Kinda missing the point of NFTs there, it's a collector's item and I can't spend $2.6m to buy the actual physical book, but I could spend $2.6k to buy an NFT with 1000 editions which was minted by the owner of the physical book. I don't care about Jorodowsky's Dune, but if I was a fan I could then show off my NFT on twitter, or <<the metaverse>> or just print it out and frame it.
FAQS
- Can't someone else just download the image and pretend they own it? Yes, just as someone can buy a fake LV bag and show it off. Other collectors will still know, and don't care about the fakes. As the tech becomes more mainstream, sites like twitter will show whether you actually own the NFT you claim to.
- Can't someone else mint their own NFT? Yes, but like with real collectors items, provenance matters. Just like one can forge a perfect Picasso but without any plausible proof of origin it would not be worth much.
- Can't they decide to mint more "fragments" after the fact, therefore diluting the price of each of the 1000 editions. No, the smart contract that governs the NFT can't be changed.
- Won't the link inside my NFT die? No, the link is usually just a SHA256 hash of the content; with the content being hosted on IPFS. It's all p2p so as long as a host somewhere in the world has a copy, you can always find the content by hash, even if the underlying technology changes with time.
So NFT's are just a way to introduce artificial scarcity for what is otherwise a reproducible digital good? A way for people to flex money on things that don't exist? They're like DLC skins in a video game - worth nothing, other than showing off that you spent $x dollars?
Kinda? Most things are reproducible. Limited edition sneakers are reproducible, and yet scarcity makes them worth thousands of dollars.
Is it stupid to pay $10k for some hard to find sneakers? maybe, but people do it because they have the money and they're collectors, or they want to flex. Is it more real because there's a physical item which costs maybe $20 to manufacture?
It's not like your example with the DLC skins, DLC skins are not limited in any way, the game company can create more and more of them. An NFT collection is limited, there will never be more than the amount the contract specifies (unless the contract leaves that open-ended intentionally). The creator can't simply sell new ones, because using a new contract would make the new ones lose all inherent value.
It's exactly the same as how certain sneakers are worth $10k and others that are from the same brand, same designers, same materials are worth $100 – provenance matters, and knowing it was released in an extremely limited way makes something more valuable.
FAQS
- Can't someone else just download the image and pretend they own it? Yes, just as someone can buy a fake LV bag and show it off. Other collectors will still know, and don't care about the fakes. As the tech becomes more mainstream, sites like twitter will show whether you actually own the NFT you claim to.
- Can't someone else mint their own NFT? Yes, but like with real collectors items, provenance matters. Just like one can forge a perfect Picasso but without any plausible proof of origin it would not be worth much.
- Can't they decide to mint more "fragments" after the fact, therefore diluting the price of each of the 1000 editions. No, the smart contract that governs the NFT can't be changed.
- Won't the link inside my NFT die? No, the link is usually just a SHA256 hash of the content; with the content being hosted on IPFS. It's all p2p so as long as a host somewhere in the world has a copy, you can always find the content by hash, even if the underlying technology changes with time.