How do you exchange something that neither of you own? Beyond bragging rights, you will need some way to establish legal ownership of something because you own the corresponding NFT. So why not sell that ownership directly without the level of indirection that is the NFT? I guess the reason is that you have decoupled ownership and the ability to sell that ownership, making it easier to speculate independently of legal domains like countries.

Really, it's just adding a level of indirection, as always :-)

> I guess the reason is that you have decoupled ownership and the ability to sell that ownership, making it easier to speculate independent of legal domains like countries.

> Really, it's just adding a level of indirection, as always :-)

Yeah, that's basically how I see NFTs currently.

If Nvidia provided an nft for every graphics card they sold, and every online marketplace like ebay required that you provide that nft to resell the card, then that truck of stolen graphics cards becomes much harder to move.

I can't tell if you're being facetious, but Jesus what a terrible idea. What if you lose your private key and lose access to the NFT? Can you not use the graphics card? Or can you not sell it? What if NVidia goes out of business someday in the future and the card gets bricked because they stop maintaining the chain that held all the NFT's of the graphics cards?

Peesumably if Nvidia went out of business then eBay would just stop enforcing having it.

But otherwise there's no advantage compared to a traditional database that I can see...

Sure, but you don't need a Blockchain for that. An ordinary database solves the problem more easily and less wastefully.

Ahh, in that case, the problem this solves is the database owner has admin power, and could take away your graphics card.

This is similar to how I was always worried that Bank of America would arbitrarily change the balance in my account for some reason, but bitcoin solves this problem. Now I just have to worry about losing my password or getting hacked and losing all of my money, and that's just much less realistic than a major bank abusing their centralized admin powers to change my balance.

There is so much Poe's law content in this thread - not sure if you're being facetious or not. But I'll bite.

If Bank of America deducts money from your account, you can call customer support and threaten to file a complaint with a regulatory agency, threaten to close your account, or just take them to court. No guarantees that you'll get your money back, but at least there's a chance.

If you lose your wallet password. It's game over. 0% chance of ever recovering any of that money.

Do you see the difference though? One is something you can control, and the other is something you rely on other parties mot to do or to later fix.

I would imagine that a majority of the world is fine with giving up a little control to have a chance of getting their money back.

How does the online marketplace enforce that identifier in the provided NFT corresponds to hardware id of the card?

How do you prove that said NFT is issued by OEM?

How do you avoid NFTs being issued by the seller themselves?

So, like serial numbers, but more fragile?

The difference is that nVidia would not be able to remove your NFT from its db of serial numbers, because the association between the number and you, instead of being in a DB it is in the blockchain itself, and the only one that can change that association is the holder of the NFT.

So in this scenario would the NFT be burned onto the card's ROM, and basically serve as a serial number you can trade without the participation of the manufacturer?

That's still rather convoluted.

How does this prevent Nvidia from switching to a new blockchain, migrating the transaction data, and deprecating the old one?

Until someone made a counterfeit, sold that (with the NFT) and kept the original. They can simultaneously "prove" they've sold the original and also reap the benefits of having the graphics card.

The same thing applies to other similar "NFT as certificate of authenticity" schemes I've seen, such as around luxury goods.

Why would this be better than physical possession and proof of purchase?

> (...) then that truck of stolen graphics cards becomes much harder to move.

That sounds like a convoluted and impractical solution looking for a problem. Mobile service companies and hardware vendors managed to implement services that support activation and bricking without getting any crypto-related buzzword in the way.

> How do you exchange something that neither of you own?

This seems to be no problem in finance — who owns what in a contract-for-difference?

You cant own property, man! :D

Yes, this is correct. For now, people are willing to participate in the collective delusion that these tokens are what they claim to represent: real ownership of an off-chain asset. I don't think that's going to last.

It's possible to imbue an NFT, itself, with real value. Like if it was a legally recognized title. Or if ownership of an NFT could be used to produce an authorization token for access to some physical or digital experience.

Isn't this the entire purpose of smart contracts in Ethereum, the underlying system for most NFTs? What do NFTs add?

Smart contracts are a very generic concept. NFTs are a smart contract design pattern. They typically employ standardized smart contracts (e.g. ERC-721, ERC-1155) so that services can be built to interface with any standard NFT contract. But it's also possible to make custom smart contracts to manage non-fungible digital assets.