How do we attribute value to an NFT?

 

How do we attribute value to an NFT? We can analyze this question from a number of perspectives. To start, we could draw a line of demarcation between categories of possessions that exist physically and those that exist intangibly. One intuitively understands how tangible things get value. This is often tied to the item’s usefulness. For example, a car has value because it transports. A knife is useful for cutting. A pen enables writing. We move out one level of abstraction and see that pieces of physical money (coins and bills) have value in how they are used to transact in goods and services.

The value of intangible possessions requires more abstract thinking, but the reasonable person has no difficulty in grasping how that valuation works. One may possess a right or privilege even though he can’t hold it in his hands. Another may possess a digital good – think about premium skins in video games – but she cannot physically touch it. Understanding the value in these kinds of intangible things is not too challenging. So we can reject the notion that an NFT’s intangible nature means it has no value. But where do we go from here in exploring where an NFT’s value is derived?

Consider a digital work of art (as a .jpg, for example) that is transacted as an NFT. The underlying work of art – whether seen as bits on a screen or printed out as ink-on-paper – can hold the viewer in aesthetic arrest. But the NFT itself – data within the blockchain – does not so stimulate the human soul. It seems, therefore, that we have eliminated the notion that beauty or some similar concept gives value to an NFT.

But let’s not yet move away from thinking about characteristics of works of art in seeking to answer our question about attributing value. The ability to hold its viewer in aesthetic arrest is only one way a physical piece of art can have value. Consider the Mona Lisa – the actual physical painting hanging on a wall this very moment at the Louvre in Paris. I could fly to Paris, take the Metro to the Louvre, buy a ticket and make my way to the hall where the Mona Lisa is displayed. I could look at it there and behold its beauty. But I could also behold that beauty by doing a Google Image search on my computer in the basement. Or I could go to Target and buy a Mona Lisa print to hang on my own wall. The fact that I could enjoy the Mona Lisa without going to Paris shows that the ability to induce aesthetic arrest does not come only from the original. One can get the same thrill from seeing a copy. Yet there remains a thrill one can get only by beholding the actual physical painting in Paris. There’s a “something more” arising from seeing the actual materials assembled as they were by da Vinci’s own hand. There is a value in being in the presence of and perceiving the actual corporeal stuff that da Vinci saw and manipulated.

 

There is only one original Mona Lisa. It is irreplaceable. That is, it is non-fungible. The original Mona Lisa in Paris connects us to da Vinci in time and space. When we are in the presence of the original Mona Lisa, we are in the presence of the actual stuff (wood, pigment) that da Vinci handled. That ability to give the viewer an experience of presence – one more than mere aesthetic arrest – contributes substantially to the painting’s value. So it must be, then, that these particular molecules comprising the original Mona Lisa, and one’s being in proximity to them, are what gives the original painting a special value? Well, no.

The actual molecules comprising the Mona Lisa – the carbon in the poplar board, the material in the pigment, etc. – compared in terms of chemical structure and behavior – differ none from all the other like category molecules in the universe. The Mona Lisa’s molecules are not special in themselves, but instead are valuable because they were worked in accordance with da Vinci’s intention.

Here we may have reached a good place from which to jump back over to NFTs. We know that intangibleness does not disqualify NFTs from having value. And we know that NFTs do not induce an aesthetic experience. But they do carry some specialness due to their uniqueness. In a certain respect, Jack Dorsey’s NFT of the Very First Tweet carries the same flavor of specialness as the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, even though – unlike the Mona Lisa – the Very First Tweet NFT does not portray beauty. And, unlike the original Mona Lisa, the Very First Tweet NFT, being intangible, does not contain any particular molecules that Dorsey put there (because of course the bits stored that embody the tweet or the NFT are not tied to a particular memory substrate that he dealt with back in March 2006). But what does remain is the fact that the content of the Very First Tweet has now become inextricably (even if only symbolically) linked to the NFT because of Dorsey’s intention.

 

We have now arrived at a point where we can at least preliminarily posit some statements articulating how an NFT gets value: Value attaches to an NFT because of the uniqueness of its digital structure having come into existence as the particular effect of an act of its author’s intention. More simply: One may want an NFT because there is something abstractly intriguing about its creation and existence, even though there is nothing one can touch that corresponds with that intrigue.