What it was years ago | What it is today:
- P2P Electronic Cash system | P2P JPEG ownership transfer service
That's the thing: there is no JPEG ownership, it's meaningless! It only "means" something on a made-up system, which only means something to the few people who are in on it. To the rest of the world, it doesn't mean anything. And on top of that, anyone can claim "ownership" of any image, with or without having the rights to do so. It's a scam.
If I'd tell you each of my satoshis is worth $1000, and if I'd create a wallet that actually shows that, and if I were to hype it enough, I could probably get some gullible victims into paying me that much. Just like the ICO scams did when Ethereum was facilitating all those scams. I really don't like the idea of Bitcoin faciliting this.
No-coiners will also tell you that BTC is meaningless, it's a made-up system...
Only 1% of the global population owns BTC, to the rest (99%) of the world it doesn't mean anything. Ordinal users are a subset of an already small subset (BTC users).
In the end it's all ones and zeroes. However we decide to interpret it is a matter of perspective (for art lovers art makes sense, for others not so much).
Even copyrighted material (such as
Nintendo video games) is ones and zeroes.
Nintendo will tell you it's not just ones and zeroes, it's their intellectual property (because that's how they interpret it from their own perspective) and they may even try to take down BTC nodes with a
DMCA notice.
Piracy lovers/preservationists will tell you it's just ones and zeroes, not much different from other data stored in the BTC blockchain.