- Having a beneficial use; serviceable: "a useful kitchen gadget."
- Being of practical use: "a useful job; useful members of society."
- Full of use, advantage, or profit; producing, or having power to produce, good; serviceable for any end or object; helpful toward advancing any purpose; beneficial; profitable; advantageous: "vessels and instruments useful in a family; books useful for improvement; useful knowledge; useful arts"
Let’s say I bought an NFT for X and later sold it for Y profit. I bought a house with Y. The person who received X bought a car with it, or maybe long in oil futures with X before the Iran war, made Z, and bought a field with the profit. Or maybe he put Z in a couple of bonds and used the resulting return later.
I'd say that's a scam, not an argument for the usefulness of NFTs. My counterargument is that most NFTs made people lose money instead of buying them houses or oil fields.
I'd bet that most stories of NFTs translating to material wealth come from minters or the inner circle of early adopters, because they made something useless and valueless, and somehow convinced enough people that it was worth buying it for hard-earned cash. Many lost so a few could make bank.
Value and usefulness are again subjective. For instance, what value would you have put on a can of Piero Manzoni’s Artist’s Shit? After all, we could all take a shit in a can. One can was sold for 124k EUR.
Many people lost some money. Maybe they gained from the experience. Many people made money. Maybe they lost some on other things. Many people got their knickers in a twist over things with such perceived (by themselves) low value selling for high value. Maybe they forgot that fiat money is a construction as well. Conversely, maybe they gained something intangible from the whole experience.
useful
- Having a beneficial use; serviceable: "a useful kitchen gadget."
- Being of practical use: "a useful job; useful members of society."
- Full of use, advantage, or profit; producing, or having power to produce, good; serviceable for any end or object; helpful toward advancing any purpose; beneficial; profitable; advantageous: "vessels and instruments useful in a family; books useful for improvement; useful knowledge; useful arts"