This is an unfinished post

I got bored of the topic. I wont ever finish it, but I don’t want to delete it, and I don’t want it to stay in my drafts folder.

NFTs are all the rage now, but I honestly don’t understand what they’re supposed to be.

Well, I understand the name: non-fungible token. They’re a token that’s not fungible.

A token is a type of cryptocurrency. And if they’re not fungible, they’re unique, not interchangeable.

A dollar is fungible. Any dollar is, for all intents and purposes, the same as any other.

But what is it really?

Effectively a checksum of a thing.

Sometimes it’s an identifier of a real thing, a physical object. More often, though, it’s of a digital thing such as an image

It seems to be a representation of the thing. Like a trading card.

So it can’t be duplicated?

The exact token can’t.

But there doesn’t seem to be a reason why someone couldn’t create another NFT of the same thing. Think print 27/99.

There’s also no reason why someone couldn’t just make another version of the artwork.

And anyone can create NFT of anything

They don’t have to “own” the rights or the thing to create NFT of it. Apparently DeviantArt has a problem with exactly this.

Does it give you any rights?

Theoretically, I guess it could, but I didn’t find any that actually do.

Simard would auction a single-edition NFT of the photo and then release the photo itself to the world for free commercial usage.

So she’ll auction off the NFT and then re-licence the photo to be free. So, what does the NFT buyer get exactly?

Does it contain the art work?

It doesn’t seem to. It seems most art is too large to put on the blockchain so it contains just the checksum.

So how do you view the artwork?

Through services that act as an index of NFTs basically.

And anyone can see the artwork. You don’t have control over its appearance.

So what’s it worth?

Well, if we ignore the speculative value, I can’t see actual value I mean, it’s worth what people pay for it, but intrinsic value I cannot see.

Why do people buy it?

I don’t know. It looks like speculation at the moment.

OK, I’m bored and I not interested to dig deeper

Potential uses of NFTs

Tickets. I guess that’s legit. So you could sell them independent of the vendor. But I see no reason that a vendor would issue them then. Other than hype.

Keys The content of the NFT is public. But what if there was something that would only open for unlocking the wallet the NFT is stored in?