> You could argue that one particular NFT is the official Picasso NFT because it was sold by the owners of the Picasso painting

I’m pretty sure the analogy would be that Picasso himself actually issued the NFT. Anyone can “argue” that Picasso issued an NFT, but that’s just like arguing that your extremely skillful forgery is a Picasso original. What’s important is if it actually is an original.

With an NFT everyone has access to the exact same byte-for-byte copy of the art work, but one person gets to hold a special token saying that they have some special pseudo-ownership relation to it.

So, a more apt analogy would be Picasso donating a painting to a museum, but trying to sell you a certificate saying that you own the artwork, but you're unable to move it to your private collection or gain any additional access than the general public.

That seems like a pretty raw deal to me.

A signed print of a picasso painting would quite likely go for quite a bit, even if you could get the same print sans signature for $20 in the gift shop. Even one created post-death by family foundation etc as a limited edition probably would. Some people do value the scarcity and it being tied to the creator more, think an NFT represents that and thus pay more money. (I personally am not interested in owning NFTs, but "people spend money on scarce things I wouldn't spend money on" isn't exactly a new phenomenon)

Your argument is about digital art, and has little to do with NFTs. No one is claiming that the owner of an NFT has different access to the piece of digital art itself, of course.

Then, what is the value of the NFT? You own the rights to a hyperlink?

No, you own the NFT, which people value because the artist issued it.

Cool, if you want to pay real dollars for a digitally signed link to a web resource, go ahead.

The link is a red herring. Just like an original Picasso, the content of the thing you own is responsible for very little of its value (an excellent forgery would deliver all the aesthetic value of the original, but it would be much less valuable). The provenance of the thing is the reason it is valued. There’s really nothing new or unique about NFTs other than the technology used to implement them.

But they aren't. They're pieces of cardboard with a particular story. The card has no value itself, which is why a rookie card isn't very valuable, unless its of someone famous. Why? because one is a story right at the beginning, which may not even be a good one, where there other has an established success story behind it. Owning the card is representative of owning a chunk of that story. You can say its arbitrary, but the fact is the picture on the card is of a real person with a real story, and their image on the card is part of literally that same story.

So with NFTs, its the same, anyone can write a document that says "this certifies ownership of a picasso painting" and it doesn't mean much of anything. However if Picasso writes up a document broadcasts somehow he has done so and the document says you own x painting, then its easy enough to certify to anyone that you own a Picasso from the man himself. The story is not arbitrary, this is precisely why it has value. The arbitrary easily copied stuff is cheap and meaningless and known as such. The "rare" NFTs and stuff selling for massive prices is expensive because it is genuinely so. You can write a comment here about how easily you can create a counterfeit NFT, but how easily can you actually convince someone to buy it from you? You can observe that baseball cards are just pieces of cardboard but how easily can you acquire a card printed when batter X was a rookie?

I'm not saying this sort of value is easily quantifiable, but it is easily observable, identifiable that its reflective of a real element of reality and not (entirely) arbitrarily imagined.

Just minting something does not give it value. Sure, you can give it a price. Likely nobody will pay for it unless they think it truly has value. It’s the responsibility of each NFT creator to convince people that it’s worth anything.

Subsequent 'owners' too. One could say having your name on the trail diminishes the value

Just smells like laundering to me

Well, the art market is also largely powered by the elites' need to launder money, so in this sense they are similar.