I actually had a similar idea, last time the theft of a famous painting was reported in the news. The museum could offer a deal, where they get the painting back but give the thieves a certificate for it. As part of the deal, they have to hang a sign next to the painting, saying, "This painting is considered to be stolen."
The thieves can do whatever they want with the certificate -- use it to pay illicit debts and so forth. They can visit their painting at the museum, and brag to their friends about it. But the rest of the public still gets to enjoy the painting too.
Now closer to home, I'm a musician and play a modestly valuable instrument. I've thought of taking really high resolution images of it, because the grain pattern of the wood is practically like a fingerprint, and would be difficult to conceal without destroying the instrument. A database with hi-res pictures of valuable instruments would be like a serial number database for bikes.
You could do the same thing today, offering a certificate of authenticity or whatever, validated by the relevant comunnaly accepted authority, and it would be be just as baffling and nonsensical an offer. The certificate is not the weilder of value , even if it were required for the object itself to be valuable (eg originality).
With an NFT I don’t even know what you’re certifying, except that this one chain says you own the object. In your example that’s not even true, the museum “owns” it, yet the thieves have it, and the NFT is now just as flawed as today’s understanding of ownership.
> The thieves can do whatever they want with the certificate -- use it to pay illicit debts and so forth. They can visit their painting at the museum, and brag to their friends about it. But the rest of the public still gets to enjoy the painting too.
I love this answer because it's a perfect analogy to explain why NFTs are total nonsense.
Owning a one-of-a-kind, literally irreplaceable painting cannot be substituted for a certificate. The certificate has zero value because it does not allow the owner to restrict access to the original painting.
The core concept of ownership (control over a scarce resource) is violated as soon as you start trading a certificate instead of the original item.
It's like someone saying that owning the last remaining Michael Jordan baseball card is the same as owning Michael Jordan, and that both have the same value. It's ludicrous.
> The core concept of ownership (control over a scarce resource) is violated as soon as you start trading a certificate instead of the original item.
That’s entirely how our markets are run. Nearly all stock is owned by a few trusts and what everyone is trading everyday are “certificates” of the original stock certificates.
Even big ticket items like cars or homes, they really aren’t worth anything without a clean title or deed. On the other hand people buy deeds all the time without ever seeing the actual property.
Stock ownership is backed by the legal system. It also has a ledger that must be settled and sent to the government.
Stock ownership gives you dividends and votes, too. You can sue for these things if they aren't given to you.
Cars and homes are things I can physically interacg with.
Digital certificates of digital goods have none of those qualities. If you do get any legal rights when you own them, it's not any different than copyright, which we've already seen is essentially impossible to enforce for digital works.
Note that I wouldn't endorse owning a person, but whether they have the same value is a matter of whether they have the same utility. Leaving the painting in the museum might make the certificate more valuable for all we know, because it ensures that the painting will be stored properly and not forgotten by the public.
Honestly I didn't even think about a definition of ownership when coming up with my idea.
Couldn’t the thieves just make a new NFT blockchain that says they own whatever they like and skip the messy steps in the middle? You’d end up at the same end state where the museum has a painting and the thieves have a certificate that says they own it.
The thieves can do whatever they want with the certificate -- use it to pay illicit debts and so forth. They can visit their painting at the museum, and brag to their friends about it. But the rest of the public still gets to enjoy the painting too.
Now closer to home, I'm a musician and play a modestly valuable instrument. I've thought of taking really high resolution images of it, because the grain pattern of the wood is practically like a fingerprint, and would be difficult to conceal without destroying the instrument. A database with hi-res pictures of valuable instruments would be like a serial number database for bikes.