Imagine going to the grocery store filling your cart with stuff and then checking out. Then you leave the cart behind and only take the receipt home with you. In this analogy, the NFT is the receipt that you get at the checkout counter and your cart is the actual picture file. Although you do usually get the picture file, anyone else can access it too.

Sure the receipt proves that you bought the thing, but you having the receipt only matters if somebody else cares.

The art world was actually a good target for NFTs because I can print out a picture of a Monet and hang it on my wall for basically free, but other people pay hundreds of millions of dollars for that same painting just because it’s “the real one”.