Most of this was from an article I wrote in January 2022. Just looking back and thinking I might have been half right. Here is an update from Forbes from November 2023:

If you listen to headlines, the non-fungible token market seems like a flash in the pan. The asset class peaked at $21 billion in May 2022 before crashing back down to Earth. Over 95% of NFTs created in the 2021-2022 NFT craze are now worthless.

This stat is a little misleading as the overall value of NFTs is thought to be around 10 billion, still. Mainly because:

it is driven by the 5% of NFTs that have retained their value. The top ten artist collections are worth a combined $2.5 billion, having retained 73% of their value from one year ago.

I got on this NFT kick after reading this explanation of them:

You are married to a woman you really wanted to be married to, you went through all the trouble to get married to her, paid the fees and got the marriage certificate. Now you understood that your wife was still going to sleep with anyone that wanted to sleep with her, she simply was available to every guy in town at anytime. They have complete access to your wife with almost zero restrictions at anytime. You are not worried about this, though, because you have a piece of paper that shows you are the person only person that is certified to sleep with her.

Now back to the original article from 2022 which deals more with the legal side of NFT ownership

I gotta tell you, I am slow to jump on board with new things.  I remember tuning out talk of crypto for years because I thought it wasn't going to amount to anything. Well, I am right back at it.  I just don't buy that NFTs, in their current function are the next big thing, or the future of collectables.  If I am wrong, I will have it here in writing. Help me understand it better in the comments if I am way off here.

To start with, copyright law is not as black and white as it may seem for NFTs.  Ownership and the right to reproduce a work, make it public, cash in on it can vary greatly depending on how a purchase of an NFT is made. There have been some NFTs where the buyer has been granted the right to use the copyright in a limited way. For example, owners of CryptoKitties NFTs have been allowed to make up to US$100,000 in gross revenues from them each year. In other cases, creators have specifically restricted all commercial use of the work. For example, the Kings of Leon stipulated that their NFT music was for personal consumption only.

This is another point from theconvesation.com, "Incidentally, buyers should also be aware that the blockchain cannot absolutely know whether a creative work Is authentic. Someone can take another person’s work and tokenize it as an NFT, thereby infringing the rights of the copyright owner. You need to be sure that you are buying something that originated from the creator."

An article from the Medium explains NFT ownership more as "Certificate of Authenticity." Take for example the NFT purchase of the first ever tweet:

"When Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, sold the first tweet he ever posted as an NFT for over 2.9 million dollars, the internet went wild with the question of who now owns the tweet. The buyer, Sina Estavi, described the purchase as buying a Monalisa of tweets. He received a certificate, digitally signed and verified by Mr Dorsey, and the metadata of the original tweet. In reality, the tweet remains publicly accessible on Dorsey’s Twitter page, while Mr Sina gets a certificate of ownership and a right to resell the NFT of the tweet. Thus, the debate of ownership, acquisition and resale rights may lie in the nature of the asset and conditions surrounding its sale."

Each NFT has rules associated to it as to how it can be used and how it can be bought and sold.  In addition, the terms and conditions are pre-determined by the creator of NFT and may include benefits for buyers such as:

• Outright ownership of the asset (digital or physical transfer included)
• Exclusive access to the digital location where the asset is hosted (creative works, e.g. picture, audio, poem, tweet, GIF)
• Resale right
• Access to receive a percentage of bounty from a further resale

So, even if you are all crazy on NFTs, are you really sure what you actually own? Does the original creator still get a big piece of the pie if you sell your NFT? How are you allowed to profit off the NFT? And so on...

All this is great, but, even without a complete understanding of the legal aspects, my problem is that I may just be too old. I collect different types of things, I am a huge fan of an old horror movie actor named Vincent Price. I have some artwork he created and some contracts, pictures, albums and other items from his personal collection. Having an NFT of Vincent Price would just not hold the personal value to me as to owning things that he actually owned, touched and created physically. 

Now, I get how since I am not on the NFT bandwagon, I could be just saying this as sour grapes, so let me know where you have had success or see the value. Especially, if it is not as simply a collectible.