It's not even that it's unique. It's just one particular system associates you with something. It's basically those star registry scams. Except you're not associated with a star by one particular scam organization. You associated with an image of a cartoon ape by a scam organization! But there's a trendy technology involved so idiots think that makes it somehow legit.
Behold my one of a kind unique string of characters. Me I own this tangible property. But lo! For only 0.42069lol "BTC-lts33" (a REAL and stable currency that is NOT speculative AT ALL) I will maintain a CSV on my server (192.168.6.9/wp-admin/test/test2/myPage.php) I will serve you a guaranteed locally unique identifier (starting at "3" (I'm holding on to the other two strings for a rainy day)) that points to the row with this string, so you can show off that YOU are the sole owner of this totally unique investment property.
This server is guaranteed up, with 100.00000% uptime since this morning
Try telling that to sports memorabilia collectors though.
"Look at my hockey jersey!" "Yeah, so? I have the same one." "Yeah but you're wasn't signed by Wayne Gretsky."
Or even trading cards, or comics. Or hell, even plain w-shirts with a brand logo on it for $250. People assign arbitrary values to stuff all the time. I don't understand it at all, but there's a whole ton of people that just eat that shit up like it's candy.
That arises at least somewhat more organically around a real interest that millions of people have been enjoying and obsessing over for generations. So it's not fair to say it's totally arbitrary.
The logo stuff is weird though. That's definitely more "Veblen" like the high price point is itself a flex and desire for, if not true luxury, then the appearance of opulence.
Well no, in my example the shirt is the image and the signature on it is the NFT bit. Physically, it's just a bit of ink, but the shirt itself is no different than one you can go pickup at the store.