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Comment by zeusk | Hacker News Reader

No one goes around saying baseball cards are the future of internet. And I really care because these "investments" are sold/marketed to some of the most gullible "investors", my dad lost quite a chunk of change on alt-coins and nft.

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I'm sorry to hear about your dad. I agree that the marketing and hype behind NFTs are pretty toxic. But I don't think its true that all people even tangentially involved in that space are scam artists or gullible.

Can you point to an example of what you would consider a legitimate NFT project?

I don't subscribe or follow any NFTs. I'm generally pessimistic but I don't write it off entirely. I know a few people that bought NFTs and I don't think they're scam artists or naive. They're just having fun and playing around with some money. Maybe using it as an excuse to learn about Blockchain and feel like they're a part of a community. No different than my aws bills for apps that no one uses

Idk it doesn't sound like a very good argument for a real value proposition. Maybe knowingly participating in a highly speculative market isn't exactly being naive or a scam artist, but it still doesn't make NFT's seem any smarter.

That's on your dad for being gullible. NFTs are the future whether you like it or not.

The JPEG/MP4/HTML/(literally any non fungible asset) is the house. The blockchain is city/state. The NFT is the deed to that house. It's really quite simple.

This is a terrible analogy. A house is a finite asset which only one person can occupy at a time. An infinite number of copies of a JPEG can exist. The city/state has the power to enforce property rights. The blockchain does not. The NFT is just a note in a ledger somewhere which others may or may not respect. It's really quite simple.

There's so many terrible analogies associated with NFTs and blockchains too. It all comes from their confirmation biases. They're already too invested into it to back out. It's too easy to become blind to any valid criticism, so might as well come up with as many analogies as possible to attempt to gather more recruits and justify their decisions.

It's much more like "buying a star" website.

A better analogy would be that the blockchain is a filing cabinet. A deed has the force of law because the city/state is prepared to use violence to enforce the ownership claim inscribed on the deed. What authority is going to enforce your NFT?

All of the people that use the blockchain as the source of truth and authority enforce it. The question you're asking is literally the same as "what gives bitcoin value". The answer is everyone who believes it has value. Why is TSL/SSL an agreed upon encryption scheme? Because people agreed to use it and you're excluded from access if you don't.

When twitter integrates NFTs and requires you to sign a proof of ownership to set an NFT as a profile picture (with a verification check mark), this effectively signals that twitter is enforcing the NFT. When facebook does the same, it signals that Facebook is enforcing the NFT. When Spotify integrates NFT licensing, they will be enforcing it.

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