> People can look at images of the Mona Lisa all day long without compensating you, because you simply own the original trophy, not the idea… Your ownership is

> People can look at images of the Mona Lisa all day long without compensating you, because you simply own the original trophy, not the idea… Your ownership isn't stamped or an inhenrant part of the Mona Lisa, your ownership comes from the certificate and trust in the certificate, history of sales and its legacy. NFTs are simply digifying this. > [Creators will] become promoters of digital tokens more than they are creators. Because that’s the only reason that someone is likely to buy one–like a stock, they hope it will go up in value Since this is such a new idea and market speculation is rampant but the comparison and suggestion is still unfair. Money may be one driving factor in buying stocks, but it often isn't the only factor. NFTs don't change much for physical artists but non fungiblility did not exist for digital art until now. > NFTs aren’t usually aesthetically beautiful on their own, they simply represent something that is. In both cases the certificate is a representation of the art. The certificate or idea that you own the Mona Lisa isn't what's beautiful, the piece of art your ownership represents is. > BUYERS of NFTs may be blind to the fact that there’s no limit on the supply. In the case of baseball cards, there are only so many rookies a year. Creating a new token is easy, just as doing a scribble and calling it art. There's still implicit trust that the creator won't make a duplicate token with the same representation just as there's implicit trust an artist won't certify identical paintings as originals. The benifit for collectables is that the minting and supply is public. You can verify that your NFT is 1 out of X, and only X. > THE REST OF US are going to pay for NFTs for a very long time. They use an astonishing amount of electricity to create and trade. Together, they are already using more than is consumed by some states in the US. Imagine building a giant new power plant just to make Christie’s or the Basel Art Fair function. And the amount of power wasted will go up commensurate with their popularity and value. And keep going up. The details are here. The short version is that for the foreseeable future, the method that’s used to verify the blockchain and to create new digital coins is deliberately energy-intensive and inefficient. That’s on purpose. And as they get more valuable, the energy used will go up, not down. The energy costs of the NFTs are currently pretty high, but to claim it'll only go up is disingenuous. In the foreseeable future Bitcoin will be the only energy intensive blockchain as others move to proof of stake. Ethereum has begun to make this transition and most other large platforms have already made this transition. Since blockchain is digital and public the ease to produce a concrete estimate of energy paints an easy target. Measuring energy from other recreational activities is much harder and fuzzy. Gaming is a similar target but is much harder to discredit.