I work in tech and know just enough to not be an enthusiast about any of it, so while I understand the concept of NFTs, I don't really understand how any of it works in practice.
I keep seeing these pictures, like a monkey cyborg or the ugly cartoon lions, that have sold for huge amounts. I understand people are paying in Ethereum or whatever, so it's not exactly like they're selling for millions of dollars, but what is stopping me from making a bunch of crappy art, turning it into NFTs, selling it all for Ethereum, and cashing out the Ethereum? Is there some special significance to the NFT art I'm seeing that makes dumbasses want to buy it? Like the artists are well known, or the images are well-known memes or something? I'm guessing I can't just start doing it too because if it were that easy everyone would already be doing it. Help me understand
I wonder if you could do something similar to ebay scams where the listing is like "This is an empty PS5 box. You are only purchasing the box." I'm talking out my ass bc I know nothing about this but I imagine the NFTs must incorporate a fingerprint of the original file, so you can't just right-click-save-as the original image and mint a NFT from it. But you could take a screenshot of the original, or alter a single pixel, and mint that into a NFT. Then you could sell it to an unsuspecting rube who didn't look closely enough at what they were buying
im not certain but i think this is in fact possible, they call minting shit that isnt 'yours' like copymint violation or something. the market platforms purport to monitor for it and use reporting tools etc bc i guess they must to have any sort of investor confidence