Not that I'm all into the crypto and NFT stuff, but I've seen enough of it around to have an idea of what it's about. I have purchased about $20 worth of crypto, which I bought with some credit that I had on Venmo. Unfortunately, that is worth about half of what I paid for it, but fortunately it wasn't a big investment for me and I'm glad I didn't jump in too deep on the first step. Although some people can get rich quick investing in them, I think they are pointless for most people to get into, and, of course, it's usually the people that get involved early on that make the most money. Reading these stories, you can see that this isn't my opinion alone.
For starters, NFTs can only convey ownership (or rather, possession, but we’ll come back to that) of the token itself. As software engineer Molly White explained to WIRED, “With NFTs, the thing you've bought does not tend to give you ownership of the underlying item (image, game asset, etc.) in any way you would normally transfer physical or digital art.”
In the best cases, NFTs can only ever be proof of ownership of themselves. Third-party systems still need to verify the external data—artwork, digital items, etc.—that NFTs refer to.
Scams have always been a part of the cryptocurrency industry, and so has the uncomfortable question of centralized interventions. A recent study found that 50 percent of all tokens listed on popular decentralized exchange Uniswap are straight-up scams. Last month, CoinDesk proudly defended OlympusDAO as being the “future of money” while admitting in the first sentence of its defense that “Yes, it’s a Ponzi scheme.” Scams and thefts in the decentralized finance space have continued to get worse, reaching $14 billion in 2021.
If you're really interested in learning more about NFTs and cryptocurrency, I recommend checking out the articles where these quotes came from,
https://www.wired.com/story/nfts-dont-work-the-way-you-think-they-do/ and
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3v3ny/all-my-apes-gone-nft-theft-victims-beg-for-centralized-saviors .