud]

Digital art is constantly stolen. Artists share designs online, and it's not much work copy the image and convert it into a T-shirt.

[Zababa]

Which is why NFT have a value, because you can't copy them like you can copy a PNG file.

[rchaud]

Or I could just buy the T-shirt at a fraction of the cost, and not care that it's not carrying a cryptographic signature.

Most NFTs that I've seen are incredibly flimsy-looking digital 'pieces', if I can even call them that. Their value itself is just as questionable, considering the artsts are unknown, the art is not a limited edition, and the cost to reproduce it is zero.

Maybe the market for NFTs is purely the '1000 true fans' types, the followers who will always pay for what you put out. But the majority of people are unlikely to have that relationship with the artist, even if they like what they saw on a transient Twitter post one day.

[Zababa]

> Or I could just buy the T-shirt at a fraction of the cost, and not care that it's not carrying a cryptographic signature.

Sure, if you want to have that T-shirt, or support the artist, or something. But the goal of NFTs is to guarantee the uniqueness of what you bought, usually (probably 99% of the time) because people want to invest in them. So a T-shirt won't do.

I see NFTs as the "ultimate abstraction" of all speculation. It's not anymore about the value of the thing itself, it's just that you can buy it, prove that you have it and resell it.

> Most NFTs that I've seen are incredibly flimsy-looking digital 'pieces', if I can even call them that. Their value itself is just as questionable, considering the artsts are unknown, the art is not a limited edition, and the cost to reproduce it is zero.

I agree with that, but still, you can speculate on the NFT so some people will do that. Again, I don't think the cost to reproduce being zero is a problem for NFTs. If you could make a copy of any Picasso painting for free, people would still buy and sell the original for millions.

> Maybe the market for NFTs is purely the '1000 true fans' types, the followers who will always pay for what you put out. But the majority of people are unlikely to have that relationship with the artist, even if they like what they saw on a transient Twitter post one day.

I think the artist doesn't even matter. NFTs today are a bit like shitcoins, some people just want to speculate/gamble.

I'm really crypto-skeptic in general, mostly because I can't see a use for any of those things. But I can see why the concept of NFTs is useful.

[jrm4]

Right? My idea above is sort of -- let's assume NFTs more or less work for the "1000 true fans," could the idea be tweaked for the smaller or more divisible for the "100,000 casual" fans?