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.
> 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.
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?