Hypothetical situation. You purchase some digital art for $1M from a marketplace and get issued a NFT for the purchase. I slip on my black hoodie and balaclava, hack the Gibson and acquire your private key for the NFT then try to sell the digital art. You then sue me in court. Both you and the marketplace can produce documents of the financial transaction verifying that you were the legitimate purchaser and all I have is just the stolen NFT. Who is the court going to rule in favor of? Well you and if that's the case what proof does the NFT provide that a standard purchase agreement and the accompanying financial documentation of the purchase doesn't which is how we already purchase something like art?
That would be an actual crime. If you guessed my key, perhaps by knowing I generated it insecurely or watched me type it (when not under an NDA or some duty to me), you could do this legally though.
But yes, once you've stolen the thing from me I have less control over it...
Also, this would never happen as written. If you tried to claim my asset without having changed the key, then I would. We'd never be in court with shared custody, and thus they'd never get a chance to rule on this. The only time a court would come in would be criminally if you actually hacked my system.
Otherwise, owning the key is the entirely of ownership. Blockchain is intentionally a knowledge-based version of a bearer bond. (It could be based on hash-preimages which would count as a password and probably be legally protected, but intentionally it's based on math because factors in an equation aren't protected.)
Also, you aren't really purchasing art because it's untenable. You're purchasing something like the right to show that the artist considers you to have purchased art. To actually purchase art would be to actually codify a contract (from what jurisdictions?) in an NFT, and that's not what anyone is doing. It's all just digital signatures of a phrase like "Thanks for being the first sponsor of my work 'Autumn Leaves', with shasum XYZ".
Isn't this literally the only thing an NFT guarantees anyway? It is precisely a "non-fungible token" and nothing more.
Anything you can do with a non-fungible piece of paper, you can do with a non-fungible token. Anything you can't do with a non-fungible piece of paper, you can't do with a non-fungible token.
I'm blown away by how many people are upset that other people are doing stupid things at the confluence of new technology and excessive spending money.
> Isn't this literally the only thing an NFT guarantees anyway? Anything you can't do with a non-fungible piece of paper, you can't do with a non-fungible token.
Pretty much. It's a bit harder to show your paper autograph (and prove its veracity for full status points or before selling it) than to demonstrate this with an NFT. If that's what the paper is about for you, the NFT is better.
With concert tickets though there are a ton of benefits from proving authenticity, not needing to meet to transfer paper, not needing ID to prove you didn't steal it when checking in, etc.
> I'm blown away by how many people are upset that other people are doing stupid things at the confluence of new technology and excessive spending money.
Well when artists are pretending to sell art for $69 million to their business partners to create hype for NFTs and lure in clueless people who will lose their money on a pump and dump virtual asset then people start to feel like it’s a scam not just “excessive spending”
I mean this artist is now the third highest paid artist alive and it seems like he just pretended to sell the art to his business partner and the money transfer may not have even happened. That’s not excessive spending if true, that’s lies and fraud
Whatever their flaws, NFTs are perfect proof of ownership of the token...