Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

They represent true digital ownership for the first time ever. Incredibly empowering for creators, I'm personally very bullish on the overall category NFT's and think they're here to stay.

Wow, only one comment on here and it's exactly how I feel, but articulated better than I would've.

In a theoretical sense I can see how they'd be valuable - limited supply and high demand and all that - but in practice it just seems like the prices of some of these early ones are too bonkers for it to be sustainable.

Just like everything else in the crypto space, it is both.

This stuff isn't going to die out completely and the exact way that people interact with it is going to develop over the next years.

On the other hand it is very possible that current prices are a mania although there is certainly some possibility, that in the long term, current prices will prove to be good buys.

Long-term, I think it's legit. A few big-name artists and other popular figures (athletes, actors, etc.) will take advantage, and use it as another income source. It's pretty convenient to immediately get a large payday by selling a unique asset (think of an autographed copy), while also being able to mass distribute and sell it at scale. For example, most people don't know that rookie cards for NBA players can go for well over a million dollars. Same idea here, except it is hosted online and cryptographically proven.

In the short-term, definite mania. Relatively unknown artists are getting ridiculous amounts of money, several magnitudes more than they get on the open market with a private commission, because the supply of artists that are currently active in this market is dwarfed by the number of rich crypto speculators that are throwing money around, trying to make a profit.

Mania for now but long term it will bring scarcity to the digital realm something that's important to fully develop the digital economy. Right now digital has been very profitable for a relatively few since it takes lots of money to develop a product but scarcity will let many more people make a living.

A simple example are artists. Artists have been mostly locked out of making a good living with their digital works but NFTs will fix that.

We will also start to see new forms of products that aren't profitable now since there is no way to cover the costs to develop them but with NFTs there is now a way to cover the costs.

I see the book market changing. Established authors will be able to sell their books and not have to go through publishing houses. They can sell them to the public and now the public will be able to resell the book and gain some of the money back and the original author can get some money too.

The future is very bright, as they say. There's finally a way to monetize cyberspace for the everyman.