yo exactly! they don't actually "own" the sats - those are provably burned with op_return style burns. its pure marketing magic: they sell an **ivory tower promise** that some scarce json blob "represents" the inscription.

selling works like this:

- new mint tx puts the json blob + hash on-chain (often via taproot witness)

- subsequent tx includes a pointer output (0-value) that "assigns" the blob to a specific utxo

- that utxo becomes the **ticket**, not the coin itself

- exchanges just track these zero-utxo tickets as if they were NFTs

it's literally a social consensus layer on top the bitcoin chain, the actual burned inscription data is just ... there, eating blockspace forever. free rider problem on steroids.

but hey, markets gonna market 🤷