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The Power of Ownership in a Digital Age
How NFTs Are Restoring Personal Ownership On The Internet

Back in the early 2000s, owning something online felt novel — even empowering. You downloaded songs. You stored photos on CDs. Your hard drive was your vault.
Then something changed.
We moved to the cloud. We streamed instead of downloaded. We handed our digital lives over to platforms, subscriptions, and user agreements none of us really read. Slowly, quietly, we stopped owning anything online.
It’s convenient, sure. But also a little precarious.
One service shuts down, one login gets blocked — and a decade of your content, purchases, or connections can vanish. What happens to “the cloud” if the sun suddenly comes out?
That’s what makes NFTs so radical — and, in a way, so restorative.
They’re not about speculation or status symbols. (unless you want them to be)
They’re about returning control to the individual.
At their best, NFTs let you hold proof — not just a file, but a function: access, identity, utility. They let you carry your membership, your rewards, your digital belongings with you. From platform to platform. From moment to moment. Across time.
This is what ownership should look like in a digital world:
Verifiable
Portable
Personal
Independent
It’s easy to get lost in the noise — cartoon apes, scams, hype. But beneath that, something foundational is happening. We’re rethinking what it means to own, share, and use digital assets in a world that’s becoming more virtual by the day.
It’s not perfect. The tools are still clunky. The concepts are still evolving. But the trajectory is clear — and it leads toward more control, not less.
NFTs aren’t just tech. They’re philosophy encoded in software:
You should own your stuff — even online.
And when you do, you begin to see the internet differently. Less like a service you rent, and more like a space you help shape.
— Hashed Out
Ready to take a deeper dive and learn what NFTs might mean for you?
Read the main article: Making NFTs Work For You
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