It's a scam because you're buying nothing in both cases lol. You're exchanging money, with value, for nothing.

When you buy stocks, you think you're buying a share of a corporation. It sits in your brokerage account. Now you've traded money for "something" you can't touch.

The existence of your stock ownership depends on a legal and social framework to exist. If the government was overthrown and you were exiled tomorrow, you have nothing. If an asteroid destroyed half the earth tomorrow, and you survived, you still have nothing.

You take for granted the systems in which you live and function in. There are many things we "own" and cannot touch, yet they are as real as anything. The money in your bank account is an example of that. It has value, you own it, but if we are stranded on a deserted island with no electricity or wifi, it ceases to exist to us.

> The existence of your stock ownership depends on a legal and social framework to exist.

That's true for most things we own these days, and it works quite well.

It does, and it will always be needed for the physical world.

> There are many things we "own" and cannot touch, yet they are as real as anything.

That's a great metaphor, but the issue is that NFTs are an order of magnitude more fake than stocks, money, etc.

You should qualify what "more fake" means and how.

I guarantee some court of the 27th century will be deliberating the validity of someone's claim on Gliese 674 simply because they have the only documented claim anyone ever bothered to make, in the form of a vacuum preserved slip of foolscap naming their star registry buying ancestor as the owner.

Kind of like this: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/05/07/the-fullness-o...

I can almost promise you this won't happen - since star registries have no claim to the rights they're selling. Most star registries I've ever seen are purely about naming and just because a town is named Munkton and I'm the sole descendant of the original owner doesn't mean I have any implicit claim to any of the town land - even undeveloped city land is still held by actual entities.

I will grant it is slightly possible if we have a data destruction period between now and the 27th century. Claims to property after the nazis were overthrown could often be made by jewish residents with very little proof due to the fact that all the real proof was intentionally destroyed. But even those could end up extremely contentious. You can read up on Jewish Restitution[1] and you'll see a lot of really difficult cases that had to be dealt with.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_claims_for_restitution...

What if I didn't exchange any money? What if the token in question does provide value by granting me access to something?

The former isn't really possible right, as you have to pay at minimum gas fees. The latter is extrinsic.

The former is possible on chains where "gas" is a fraction of a fraction of a cent. Even if we're being pedantic there - what, the miners/validators are the scammers in this case?

The latter is not extrinsic at all - it's all in the contracts on the blockchain.