A university degree or a food safety certificate are not at all like an NFT. Those types of certificates have substantive implications. A degree is a credential

A university degree or a food safety certificate are not at all like an NFT. Those types of certificates have substantive implications. A degree is a credential to signal one's expertise, a food safety certificate is a credential signaling the food meets specific standards for human consumption. Authenticity is important in these cases because it's valuable to be able to determine if the issuance of the certificate reliably correlates with what it implies. If I decide I want to hire an engineer to build a bridge, a certificate that can reliably signal they are educated in the vocation of engineering is a matter of life and death. With NFTs, authenticity is a non-issue since the NFT itself is lacking in any meaning because it has no connection to the real world.