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Comment by miracle2k | Hacker News Reader

> Because the thing that it’s representing could still disappear or go away.

Not if you, the owner, or someone else, stores a copy. Even if the URL associated with the URL is broken, it doesn't change the fact that it still represents the thing people want it to represent.

NFTs are not a backup system for your data.

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And how do you want to prove that the copy you made had the same content that was stored behind the URL? What if the host changes the content behind that URL to something completely different. No one can prove that it's actually the thing you copied that was behind this NFT. It's really worthless in my eyes.

A hash of the bytes is really is really useful for this kind of authentication. But for actively traded and popular NFTs that isn't strictly necessary. The community knows what they represent.

But then the receipt is even less representative of the underlying thing you’ve gone and bought in opensea or whatever. Like, it’s not even pointing to the same bits on the same platter somewhere that’s meant to be so special.

Don’t get me wrong, I get that it’s not meant to be a data backup and it can be totally disassociated from the ‘thing’ - but setting that concept up and just being a bit more aware of what you are actually getting might make some people a bit more hesitant to buy a digital receipt with a url that may or may not 404 in the future. Great, you’ve got a receipt - for something that potentially millions of people also have a copy of. What makes your receipt at that point, if/when the underlying disappears, worth anything?

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