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Rephrasing your questions and critiques more broadly: What is the point of all this digital infrastructure if no one uses it? Why would anyone use it? This is

Rephrasing your questions and critiques more broadly: What is the point of all this digital infrastructure if no one uses it? Why would anyone use it? This is a more difficult question for NFTs as the market is even smaller than the financial use cases which has been driving blockchain applications. It'll take some time for seemingly legitimate and long-lasting value in areas for NFT to emerge as they are still being explored and developed. However, no matter how you frame it, rhe value proposition for applications comes down to the value add characteristics of the networks they are built on top of. > The tokens you acquire are worth nothing. The tokens worth is determined by the market place that emerges around the tokens characteristics. Some tokens are censorship resistant and run on globally accessible networks so that they are not easily erased, their ownership is easy to prove, and their history is reliably known. Some tokens are required to access other marketplaces or services because they have properties that make them more easy to use as traditional currencies. Some tokens allow for self-ownership paradigms. Again, the tokens acquired carry the value of the characteristics of the networks in which they are issued. What these characteristics are valued as and actually "worth" in real economic terms is dependent on their demand. > The “uniqueness” of the NFT is an illusion; it does not offer any strong guarantee of uniquely representing an actual asset. This is only true if the NFT isn't accepted as value. If the characteristics I described earlier indeed do become valued, then the ledger which holds the claim i.e. the NFT will be taken as the source of truth for representing the ownership of the claimed asset. Its the theory of accounting applied to a different space.

wokwokwok 6y ago
> the NFT will be taken as the source of truth for representing the ownership of the claimed asset... I simply can’t see how that is possible for digital assets you can copy and paste and have two copies of the original asset; it only works for physical assets where there can only be one copy of the asset, ever. You’ve hit it on the head: what does it mean to own an image when ten other people also “own” a copy of it, and any of them can create more copies other people can “own”. It’s meaningless, unless you assert ownership entitles you to additional legal rights beyond what the token conveys... and in which case, how the hell is that different from the same thing with no crypto involved?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > You’ve hit it on the head: what does it mean to own an image when ten other people also “own” a copy of it, and any of them can create more copies other people can “own”. Also worth remembering: doing anything with a digital asset involves automatic creation of countless of copies. When you're viewing an image from your computer's storage, you already have at least three copies at that moment - one in storage, one in RAM, and one in video memory. There may be another one in your screen's buffer too. If you try to send it through the network, every switch and router along the way effectively creates its own temporary copy. This is to emphasize: ownership as a concept makes no sense in the world of bits. It doesn't exist. Ownership is defined by agreement between people; these days, usually through the legal framework.
- TheColorYellow 6y ago
  > unless you assert ownership entitles you to additional legal rights beyond what the token convey This is precisely the idea to a certain extent. The ledger serves as proof of ownership which then allows access to entitlements dictated by that ownership. This being done in a digital first way is another aspect as well (although not really conceptually mind blowing to me personally). > how the hell is that different from the same thing with no crypto involved? This goes back to what I said earlier about the characteristics of the underlying network driving the value. The differences can be in things like the peer-to-peer nature or the decentralized infrastructure which provides a degree of censorship resistance or improved accessibility. We're at the point where credible evidence of the value added by these characteristics is still being explored. You can certainly make some level of argument as to why the decentralized nature of these protocols is better than the traditional alternative, but even I'll admit its difficult to parse through the noise of speculation and hype for the arguments that may be worth a damn. The idea of distributing control, responsibility, costs, and other aspects of operating a system away from singular points of failure is an idea that seems worth investigating and to me this is what blockchain is doing. NFTs are a different flavor of exploration then that of cryptocurrencies.
- deleted 6y ago
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- kmtrowbr 6y ago

wokwokwok 6y ago

> the NFT will be taken as the source of truth for representing the ownership of the claimed asset... I simply can’t see how that is possible for digital assets you can copy and paste and have two copies of the original asset; it only works for physical assets where there can only be one copy of the asset, ever. You’ve hit it on the head: what does it mean to own an image when ten other people also “own” a copy of it, and any of them can create more copies other people can “own”. It’s meaningless, unless you assert ownership entitles you to additional legal rights beyond what the token conveys... and in which case, how the hell is that different from the same thing with no crypto involved?

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> You’ve hit it on the head: what does it mean to own an image when ten other people also “own” a copy of it, and any of them can create more copies other people can “own”. Also worth remembering: doing anything with a digital asset involves automatic creation of countless of copies. When you're viewing an image from your computer's storage, you already have at least three copies at that moment - one in storage, one in RAM, and one in video memory. There may be another one in your screen's buffer too. If you try to send it through the network, every switch and router along the way effectively creates its own temporary copy. This is to emphasize: ownership as a concept makes no sense in the world of bits. It doesn't exist. Ownership is defined by agreement between people; these days, usually through the legal framework.
TheColorYellow 6y ago
> unless you assert ownership entitles you to additional legal rights beyond what the token convey This is precisely the idea to a certain extent. The ledger serves as proof of ownership which then allows access to entitlements dictated by that ownership. This being done in a digital first way is another aspect as well (although not really conceptually mind blowing to me personally). > how the hell is that different from the same thing with no crypto involved? This goes back to what I said earlier about the characteristics of the underlying network driving the value. The differences can be in things like the peer-to-peer nature or the decentralized infrastructure which provides a degree of censorship resistance or improved accessibility. We're at the point where credible evidence of the value added by these characteristics is still being explored. You can certainly make some level of argument as to why the decentralized nature of these protocols is better than the traditional alternative, but even I'll admit its difficult to parse through the noise of speculation and hype for the arguments that may be worth a damn. The idea of distributing control, responsibility, costs, and other aspects of operating a system away from singular points of failure is an idea that seems worth investigating and to me this is what blockchain is doing. NFTs are a different flavor of exploration then that of cryptocurrencies.
deleted 6y ago
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kmtrowbr 6y ago