That is actually an incredibly accurate analogy of NFTs. Along with cryptocurrency, it's fascinating and has the potential to change trade fundamentally, but has a massive environmental cost which people don't understand.
It's not that everything is on a server somewhere, it's because millions of people using their computers to try and crack a difficult calculation and a small amount of the currency is given away for success (mining). Chances of success are so low, everyone joins a pool, so the rewards from mining is more or less proportional to the processing power you provide. As you'd expect, market forces means that the value of currency and cost of electricity matches.
Where the electricity is cheap (e.g. China) or free (stolen) it's worth mining, anywhere else and you're more likely to lose money. It means that cryptocurrencies (and therefore NFTs) are at best an environmental nightmare and at worst a way of funding organised crime.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ectricity.html
Quote:
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The process of creating Bitcoin to spend or trade consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million.
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For reference, 91 TWh = 3.5 million 3kW kettles running 24 hours a day, 365 day a year, and that's just one crypto-currency.