what is a NFT

A NFT is a non-interchangeable unit of data

or a non-fungible token 

I finally saw an explanation that made sense to me.

You're essentially paying for the ownership of a certificate. The certificate says you are the owner of the certificate

Why is that valuable? Well... why is anything valuable? Because people are willing to pay money for it. It's like collectable cards. There's no intrinsic reason a little piece of paper with a picture on it is valuable.

So let's say I paint a picture, and everyone likes it, so everyone sees it online. But then I also make a single certificate associated with the image, and sell that. The buyer doesn't own the image. What they own is like a collectable card.

"Fungible" just means it's not like bitcoin where, for example, my 1 bit coin is worth the same as your 1 bitcoin. With these certificates, mine might be worth more than yours because mine might be associated with a famous paining or something.

I still like my definition best - New Fangled Trash...

This is a decent explanation - A new way to sell you nothing and get money for it.

People's reluctance to define it in a way that makes sense certainly adds to the image of it being a bunch of hyped up garbage.

Money is only of value because of a commonly shared myth that gives it value. Gold also.

But it's so useful to large economies... isn't that interesting... I wonder how much is cultural and how much is instinct. Did wealthy people make up money and then indoctrinate the youth? Or do humans naturally create artificial value.

I guess a little of both.

I remember as a young kid we had some colored balls. After I decided the green one was my favorite, my brothers wanted to play with it more than the others.

I think Harari’s perspective is worthy of consideration.

https://www.ynharari.com/topic/money-and-politics/

The moment money became an abstraction of bartering, scammers started figuring out ways to skim off the top, and they have never stopped since.  The further money becomes abstracted, the easier it is to steal from people.

NFTs are a new wrinkle on an old theme.  Taking things of value and obfuscating them and mixing them with worthless things, then convincing you to value the worthless stuff, too.  This latest wrinkle is brought to you by video games, where dumb people have proven to the financial markets that they will pay for literally nothing.  Thanks, person that paid $5 to turn their avatar pink.

Over time, inflation outperforms interest.  That is the global sound of average people's money being sucked away.  Only if you have enough money to invest in a stock market artificially propped up in value by monthly 401K/IRA deposits do you break even or get ahead.  

In the "olden days", an artist would paint a one-of-a-kind painting and sell it to you. You'd hang it on your wall and know that you had something unique and tangible. What a quaint little concept...

In simple terms, a scam.

Haha, well, every new idea is stupid.

If NFTs survive until the next generation they'll have a lot more respectability.

I predict that NFTs will last about as long as pet rocks and Beanie Babies did...

I'm completely uninterested in them, but I don't see much difference between NFTs and collectables in general.

lol.

No.

With a collectable you have physical proof of owning it. With NFTs you have a link to a file saying you are the "owner", without any legal covering what it entitles you to. Furthermore: if the party creating that file with info for your NFT stops (e.g. treasurechess/fourthwave stops hosting the nice image you "own"), you are left with a broken link to something that doesn't exist.

With a collectable you would still have the Pokemon Go card when the company behind them stops.