Please don't do this here.

My current way to explain to non techies is that it's like those "Name a star" sales:

* Artificial seeming scarcity out of something that's inherently abundant

* No actual ownership of actual thing

* Instead, a overly-detailed focus on mechanics of the process: We will send you a gilded certificate; we will put your entry into a leather bound book; this cook will be registered with United States Copyright Office; it will be added to Library of Congress, etc etc etc - giving seeming legitimacy to the endevour

The only thing that's missing, and it's a critical difference, is the complete lack of secondary market for named stars :D

There is another critical difference: The person creating the NFT is, in theory, the artist who as a claim to authorship of the work.

True, its more like an artist assigned numbers to all their works and sold the right to put your name on a website next to that number. Maybe for some artists that means something like getting a shoutout on their Patreon but totally worthless in abstract.

Sure. But if we create a community of art collectors for whom this sort of shoutout does mean something, then these things start to have concrete value - because you can sell yours to someone else. This means artists now can earn money by selling such intangible works, which strikes me as unequivocally a good thing.

A marriage certificate that you bought from some random guy on the street and has no legal significance.

And there may be hundreds of similarly "unique" marriage certificates sold, and the person you're supposedly married to has never even heard of you, yet you're absolutely convinced she's in love with you forever.

Are you arguing that you purchasing a picture from me on Opensea does?

No. You are the random guy and Opensea is the street. (And it’s not a picture/wife that you sell, is an NFT/certificate.)

Sure, but how am I different from million other guys on the street or Opensea.

Lets start at the beginning. You have analogy wrong ( which is a problem with analogies - they are open to interpretation ). The joke part says the following:

1. You have a wife. 2. She is not behaving like your wife. 3. You have a marriage certificate saying she is your wife

And NFTs follow the same pattern, because:

NFTs say they are your wife. They do not behave like your wife ( everyone can have them ). You have a digital certificate saying that NFT is your wife regardless.

**

As a guy on the street, I only see a value of selling fake wife certificate. I do not see value buying it.

I hope I explained it right.

> As a guy on the street, I only see a value of selling fake wife certificate. I do not see value buying it.

You just described the whole NFT scam. I would love to produce pngs I can sell for thousands of dollars. I won't buy NFTs not even for a penny.

Well, it seems you have your own analogy wrong ;-) [By the way, the “A marriage certificate that you bought from some random guy on the street and has no legal significance.” was not mine.]

If the NFT is the wife, what is the certificate?

> Imagine you have a wife

I feel like this comedian knows their audience

Who would drill a hole in a human being?!

Seriously though, implying that somebody having sex with multiple people makes them worthless is horrible. Also, if someone and their partner have incompatible expectations or boundaries then they should break up. What's forcing you to stay with your hypothetical wife? Seems like she'd be better off without you anyway.

> Imagine you have a wife and your wife is being drilled by everyone and you can't do anything about it.

Some people are into that, I try not to judge :)

The marriage certificate is what gets you various benefits, not the pretty stylizing on it (or the way the spouse looks) or the people that took a picture of it.

NFT collectors are valuing that authentication to various benefits first, and imagery second.

I get the impression people are not able to separate whats going on in the 1/1 market versus the collections marker. Just an allergy to the acronym NFT.

No, this is gross. It implies that marriage certificates grants you the exclusive rights to have sex with another party.

Quite the opposite. Marriage is a legal contract that, among other things, bestows certain rights and obligations. There is a reason 'adultery' is something that counts as marital misconduct.

Uhhh.. obligations to sex? That is exactly what this analogy is saying. Its gross to assume that anyone owes you sex.

> Its gross to assume that anyone owes you sex.

> your wife is being drilled by everyone and you can't do anything about it

I interpret this as "someone owes you to not have sex with other people" (which is a common assumption in most marriages), not that someone owes you sex...

No it doesn't. You just made that up. Your comment implies you're just someone who likes to go looking for things to get outraged about. See, I can make up "implications" too.

My understanding is that this is not correct, it conflates all NFT transactions without nuance, if one buys intellectual property via NFT and can prove it (which is ostensibly NFT's raison d'etre) then I see no reason why they couldn't exercise their rights to it (i.e. sue for copyright infringement, ect)

So you need to fallback to centralized government to sue for copyright? How bourgoise.

Maybe I misunderstand your point but intellectual property can only exist under a legal system, this seems like a shallow 'gotcha'

No, it's a thorough gotcha for a shallow topic to which money has given the illusion of depth. If you need a centralized entity to enforce the rights associated with a decentralized system, the decentralized system is unnecessary. We've long had solutions for the purchase of digital assets on any platform you choose, with ownership and usage rights enforced by the state.

Exactly. This is my problem with all these things people claim blockchain technology will solve. People think it's magically going to solve all the problems created by the government. They think it's a work around to fix corruption.

No matter how hard you blockchain you're still under the law of the government. You still have to pay taxes in your country's currency. Your "decentralized" blockchain still relies on centralization. Your internet infrastructure is centralized and ran usually by the government. The power grid you depend on is centralized.

My point is your blockchain technology still relies on the government. China even outlawed Bitcoin mining. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FIX POLITICAL PROBLEMS WITH BLOCKCHAIN.

There is one political problem that is solved by Bitcoin, in fact it is why it was created. That is the problem of Central Banks debasing the monetary supply.

They knew that when it was created that States would crush it like they had crushed other attempt. With Bitcoin, they could not. I don't think its safe to say its under the law. The law is to the side. Bitcoin exists in a numerical and computation universe that cares not for the laws of man.

> People think it's magically going to solve all the problems created by the government

No one other than extremists (which exist in all groups) believe this, using this as a reason to hate NFTs makes you appear unreasonable and not grounded in reality

> No one other than extremists (which exist in all groups) believe this

This is the main argument I hear. Tell me then, how else is it useful?

> using this as a reason to hate NFTs makes you appear unreasonable and not grounded in reality

It's a perfectly valid reason to hate NFTs among so many others. Instead of since centralized authority such as a government keeping track of who owns something it's a "decentralized" blockchain.

Your implicit claim is that NFTs offer nothing more than decentralization which is not true, as it's basis is a public tamper resistant ledger that is difficult to censor. How many systems like this exist already? How many are easier to use than NFTs? How many of your prospective customers are likely to know about or want to use this alternate system versus NFTs?

To claim it has no benefits other than decentralization seems odd to me

Edit: I can't respond past this point as I'm being throttled

The only novel benefit, as you say, is "decentralized trust". The blockchain portion of the NFT in most cases is simple a pointer to the asset and the owner, with the actual asset being off-chain managed by a single entity that can do whatever they please with it. Why does the ownership need to be decentralized if ultimately, the asset is mutable?

What problem is solved via a public tamper resistant ledger outside of the hypothetical? I routinely make purchases outside of a public tamper resistant ledger without issue.

I’d argue that what you’ve stated is just the mechanism by which decentralisation is achieved (you haven’t identified any additional benefits).

Oh, there is nuance.

Still, legally speaking, who is exactly enforcing it? Opensea? MPAA? I get that is going to be a fun question to answer since you can technically sue for anything ( but its not a guarantee that a judge will throw it out if he/she sees something sufficiently in the 'wasting my time' category ).

Can the NFT be cryptographically verified to be authentic? If so then it should be as good as any other proof of purchase

> Can the NFT be cryptographically verified to be authentic?

No. Authenticity of the data is not part of the concept.

What would that even mean in the context of non-physical contracts? You can buy an experience as an NFT (i.e. dinner with a C-list celeb) and the NFT serves as nothing more than a receipt saying you purchased that experience. Doesn't have to be unique (several people could by the same), doesn't include any specific metadata relating to the buyer.

What kind of "cryptographic authenticity" would even apply in such case?

It gets worse with digital assets if all you get is an IPFS URI. The actual data can be removed or altered at any point without the NFT itself being affected in way. Unless the asset itself is stored in the blockchain (which is practically impossible for anything beyond thumbnail-sized images) there's nothing to validate on the BC besides the token itself.