Thread by @AlexandraErin

A thing about NFTs is that whenever someone says they can be used to purchase something (event tickets, digital music, in-game assets) in a form that allows the purchaser to re-sell them... the reason you can't do those things already is a policy choice, not a technical limit.

Any company that is willing to use NFTs to sell you things that you own in a way that is transferable could have done so without NFTs.

What NFTs actually add on a technical level isn't the ability to be sold, but the ability to be stolen.

Whatever digital good the NFT represents is still stored in a central location. Access to the digital good is still mediated by a single central authority. But their willingness to equate ownership with a cryptographic token that exists outside their control makes it stealable.

Like, someone can steal your whole Steam account from you. It happens! They can't take an individual game from it, though, and if you lose control of your account, there's a central authority you can appeal to, a company that might have procedures to verify your identity.

But to whatever extent a company selling digital assets on the blockchain is actually honoring the principles f the blockchain... possession becomes ten tenths of the law. The person whom the ledger says owns "your" goods, owns them.

I mean, my viewpoint is I wouldn't actually trust that any company that sells permanent digital goods tied to the blockchain will continue to honor them past the cultural moment where the hype around NFTs makes it profitable.

Like, these are the same companies that sold tangible, physical storage media containing digital goods and then stopped producing hardware that could read said media, and yet regard attempts to keep the goods useable as illegal piracy?

But to whatever extent they make the content transferrable and independent of their control... it can be stolen. In the same way your Steam account can be hacked, but with no actual hope of recourse.

And the thing is, whenever somebody's ugly monkey pogs or whatever get stolen and they tweet about it, you see NFT boosters in the comments talking about how this is a good thing and lambasting the person who seeks recourse for ruining the make-believe tea party.

Part of the appeal of NFTs... a big part of it... is the idea that it's the wild west, and everyone thinks they're the fastest gun and the cleverest outlaw.