I believe NFTs are actually a good idea on paper for this use case. Our implementation of the idea is weird though.
I don’t know why the SEC though. NFTs are not “money”. It’s a contract that shows ownership. It’s a legal issue in my opinion
The SEC also regulates trading in stocks, which are contracts that show ownership, just of a portion of a corporation instead of a piece of art. They’re both classified as securities because they can be bought, sold and traded as investments where people can stand to gain or lose large sums of money in said trades. They work in very similar, if not identical, ways. If the NFT did not function so much like a stock investment and was just something you could buy or sell as a regular good, then the implementation would not be so weird.
But can’t that same argument be used for a Picasso or Van Gogh painting? Are those also regulated by the SEC for ownership? NFTs are trade-able when it comes to art. It’s just a contract in the form of a deed of ownership at a digital layer being transferred.
If regular art which is often considered an investment and hogged by the ultra rich is also regulated by the SEC then you’re right. If it’s not then I don’t get why we treat the “art” which is owned by a NFT contract differently based on the type of contract we’d like to consider binding.
