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Comment by fabian2k | Hacker News Reader

Buying an NFT does not grant you any ownership unless you have a separate agreement or contract along with it that does. How is a court in Germany supposed to know what it means that you paid some amount of cryptocurrency in exchange for an NFT? This has no meaning outside the blockchain.

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Courts don’t play games like this. Everything is under their jurisdiction whether it’s novel or 1,000 years old. Worst case scenario you entered into a verbal contract where $100 of consideration was exchanged for x and you are engaging the courts because you believe the counter party failed to deliver x. If both parties are German it will not matter that blockchain was the medium of exchange anymore than it would if napkins at the bar were the medium of the exchange.

But what exactly are the rights you get when you buy an NFT? I'm assuming the absence of any other communication here, as that part would then be more like a verbal contract.

The NFT is a link to something, and buying the NFT means I get the ownership of the NFT. But I've no idea what this actually means in the end, which rights do you get by that? I paid someone $100 and got a link back, everything else is completely unclear. I've no idea how a court would be able to fill in all the blanks here.

I guess it would depend on how that NFT was marketed at the time of purchase. If a piece of digital artwork was displayed on the NFT's web page and the buyer believed that they would get ownership of that artwork in return for their money a court might side with the buyer.

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