I think baseball cards is the best comparison. People pay this much because it's official, it's a collectors item. You could make a nice color copy, but it will not be the same, even if the copy is hard to distinguish.

The world is moving to digital. Kids play with digital things more than with physical. So how can you own a digital collectors item? Best solution seems NFT.

If the actual collector's item is freely available and all you get is your name listed as having paid for it, you're not really "collecting" so much as showing that you paid money for each item.

If I collect stamps, it's fun to show off your stamp collection because you have those stamps. It's different if everyone can also have all of those stamps, and the hobby is reduced down to "I have these stamps and also my name is on the blockchain next to each of them". There's no physical scarcity for the stamps, there's scarcity for your name being listed as a buyer in a ledger. Call me old fashioned, but that seems to suck the fun out of it.

> If the actual collector's item is freely available and all you get is your name listed as having paid for it

I think this really hits the nail on the head. Even if you 'own' an NFT, you have no control over who gets to see it, who doesn't get to see it, who can casually claim to own it and show it on their phone (since it is after all identical to the real deal and no one's going to sit there in the bar and verify it - at least not without the existence of some kind of designated authority). This means that you did quite literally pay to have your name listed as the owner in some obscure place people may or may not care to check unless you're doing a buy/sell transaction.

You do have it like you have any other digital clout (likes on an Instagram post for example). Perhaps with younger generations spending more and more time on digital devices, proving you have something in a digital wallet is just as good as owning the physical thing. Maybe it's even better.

I struggle to see the value (some CryptoPunks are going for outrageous prices). That being said, I think we are early days. I find these types of innovations to be interesting and want to see where it goes.

You're missing the social component.

Even if you don't have a tangible good, you can still signal that you are apart of a group by buying an NFT.

NFTs are basically about buying status in a community.

Is this solving a new problem? You could buy things for status before NFTs, and simply having them was proof of ownership. An entry on the blockchain associated with a hash is hardly as "cool" (if we want to talk about social constructs) as showing a picture with the thing you own. Hell, you can pay money without NFTs to put almost anything you could want in the blockchain.

With NFTs, the "thing" the NFT shows ownership isn't the piece that's supposed to be valuable, since that's readily duplicated, it's the NFT (and what it represents) itself.

"The social component" requires people to ask agree that NFTs are the right system of value, and that requires maintaining the illusion that the token itself is a valuable thing to own. So yes, if this formalized way of showing that you've spent money is widely accepted by a community as a status symbol, sure, go for it. But there's a lot of people even here in the comments who think that's awfully silly, especially when you can buy actual physical things that show your status to people who don't care about what entries exist on the blockchain somewhere.

> An entry on the blockchain associated with a hash is hardly as "cool" (if we want to talk about social constructs) as showing a picture with the thing you own

You don't get to decide that for everyone else though.

You and many other people can think it's silly, but it's highly likely (If not proven) that there is a subset of people who _do_ think it's cool.

I don't really have an interest in NFTs, but I absolutely see why someone _would_ be interested in them.

You are still talking about physical items.

Let's say you collect some rare item like "the sword of sauron" in some MMO game. This time, it's really yours because it lives on the blockchain. Sure, it's a digital item and the data (3D mesh + prpoerties) could be copied, but only the real thing can be used in game.

This thing is a real digital collectors item.

I could see this work with digital Pokemon and things like that.

Considering your examples: if I have the sword of Sauron in the game, then it’s mine. I collected a lot of digital items during my life and never had a need for a blockchain. I would also never care if a « true owner » is registered somewhere as long as I have mine. Same for Pokémon’s, if I have them in my game then they are mine.

Sure, but when you want to trade them, you are stuck on the platform.

I used to play Crossout, and there is no way to trade or sell your things to other players for real money.

I'm not talking about blockchains representing those items, I'm talking about those items being in the blockchain. This way, the item is really yours, you can sell it to anyone you want, on any platform you want. Basically just like a real item.

Right now, game items are stuck on the platform. When it's in the blockchain, it's really yours, and you can use it on the platform. Big difference.

I'm not claiming that this is going to be the future, but I think it has a high chance of succeeding.

Imagine all those digital items you currently own, you just throw it on some market and you can sell all of those for real money.

The physical world collectibles will have NFTs associated, allowing the best of both worlds.

Why would they? It seems to defeat the purpose. You can sell the item in the real world without the NFT. The uniqueness of the item is implicit in its physical form. If you did sell the item again with an NFT, there's nothing really mandating that you actually turn the item over to the new owner. The NFT has no material connection to the item, so it doesn't even provide verifiable provenance.

You could also sell a certificate of authenticity without an artwork, but why would you?

Maybe I lost the physical artwork and I'm selling it to a forger. Exactly nothing ties an NFT to the real world object it is associated with.

I like the baseball card analogy because it's not an analogy, it's a concept. Baseball cards were never a thing around me, but Pokemon cards were, and people would pay true money for these useless things, so why not NFTs?

Then why do people buy paintings? They could just own a photograph. Don't tell me it's because they appreciate the subtle brush strokes or the smell of the oil paint. It's because they want their name to be associated with a great artist. Because in the halls of MoMA in New York it will say painting by Jackson Pollock on permanent loan by <insert name of your foundation>.

Comparing an original painting to a photograph of the painting is the exact issue the OP is making. They are asking why people would pay for a photo, when anyone could have the same photo. There is no original, scarce painting to own. Just all identical copies.

"Original" doesn't really exist in the digital native world. Data is literally copied when it gets distributed.

Maybe think of NFT as a pointer to the head of a link list, the start of the data distribution chain. And we assign some arbitrary monetary value to that pointer, because, well, there's only 1 head of a link list.

There's a lot of original art that's purchased that will never appear in a museum or have someone's name attached to be shown to the general public. While I'm sure there are some who do so for the reasons you describe, they're far from the only one.

There are people who buy originals because they truly like the work, and they appreciate and enjoy seeing the original, physical piece that you don't get with even the finest print.

You also have collectors who, in addition to the above, also buy art as an investment. Say you buy a piece at a small art show from a new artist. You pay a few thousand for it. They keep painting, and years later, are appearing in larger shows, or may have created a piece or two that generated a lot of attention. Now those early works you have from them could be worth a lot more as they're indicative of that person's earlier period. There are forums, exchanges, and shows exclusively for this sort of trading.

(Source: Married to a (digital) fantasy illustrator, attend a lot of art shows, and talk with artists and collectors. I hope to own an original or two from some of my favorite artists in the coming years. And no, it won't be an investment. =)

Yes! Currently, NFTs lack a stage - I can't imagine deriving the same level of MoMA association with "Owned by jcfrei (0x859128479178571823784)" when I got to a webpage.

I can.

And that already happens.

When prestigious institutions are involved you'll be able to check their addresses and signatures too.

It is more about the transfer and hypothecation of value, which this scarcity and transparency allows.

If it doesn't catch on it doesn't catch on. Right now people are clamoring for this future.

The stage is the community which the NFT is related to.

The "original" digital work is identical in fidelity, form, and use to any reproduction. Your metaphor is wrong because in an NFT system, you don't get a photograph, you get a molecule for molecule identical replica of the original painting. In that case, yeah? Why buy art if you can get a copy that's literally an identical clone of the original?

If anyone could, at no meaningful cost, download a physically identical replica of a Jackson Pollock and have it, you can be sure the price of art would suffer quite a bit. Your ability to prove that you are the person who owns the work is meaningless if anyone can just also freely have the exact work itself.

The artist should probably create a license for the use of their artwork that includes crediting both themselves and the NFT holder when the artwork is used.

Effectively the NFT should be a delegation of some of the IP ownership rights.

Well, that or people might actually like the artworks. With a few exceptions, a photograph of a painting is not going to give you even an approximation of the experience of the real thing. Start with scale, and use your imagination from there.

it is the same as any collectible, there is a market of people that like originals, except now there is a greater assurance of it being the original, primarily because of the earlier block/timestamp compared to a duplicate NFT which would therefore not hold its value, and the non-NFT versions of the art has no transaction so they do not store value. This assurance is accessible to any creator or collector.

a whole industry of appraisers and committees now gone. yay. automatic ability to pay royalties to the artist upon resale just built in, no contracts or enforcement of contracts necessary. no trust involved for lower value works where everyone is unfamiliar with contracts and lawyers. more efficient market available to all.

> there is a market of people that like originals, except now there is a greater assurance of it being the original

for it to have some value there must be consensus around it.

if I have the same exact copy of the digital art and I am selling it in a market that does not recognize NFT as proof (think about China that doesn't even recognize patents) what value does this hold?

or if two competing entities are both claiming to have emitted the one true token, which one do I trust?

we are thinking today: the artist can tell which one is the good one, but what if is the future and the artist is dead? do we need a token that identifies the artist statement? and who verifies that the content of the email was not forged?

isn't a piece of paper with a signature in a closet inside a notary office a simple mechanism?

What makes NFT special, except that probably collector are actually paying to collect NFTs and not the item attached to them?

I know many collectors, I don't see them collecting digital fingerprints

I pay real money to have artists endorse my association with digital artworks they have created on my behalf. For all intents and purposes, these are not works for hire - The artist retains the rights, I have just sponsored their creation. Doing so post-facto isn't insane, either. The artist gets paid, I get warm fuzzies.

The blockchain is nice in that it takes control of that endorsement out of the artist's hands, so they can't "take it back" and stop supporting that endorsement. I'm certain that has happened to people. I'm also certain that this cure is worse than the disease.

Nothing says decentralizing finance like artificially restricting the existence of digital object. Of course, this statement is a bit smug, but while I caved in to the FOMO and bought some Ada could before the Mary Hard Fork, I have yet a real world use case for any of the coins.

If there would be a wallet filled with credits where I can gift / tip creators for their work independent of their bank | location | currency, this would be an amazing use case.

Maybe if you buy an NFT of an image you own 1/2000th of the rights and then can sue people for 1/2000th of the royalties when they tweet or blog it?

I could get behind that.

One interesting dilemma for prestigious artists is as their work resells at auction at higher prices they don't get any of the money, except when they go create a new artwork for their higher priced market. A way to fix this could be by the artist always being able to make genesis blocks for past artwork NFTs.

NFTs with image rights would be great for news photographers and paparazzi for starters. Or rather it would be good for lawyers representing them?

The ongoing commission to artists for future sales already exists in many NFTs

From an IP perspective aren’t NFTs the perfect sale? Basically you can let people squabble over ownership of the NFT without having to give up any IP rights over the work itself. At least when you buy a physical painting you can do what you want with it.

"A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free YouTube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month."

I think the point is, people are fans so they want to collect and have a pride of ownership.

I think the real answer is "because it boosts the economy and gets more artists involved".