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Comment by LordDragonfang | Hacker News Reader

>I think NFTs are trying to do the same for EVERYTHING.

I really fail to see how adding lengthy processing logic to transactions makes anything more liquid.

I can see how it would make _some_ things more liquid. Imagine if the average residential real estate transaction didn’t require a titling agency. You’d be able to buy a house on a Sunday, or after 6pm. People might be more inclined to buy the $85k North Little Rock House [0] if they didn’t have to sign 2 hours of paperwork and pay $7k in fees.

[0] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/723-W-23rd-St-North-Littl...

You can sign pretty much everything required online at pretty much any time these days.

Last time I bought a house we needed a solicitor or conveyancers to do a title search. That info could be on a blockchain as an nft amd a smart contract could handle it.

What would be the improvement over a database?

Trust.

A blockchain copy can be better verified than a database.

If the content of an NFT or what have you disagrees with the government's records - e.g. the database you would otherwise be querying - the government's records win. The government is the source of truth for title ownership.

Well, the Government could still be the one who writes the smart contract (or commissions one or uses a global standard) and has oracles with all the data required. I know many purists wouldn't like that, but I'm just bullish on the technology, and see it going further than NFT images and the FUD that people keep arguing about, i.e right click save and ponzi schemes. There's a use-case for this tech, and it's in discovery mode at the moment. Writing it off now feels a little premature.

Really? Imagine trying to sell a piece of art. People need to authenticate it, then you need to transport it while having some escrow solution for the transaction. With an NFT you can do the transfer instantly (depending on the blockchain) and with no trusted third party.

A blockchain solves none of the issues you listed, though. You still need to transport it, most cryptocurrencies still have escrow solutions, and a blockchain is fundamentally a third party you have to trust (and the more established currencies are decidedly not instant). You can sell a piece of art instantly for cash if you wanted to, the problem is all the other logistics surrounding it.

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