> In terms of high-quality art, the Picasso is artificially scarce in the sense that there are reproductions so high-quality that only experts can tell the original apart from the reproduction.

Except that those are also scarce because they take the labor of expert hands to make too. People actually would pay money for known forgeries because of it. Absent copyright law and a desire to fund the artist, no one would pay for digital art because copies are as close to free as makes no difference.

Sure, but we were talking about spending money on NFTs versus spend it on (original) Picassos. Now you're talking about spending money copying a Picasso versus (not) spending money copying the digital artwork that an NFT was minted for, which is distinct from the NFT itself and worth approximately zero, as you say.

That's a distinction without a difference. I'm saying the forged art is valuable because there is a cost to produce it, and the JPG isn't because there effectively isn't a cost to produce it.

The NFT took work to produce, sure, but it's just a number with some mathematical relationship to other numbers and means absolutely nothing without other systems agreeing that it means something. It creates work to be done where none needs to be done solely for the purpose of trying to fit a square peg (post-scarcity information) into a round hole (scarcity-based markets).

> That's a distinction without a difference.

That's where you're mistaken. An NFT is distinct from the work that the NFT is tied to, which might not necessarily be digital.

You can copy a Picasso, but no matter how good your copy is, you can't copy the "original" quality of a Picasso. That's all an NFT is, representing the "originaL" quality of something.

The worth (or lack thereof) of copies is completely irrelevant.

> An NFT is distinct from the work that the NFT is tied to, which might not necessarily be digital.

Yep. Which raises the question: what exactly does the NFT provide? Is the work it points to in any way lesser through its absence? If no, then why does the NFT exist?

> You can copy a Picasso, but no matter how good your copy is, you can't copy the "original" quality of a Picasso.

There's a long philosophical argument to be made here involving the ship of Theseus, the teletransportation paradox, and frankly thousands of years of philosophy of identity. Let me attempt a short version: if you have two identical paintings, and lack external information as to their origin, can not either one (or both) be said to be the 'true' painting? If so, then what value is there in the information that 'proves' one is the 'original'? The origin-information, an NFT in this case, is a construction, an arbitrary assurance. What value has an NFT that points at nothing?

> The worth (or lack thereof) of copies is completely irrelevant.

I think we agree about what NFT's are, so the only real disagreement is about their value. Precisely because of the point above, I think we would both agree that their value is completely divorced from the value of what they point to, right? So the NFT's value must stand on its own without regard to the work it points to, right? Therefore, saying it represents the 'originalness' of a work cannot be where its value comes from because that is a derivation of value from the value of the work.

I assert that the value of an NFT is effectively 0. Anyone can make any NFT they want, and it might be unique, but uniqueness is not inherently valuable. Here's a UUID v4: 6dee29bc-8798-4560-ba13-de94bac69333. I generated it just now and it is the first and theoretically only time that UUID will ever be generated. Since I have generated this UUID, I have gone ahead and signed it with a private key and thus claim ownership of it. Here's a pastebin to the public key: https://pastebin.com/ddVJxvck and the signed UUID: https://pastebin.com/0MweD9qN. This is effectively an NFT. How much would you like to pay me to sign a certificate of ownership transfer to you?

Summing all up: The work that went into the creation of a thing is all that has value. NFTs can be created for basically free by literally anyone who wants to and therefore they have no value. Claims that an NFTs value comes from it pointing to something are bunk as we both agree the value of what it points to is irrelevant.

> if you have two identical paintings, and lack external information as to their origin, can not either one (or both) be said to be the 'true' painting? If so, then what value is there in the information that 'proves' one is the 'original'?

This is the crux of it, really. Why do art buyers care so much about what the “original” is? If the reproduction is so good that you need an external expert to tell you which is the original and which is the reproduction, then that basically means it’s not the aesthetic qualities that you’re paying millions for, but the “original” quality that you’re paying for.

This original quality, as I’ve noted, allows you to signal your wealth/cultural tastes and whatnot. Now, I agree with you in that I hardly find any value myself in that, but it’s apparently worth millions to other people who are not us.

In short, I only claim that NFTs are as ridiculous/non-ridiculous as the traditional art market. If you think the traditional art markets are also bunk, fair enough. What I take issue with is thinking that NFTs are a uniquely stupid phenomenon but expensive traditional art is a respectable one.

If you're buying a $100M painting like Guernica - you should probably be an expert...

No, because you're rich as hell and will hire an actual expert to validate the origin of the painting. Come on, you think art history experts are the ones actually buying these paintings, as opposed to rich folk with too much money?

You think just because you're rich you can't have any taste in art?

Look - MBS bought that fake Da Vinci for $450M or whatever. I don't think the majority of people buying $50M+ paintings are complete morons. Maybe they are.

When did I say the rich don't have taste in art? I said the rich won't know whether they bought an original or a fake, because the fakes are high quality enough to pass as the real thing to the untrained eye. The art is worth that much not because of the aesthetics qualities, but because of the provenance and the high-status signaling and bragging rights that come with said provenance.

> Look - MBS bought that fake Da Vinci for $450M or whatever.

Case in point. That's why you hire an expert (or perhaps even a team of experts) to help you out.

No - it's worth that much because of who painted it. There are shitty drafts of Guernica that Picasso did that sell for hundreds of thousands. There are infinitely better drawings that one could not sell for a single penny. The artist is what gives it value. It's truly scarce because only so much work came from that artist - who people are obsessed with.

I will 100% grant that it's mostly about signaling and bragging rights. But NFTs are artificially scarce. Original work from Picasso is truly scarce.

It's most definitely not worth as much as MBS paid for it now that it's known to be a reproduction.

> But NFTs are artificially scarce.

We're just going in circles now. Reread my previous response to why they're no more artificially scarce than Picassos.