NTFs seem silly. You own a digital asset on a block chain. But anyone could use a jpeg, it just has no real value to have so-called ownership.

Small correction: NFTs that point to images is one example of how to use the NFT standard, not what an NFT is.

The NFT discussion always ends up at "its just a link to a jpeg", when there are NFTs that have nothing to do with images.

Can you give me some examples of these other kinds of NFTs that are useful then?

California's DMV investigating them for licenses/registrations is an example that hit HN's front page earlier this week.

This is interesting because I haven't heard of this. Would it be something like your license is controlled by you? Somehow you have to keep it private though. Having someone control a position on the blockchain wouldn't seem to be that different than name and password. You can use that to prove who you are, and you can lose that just like you can lose control of your crypto wallet if you forget your password or someone guesses it or hacks your machine.

One workaround would be to store the license/registration tokens in multisig wallets, requiring both the licensee and the DMV to approve of transfers (or add a third signer and go with two of three). A fair bit more centralized than what's ideal, but the very concept of a state-issued license or registration is already implicitly centralized anyway.

> > NFTs is a really good use case.

> Honestly, I still don't see how. None of the explanations make any real sense to me.

I don't really think NFTs have a real use case, but i can see why it might. It is effectively a digital certificate of authenticity that cannot be faked. But like a physical certificate of authenticity, it is worth as much as the general market would place trust in it. And it isn't much, since collectors of digital goods currently do not value authenticity (realistically) - they value the actual digital good, and thus, a copy is as good as the "real thing".

Therefore, collectors can only really exist for physical goods, and thus NFTs don't actually provide much value, beyond the ability for someone to speculate with it.