[whywhywhywhy]

Think you need to look into how the art market actually functions. The reality of preserving these artifacts goes way beyond just owning the painting, I mean even over time the paintings have to be re-painted over to restore them as they age anyway. Then you have things like videoart, digital art or just conceptual art.

Maurizio Cattelan's "Comedian" piece, if you own it you don't just own the banana till it rots but the concept and the instructions on how to reproduce it for exhibition, it's not the same banana what you "own" isn't very tangible beyond the instructions on how to reproduce the work.

The fact you can save an image of the Mona Lisa doesn't mean you own it, sure you probably agree because its a physical object but what about say video art like Bill Viola's works. They're digital but you copying the digital file doesn't mean you own it.

Sure you can copy the ugly ape drawing, you could even try to resell it but buyers can tell it's not the real original ugly ape because of the blockchain.

Not defending it either way, just spelling out the mindset that causes it to have value.

[jagger27]

If in X years the domain in the link to the NFT stored in the blockchain expired and ends up pointing to a new image was it ever an ugly ape?

Is there at least a hash of the image stored with the metadata and link?