There are plenty of images of the "Mona Lisa" painting, and you can print one yourself if you wish something to hang on your wall, but there's a 'real' one. Similarly the original creator of the digital item (tweet?) makes a public statement that they're assigning it to you. Think of it as a certificate of authenticity:
And yet it seems to be "worth" that much to someone. Heck, I don't think much of the "Mona Lisa" as a painting personally—give me a Rembrandt or Monet for my wall—but I wouldn't mind owning it, just so I could turn around and sell it, as the money would be more useful to me.
What makes someone pay tens of millions for a watch?
> Ok, and what does this actually get me? How meaningful is "ownership" in this context?
You get to say that you own it, and there is a seemingly legally-approved chain of custody that says you do. You can continue to keep it, or you can pass ownership to someone else.
More generally: how meaningful is the ownership of anything? I'm planning to buy a new pair of shoes for about $100 this weekend because my current pair is old. Yet people are willing to layout thousands of dollars for sneakers:
What makes them "worth" that much? Why would anyone spend that kind of money to own something like that?
This is similar to Bitcoin: it's just a bunch of bits, so how meaningful is ownership of bits in the ledger? Why do people follow a certain process to exchange money so that some bits (transactions/ledger) say that I own certain other bits (wallet contents)?
* https://www.agora-gallery.com/advice/blog/2017/12/02/prepare...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_authenticity
A chain of custody from the original creator, to you, to whomever you may sell it to.
The Plain Bagel channel had a good video on the subject, 'WTF Is an NFT? (And Should You "Invest" in One?)':
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItG-W3_EvOY