It allows you to show what key signed a record. It doesn’t tell you what person used that key, whether they were acting in good faith, or whether they had the right information. If you want to know any of those things you have to pay real auditors to check real world status, and at that point you’re going to ask why you need to pay so much more to use a slow database which requires always-on internet connectivity when you’d get the same value from a Yubikey or iPhone’s builtin cryptographic primitives.

In real life, counterfeiting is dealt with at multiple levels: legal, communal, technological. Laws are written to deter the act with punitive measures. Communities share information about how to spot counterfeits. Technology is used to make the act of copying harder.

The folly of NFTs, energy footprint aside, is thinking that a well-written smart contract is all that's needed to stop counterfeits.

Yeah but the crypto is outside of the object of desire. I too can give you a signed paper that tells you that you now own the Mona Lisa. You can even formally verify that the signature is real and by me! Notice anything?

The important questions for you remain unanswered:

- Do I actually have the rights to sell you the thing I try to sell you?

- What do I actually sell you?

- Am I who I claim I am?

- etc.

NFTs are not answering any of these questions, they are the equivalent of an elaborate signature on the contract of the guy trying to sell you a bridge.

> crypto has the benefit that you can actually prove who created something

No. Crypto lets you prove who wrote a small amount of data to the blockchain.

Yep… I can totally prove this random pseudonym/anonnym is definitely the same one that has… never been used before because due to social incentives you want zero links between identities and thus the web of trust is just a sea of filaments floating loose in an ocean

An ocean filled with fish poop…

It’s so great I can definitively verify that this ID is something… but that’s absolutely fucking pointless if I have no way to judge if the entity or entities controlling it, connected to it, supporting it, or even associated with it (to consider potential future actions)… the goal was noble but the implementation completely failed because to succeed would have required the participants to build anchors in the real world of verifiable identities… and for all the value people get from day to day use of cryptocurrencies… the biggest value of crypto was in staying as far away from the real world as possible allowing such things as drug purchases and international money laundering and illegal gambling at a level low enough to evade legal enforcement services coming after the players (since obviously if they could come after the casino/house they would since that’s where all the money is)