Re:NFTs unbundle ownership from enjoyment
by manigandham on Saturday April 03, 2021 @01:19AM
(#26678605)
There's no such thing as digital scarcity. It's only artificial scarcity, and for that you need something to control the supply.
Anyone can copy the asset. Anyone can also create another NFT to the same asset. So which token is the "real" one? That's the centralized scarcity that's required, which really just added a layer of indirection without solving for anything.
> "spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on artwork or signed sports memorabilia because of the utlity"
Again, this isn't about utility. It's about intrinsic value. Physical goods have a single original object which gives them value that digital items don't.
Scarcity of precisely what is the question. In this case, a small amount of metadata. That metadata is inherently worthless, because the metadata is just information that can be copied, and a new supposedly "scarce" token can be created with the same metadata.
It's not like people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on artwork or signed sports memorabilia because of the utlity. You can get a comparable print or a brand new piece of sports gear for far less. There is some grey area on the lower end though, and an NFT has zero utility here.