> I could have all bored ape pictures and could reproduce them infinitely. What now? How does the NFT thingy stop me from doing that?

As the grandparent poster alluded to, the history is more important than the image - the same as the fine art and collections world, but technologically enforced in the NFT world. so the transaction hash from the collection contract is more important than the image it accesses, and is way more important than your indefinite reproductions because they won't be in the collection contract. An entry in the bored ape collection contract grants you access to a variety of goods and services. The "NFT thingy" doesn't try to stop you from defrauding undiscerning onlookers or consumers that don't look at the collection contract. The "NFT thingy" prevents you from having programmatic access to gated communities.

> Actually, one can't even "verify" a NFT if the market side goes down. Because the actual DB isn't on the blockchain…

What are you referring to? Did you mean the market site? You don't need OpenSea or any site to verify current possession, prior possession, or metadata. Some styles of NFT's store metadata on their own servers, which can go down. Some styles of NFT's store metadata on more resilient services like IPFS. Some styles of NFT's store metadata on the blockchain directly. All three styles use the blockchain directly for current possession and prior possession.

Which point did you think you were making? I only wrote all that because I didn't know what you were saying specifically.

> a variety of goods and services

Which are?

Many of last year's NFT collections are for social clubs, where proving current possession grants you access.

(if you made it this far in this thread, I should reiterate that NFTs and NFT collections have many differences. A lot of people that spend more energy not using NFT's have not noticed)

These social clubs can have a physical real world component such as conferences and events. Some fast executing NFT project creators have been able to pull the logistics off quickly, thinking of Bored Ape Yacht Club (now with a large $450m investment led by Andreesen Horowitz' a16z), and Veefriends

Many more of these social clubs are online only, including access to online worlds that are currently being called Metaverses (or usually "the metaverse", pretending others do not exist), many are for benefits conveyed in games.

But even more commonly, the interoperability is leveraged and third parties offer access to their own assets and NFT collections by granting access to people that currently possess another NFT collection. Some of these things can be very valuable. Other times, these are "airdropped" directly to the holder of a valuable NFT.

As this is programmatic, It is impossible for any of these things to ever factor in a duplicate, or for the duplicate to accrue the same value and demand (unless someone successfully built a community around the duplicate themselves)

What prevents people from duplicating the cryptographic key and using that to access said clubs?

cryptography

The cryptographic key is encrypted?

I apologize for my terseness. The private cryptographic key, which is only known to the owner, can be used to sign transactions and such, but it is never directly shared out. Thus, cryptography prevents the retrieval of the key from the outputs.

> which is only known to the owner

If the cryptographic key has actual value (like the ability to access goods and services) what prevents the owner from sharing or selling copies?

"hit and sunk"