That doesn't make sense. An NFT exists purely in the realm of reality. It has a real (non-fungible!) representation as 1s and 0s and it's etched into "the blockchain". That's just as "real" as the atoms that makeup a bicycle. Arguably, much less valuable, but still real. At the end of the day, the NFT is represented by atoms as well.

If you steal my bike, that's theft. If you steal my DVD collection, that's theft. If you steal my steam account, that's theft. If you steal my NFT, that's theft.

The actual bits are public information though. You can't steal those like you can steal atoms.

That makes no sense- surely the same applies the money in your bank account? Or IP rights? Etc etc.

Neither of those build up a system where immutable transactions are the absolute arbiter of ownership.

If they did, then the same would apply.

Ownership is a legal concept and the blockchain says nothing about that. It merely records transactions and says nothing about the right to do those things.

For example, if the court orders you to turn over your Bitcoin holdings to creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding and instead you transfer them elsewhere, you are probably going to jail. When you transferred them, the coins were in your possession, but you weren't the rightful owner.

Correct, blockchain itself doesn't mess with ownership.

But NFTs and certain smart contracts are meticulously designing a custom form of ownership for themselves. That's what changes things. And this would be true even if they didn't use blockchains!

If you throw out all that custom ownership logic, you lose the core of what makes an NFT an NFT. Now it's just a few dozen bytes that anyone can mimic.

> smart contracts are meticulously designing a custom form of ownership

Not sure what you mean by custom form of ownership. If you are talking about fractional ownership, even that isn’t new.

Contracts around ownership are built on top of legal system. Smart contracts provide automation around defining and execution the contracts. That’s cool and can be super low cost, but apart from the automation, there isn’t much that’s different from traditional contracts. They can still be challenged in court.

For example, if you had a contract that, upon your death, transferred all your money to your nurse, your spouse could still challenge that in court if the contract was created under duress or created when you weren’t of sound mind.

No no you cut me off there. NFTs do it, and certain smart contracts do it.

If you get picky about the latter part, then I retract it and just say NFTs for simplicity.

Ownership can’t be defined outside of the law. Ultimately these are boring old contracts in a digital form and they may or may not be valid. The validity can’t be determined within the NFT, smart contract, or blockchain. Some code may initiate a transfer of something and that gives you possession of it, but ownership isn’t guaranteed.

For example, you can write a smart contract that would watch for divorce papers being filed by your spouse and upon filing, you would transfer your Bitcoin balance or NFT to some other wallet. A court isn’t going to fall for that. You will be found to have hidden community assets (ie assets you don’t entirely own).

If it goes from a wallet you control to a different wallet you control, neither system would say ownership changed, so I'm not sure how that example helps.

Another point of comparison I'll bring up is cars, where if you let someone have your keys then you have limited or zero recourse in many situations where they do something bad.

I think most of our disagreement is about the word ownership. I think many of the times you've used that word, it would be more accurate to say possession.

Your car example is a good one. If somebody has your keys (either with permission or stolen) and they take your car, they have possession of it but at no point do they own it.

Another example - lots of companies have crypto wallets and own Bitcoin and other currencies. Corporate wallets are controlled by agents of that company. The people who know the keys don't own the crypto, the company does. If an employee transfers from a company owned wallet that they control to a wallet they own, that's theft the same as if they had wired money to an overseas account of theirs.

Possession and ownership can align, but they don't have to. Smart contracts can be legally binding, but that isn't guaranteed. None of this exists outside of our legal system.

> I think most of our disagreement is about the word ownership. I think many of the times you've used that word, it would be more accurate to say possession.

But also I'm saying that a foundational pillar of NFTs is that possession on the blockchain is the only thing that matters.

It's possible to disagree with that pillar, but removing it would destroy a huge chunk of what NFTs are.

If you want me not to say 'ownership' for that concept, that's fine.

Also I'm not making this claim about crytocurrency in general. It's only specific subsets.

Ok so if I hacked into your computer and stole your private keys, I get to keep all your Bitcoin? Even if you know it was me and have irrefutable evidence? Even if I admit to it? You wouldn’t consider asking the courts to use real force to get it back?

Bitcoins aren't specifically designed the way I described. It's reasonable to invoke normal contracts and courts with bitcoin.

This is a situation specific to NFTs and people that are going super hard on smart contracts.

And even if I was a true believer in NFTs, yeah I'd probably ask the courts to do that, but doing so would be a betrayal of my beliefs and evidence that the foundation of NFTs is very shaky. The idea that I would do something hypocritical in such a hypothetical situation doesn't change the argument I made in my previous post.