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I'm not completely sold on the Mona Lisa comparison. Making an exact copy is tough. Sure, you can take a picture, you can even make a painted version that's p

I'm not completely sold on the Mona Lisa comparison. Making an exact copy is tough. Sure, you can take a picture, you can even make a painted version that's pretty close. But only one was actually hand-painted by Leonardo da Vinci. But in the case of the digital art, you can have an exact copy. Indistinguishable from the original in all ways. Sure, the NFT says someone has to own the 'real' original, but what extra value does that have over a literal copy?

scotty79 6y ago
Same values that original hand painted Monalisa has over any other hand painted Mona Lisa. It's the one.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  How so? Unless the disk to which the file was originally written physically changes hands, they're all exactly identical copies.
  - basch 6y ago
    Baseball cards are a better example. It's rare because a limited quantity were printed, not because the capacity to make more was lacking. Maybe what NFTs lack is the ability for people to arbitrarily destroy them. Maybe some kind of dice roll that deletes some every blue moon. Or a "light mine on fire button." Some kind of rot that degrades it over time. https://sorare.com/ https://sorare.com/ was on https://techmeme.com https://techmeme.com today
    - jakelazaroff 6y ago
      Baseball cards are rare because they're scarce. Digital assets are plentiful; you can reproduce them infinitely, and there's no such thing as being "out of print". Given that NFTs assert ownership over normal files, I don't see how it would be possible to arbitrarily destroy them.
      - basch 6y ago
        Did you look at https://sorare.com/ https://sorare.com/ They are creating scarcity. Only one card for a player created that season. It's less a digital picture and more "this is limited because we can verify the date it was created and how many we made." It even has an element of fantasy sports or pokemon, in that the cards are useful in a game and you can play with them. An element of scarcity is not only necessary to give the digital assets value, but also to make the competition function.
        jakelazaroff 6y ago
        Yes, but I don’t understand it. It sounds like these cards are only available in an app? In which case, sure, they can create scarcity because they control consumption, but they don’t need NFTs to do that. On the other hand — if these cards are just like, JPG files, (which seems to be what most other commenters on here are talking about) then they can’t verify how many exist. It’s infinite and unknowable. Any time someone downloads the file, saves it to a flash drive, whatever, they’re making a copy. What am I missing here?
A12-B 6y ago
It's about the psychology of it all. People now have a way to verify actual ownership of artwork. Whatever added value the work has is just a construction of our minds and is no different to adding value to physical artwork for arbitrary reasons, but it's true that the upper limit for value will always be less than physical artwork because you can just copy it more easily.

scotty79 6y ago

Same values that original hand painted Monalisa has over any other hand painted Mona Lisa. It's the one.

jakelazaroff 6y ago
How so? Unless the disk to which the file was originally written physically changes hands, they're all exactly identical copies.
- basch 6y ago
  Baseball cards are a better example. It's rare because a limited quantity were printed, not because the capacity to make more was lacking. Maybe what NFTs lack is the ability for people to arbitrarily destroy them. Maybe some kind of dice roll that deletes some every blue moon. Or a "light mine on fire button." Some kind of rot that degrades it over time. https://sorare.com/ https://sorare.com/ was on https://techmeme.com https://techmeme.com today
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    Baseball cards are rare because they're scarce. Digital assets are plentiful; you can reproduce them infinitely, and there's no such thing as being "out of print". Given that NFTs assert ownership over normal files, I don't see how it would be possible to arbitrarily destroy them.
    - basch 6y ago
      Did you look at https://sorare.com/ https://sorare.com/ They are creating scarcity. Only one card for a player created that season. It's less a digital picture and more "this is limited because we can verify the date it was created and how many we made." It even has an element of fantasy sports or pokemon, in that the cards are useful in a game and you can play with them. An element of scarcity is not only necessary to give the digital assets value, but also to make the competition function.
      - jakelazaroff 6y ago
        Yes, but I don’t understand it. It sounds like these cards are only available in an app? In which case, sure, they can create scarcity because they control consumption, but they don’t need NFTs to do that. On the other hand — if these cards are just like, JPG files, (which seems to be what most other commenters on here are talking about) then they can’t verify how many exist. It’s infinite and unknowable. Any time someone downloads the file, saves it to a flash drive, whatever, they’re making a copy. What am I missing here?

A12-B 6y ago

It's about the psychology of it all. People now have a way to verify actual ownership of artwork. Whatever added value the work has is just a construction of our minds and is no different to adding value to physical artwork for arbitrary reasons, but it's true that the upper limit for value will always be less than physical artwork because you can just copy it more easily.