Quote Originally Posted by TaleraRistain View Post
I'm not defending this in the slightest, but this does have a physical statue. The NFT is a certificate of authenticity on both versions and then the more expensive has an NFT for a digital version of the statue itself. The weird thing is the fine print says they won't support the certificate being traded or sold in the marketplace. So that raises all kinds of questions about what happens if someone wants to sell their physical statue.
I want to address the bolded part specifically, and I'm just using this specific post as a backboard though I've seen this comment a lot here - so this isn't particularly aimed at you, dw!

NFTs, by virtue of what they are, *shouldn't* be used as Certificates of Authenticity, and it's worrying that we're delving further and further into them. I come from this with an artists perspective, having had my work stolen quite a lot over the past 12 years as a digital artist, so of course take what I say with a grain of salt because I'm biased. I mean, of course I'm biased. Artists and digital creators are having their works stolen and turned into NFTs - a more notable example being Qing Han (Qinniart), who died. After her death, many of her works began to be uploaded and converted into NFTs. And even outside of artists creative works being stolen, NFTs can't even be used as preventative measures because the NFT can essentially be copy-pasted, and there is nothing stopping anyone from taking the NFT and making a new NFT out of the old NFT. So even if an artist wanted to preemptively create NFTs out of their work before others did, that still doesn't work.

In my opinion, NFTs being used as Certificates of Authenticity is like allowing just anyone to slap pictures in the Louvre and claim that it's theirs. Sure, you're going to have some works that are genuine and authentic - but there's also works that aren't.

And that's where I'll veer back into this situation - NFTs can be copied. Fake "Certificate of Authentications" can be made. What's to stop some shady 3rd party site from selling NFTs of this? The blockchain is notorious for allowing this to happen, with close to no repercussions for whoever decides to do that. It protects no one. It does nothing. It's speculative investing that now can't be used as speculative investing because SE has decided to cut off that avenue. And on top of that, the NFT market has crashed - big time. There's absolutely *no benefits* to this, even with the NFT acting as a sort of Certificate of Authenticity, because even that isn't sacrosanct.