Bitcoin Forum

Why in gods name would anyone pay anything for this stupid crap?
Must be some kind of money laundering scheme.


'Bitcoin NFT' Hysteria Comes to Sotheby's as Super-Mario-Style Mushroom Character Tops $200K

Dec 14, 2023

In the historic auction house's first-ever sale of the Ordinals inscriptions known as "NFTs on Bitcoin," a batch of three pixelated images from a mushroom-themed collection drew about $450,000, or roughly five times the highest estimates...continued below

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/12/14/bitcoin-nft-hysteria-comes-to-sothebys-as-super-mario-style-mushroom-character-tops-200k/

I am %99 sure this is money laundering. I mean that %1 is because I have absolutely no proof of that, but "innocent until found guilty" is when we are talking about a courtroom, not public opinion, and I can have my own opinion on the matter without needing proof. If they could provide proof who bought it and where they found the money and it turns out its some accountant who invested in apple early on and made some wealth and gave his teenage son some money to spend for college and that kid invested into this, yeah then I will believe it. But until someone offers me some proof, I will keep thinking that these are all money laundering and nothing else. That, or someone created this, and bought his own thing himself with different account, to get some media coverage about it to make others want to buy it too.

There's no way on knowing the truth behind those purchases and its true that no one on their right minds on purchasing up those pixelated NFT's for half a million dollars on which it is really just that normal for people
to have that kind of impression that this is surely money laundering thing because of the amount involved and speaking about NFT thing. We arent on a NFT hype as of this moment but we do recently see some surge when it comes to nft purchases and volume but there are really things like these on which it would really be raising up some question.

Due to the fact that there's no way on knowing on whose behind on such address, then all the thing we can do now is to speculate into those probabilities but without having those strong evidences.
Its not new anymore into this market on which someone could really be able to clean up their tainted money via these kind of methods and ways
on which it is really that somewhat effective.

There are early Bitcoin or some altcoin holders that have hundreds of coins worth millions of dollars, and they can easily afford to gamble with these pixelated garbage, because even if those crash to zero, those guys will still be rich. I seriously doubt that anyone from outside of the crypto ecosystem is coming with their $$ to invest big money into NFTs - maybe it happens occasionally, but it looks like most of the investors are crypto whales.

What still baffles me the most is how people on their right minds are still investing in NFT, which means something that has no real use if we are to classify it as something they can really be used for. With all the scams and large losses that the total NFT market has recorded this season, people are still buying NFT for millions of dollars.
 
Well, I'm not even supposed to be surprised, knowing fully well that those buying are just business people, and they are trying to take advantage of the hype of the ordinals. If they buy at that price, they can equally sell back to their fellow big guys in the crypto space.
 
That's if the sales and the buying are really genuine, as the market can be manipulated with just a single person or two people in the same place just to make trending news in order to fine a victim who will buy the NFT with a higher bid.
 
We will all be here watching to see how long this ordinal hype is going to last and how many of those buying those tokens will be able to take some profit, as well as those who will also complain if they lose at the end of the day, as we are sure to see both.

first of all the ordinals are not NFT's

secondly
i am 99.99999% sure the pixel creator published the pixelated image and then self bought his own scam. just to set a market rate
and because he paid himself.. it cost him nothing bar the market fee(0.x%)to set a market rate

now he just has to wait for an idiot to want to buy the scam

simply because thats how this fake scam market works

..
everyone has seen it done before..
years ago scammers would advertise a UK 50pence coin on ebay, but using another account they would buy the coin for £500 to set a market rate and get viral advertising on media that the 50p is worth £500.. but the buyer/seller are same person so it didnt cost £500, it lust cost the £0.20 ebay fee

now they just wait for idiots to buy a £0.50p for £500+

OP has become duped into becoming part of the viral advertising campaign the scammers were hoping for

..
how to swindle sotheby's..
scammer employs a friend to finance the auction bid(name separation from buyer/seller) and scammer will re-imburse the friend after the auction
it only costs the scammer the sotheby commission
but the hope it "legitimises" their scam to sucker in victims on next round

Same thought here, and if this is not money laundering, this transaction may be some kind of a scheme.  The owner buying his stuff.  It is not new to us that many con-artist, schemers, and scammers do this kind of strategy just to make some hype or noise in the industry.  Just like how many altcoin developers before self-trade to create volume so that their coins will be published on the exchange site to be noticed by traders.

I do not believe that the transaction is genuine, no one in their right mind will spend such a huge amount if there is no catch at all.

Yea sounds like a great plan if you have the funds and are a scammer, creating your
own market value for your scam.

TBH, I dont get the NFT/Ordinals craze or is it more realistically a fad?

I have to commend the legitimate 'artists' and 'creators' who have created work and
were able to monetise it but yea I think a lot of people will get / have gotten scammed
thinking they are investing into something for the future.

ordinals does not use proper cryptographic proof of transfer
the pixels are in witness metadata, but do not assign which output the pixels are owed to within the blockdata..
it just shows the utxo input that created it..

the ordinals SOFTWARE GUI assumes 'first output' but this is not indicated in the blockchain data, and the ordinals software can change assumed output in a couple lines of code and a software update...
meaning its not immutably secure proof of transfer

those bitcoin junk are not real tokens. they are just publishing junk data. and scamming people with false beliefs they become registered owners. even if blockchain data does not in reality show proof of registered new owner

With an announcement like this, I expect this transaction to be subject to tax. If it is, it will reduce the possibility of scam by purchasing from a friend, but it does not negate the possibility of money laundering occurring (although I rule it out because of the hype that occurs behind such matters and the existence of better ways to launder money).

If there is a fool who buys several Super-Mario-Style Mushroom Characters for $500,000, do not buy them for $5, otherwise you will be like that fool, but on a lower level.

It's just a way to get people used to paying higher fees, whether it's miners, altcoins, or people who don't like the increased adoption of Bitcoin.

Useless FOMO. I really dislike stuff that's easy but gets priced way too high. Most people here can create that from YouTube tutorials, so why the hefty price tag? Is it their plan to hype up the market to follow what they're doing? That's pretty foolish.

Bitcoin is bitcoin. It's basic knowledge that everyone should have, it's not the actual plan of Bitcoin. Maybe some folks came from altcoins thanks to its FOMO a few years ago, and it just congested the Bitcoin network.

I want people who know the basics to naturally get what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin isn't the place to sell cartoon pictures.

I remember in 2019 or 2020 or so when Ethereum NFTs were introduced. And we were getting some crappy jpeg sell for like $10K. Back then i assumed it has to be money laundering because it made no sense.

Then a year or so later, some of these jpegs were going for millions. Was it laundering? Maybe for some but it turned into speculation pretty much. People flipping NFTs left and right. And the same thing is happening here. They are buying it to sell it for a higher price in the future.

Only in the crypto industry, pixelart NFTs get the highest prices. But, who says that buyers are really art collectors? In general, NFTs are just a smooth bridge to make various business transactions pass scrutiny.
We have repeatedly expressed condemnation for similar things in the altcoin section in the past years. This is not the first madness phenomenon.

Everybody, normal people and bitcoiners, are all tired of the NFT hangover. Most people's NFTs have gone down since 2021, and that is exactly what will happen with these fool's gold coins once the effects of bitcoin halving commences in full effect, because then people will rush to buy real bitcoins.

Or maybe they will keep buying $ORDI and get crushed in 2026. I don't know.

spending $450,000 on some crappy images and getting nothing out of it other than news on crypto news platforms, i don't know what he was thinking. it has no value, it has no economics, and its value is prone to dropping drastically, but someone still wants to buy it and not think about how much money they spent just for these crappy images, that's just mind boggling.

i don't know what he did by buying it, but i smelled something fishy, it just wasn't right.

YEah, more like making black money white using that process.

This is definitely for money laundering, even all those virtual monkeys in the past were also used to do this.

Because what would be the point of buying this? Extremely rich people wouldn't be such idiots to put money into anything like this.

Now we have rare satoshis, another narrative to make easy money by overvaluing something that has no meaning.

What do you think about rare satoshis?

I  alsoagree it's either money laundry or both buyer and seller actually same person. I don't see any sane person willing to spend $450K just for that when AFAIK the creator isn't famous or well-known.


And these days you could just use AI which generate image from text.

If we talk about legitimate transaction I don't know how people could think about buying those pixelated pics at expensive price since for sure they get a hard time for selling it back again to another investor.

But in reality the creator of that NFT is maybe the one do that transaction for purpose of creating a hype for the creator of this said pixelated pics. If he succeed to create a noise then provably he can get some exposure and can sell his next creation on a legit expensive price. That's bow those smart people deal with their businesses and they want people to think that they should have that since they can earn with this in future.

I guess it's not always a kind of money laundering because there are many people who want to earn a lot of money investing in stupid NFTs. I remember the times when people bought NFTs for millions and they can buy those for millions once again.

A money launderer would do something else rather then buying a $450k ordinal. The ordinals are a new craze for many people and they will continue for sometime. We may see ordinals lovers more likely than the NFT lovers because many people believe in Bitcoin and the ordinals are working on Bitcoin blockchain.

Thats a lot of money for just owning a garbage lol this useless NFTs/ordinals is just a waste of money, what can you do with this piece of shit on your wallet? of course seller and buyer is the same no doubt.     

Ordinals isn't same to NFT, though @OP is confused too.

Few people might able to make money from Ordinals or NFT, but many of them are in lose.

Actually using Ordinals or NFT for money laundering is smart! if you use mixer or something like that, people who caught you already know if your purpose is for money laundering. But if you made transaction in Ordinals or NFT, people might think the sender and receiver are different owners, while there's a possibility the two address were controlled by the same person.

NFT was so hyped back then pre-pandemic 2019-2020 and so popular that even famous people are investing in it. Just imagining them already being successful and having a lot of money and still buying this kind of stuff would make you probably think that they are money laundering, but some people like me, have tried to invest in NFTs and make profits cause if you are lucky to be whitelisted, you can buy them at a cheaper price then sell it for a higher price. $450k is so huge that I would prefer to invest it into much better investments like Bitcoin, real estate, etc. if they might plan it just to launder their money then that might be good, but if you are a person who will try to make money, is still depends on the roadmap of the project in how you can benefit by holding their NFTs.

When I saw the NFT image, dude, I just laughed. To be honest, if that's how the NFT looks, then the price is too expensive. I also wouldn't think twice about the fact that NFT is just being used as a front for money laundering.

Although I don't have enough evidence that this accusation of mine is true, it's just that any person will think that the nft looks so ugly that they will wonder why that picture is so expensive that no one can touch it. It seems that the person with bad intentions is just passing by, and we don't know what it is or where the money that was bought came from.

I don't get how it can cost that much either, but I'd say it's better when the wealthy use their money on something relatively harmless instead of being fond of hunting animals, buying stuff made out of elephant bones, or something else in that fashion. The only downside is, of course, Bitcoin transaction fees spiking because of Ordinals, but I hope it's a temporary thing that will naturally die out.
When people buy stuff like that, maybe they do it because they can, or maybe they think they can sell it for an even higher price. Whatever it is, it's not the worst thing to spend money on, even if it's definitely not the best either.
Maybe it's a scam, though, as others suggested in the thread. In that case, it is harmful. But there's no evidence of that, right? It's just something that seems to make sense, but there's no proof.

...and what's new?  I don't see anything interesting about this except the issue of where they are doing it.  Which is the real problem, NFTs have been selling for thousands of dollars for years and not everything has to be related to money laundering, it is a thriving market.

There are famous people involved, not exactly this case, but I remember that Paris Hilton paid $450,000 a couple of years ago.

Anyway, it is not very distant to give value to an Alts that capitalizes Billions, whether it is a bubble or not, the solution is simple, don't get involved.

Even I don't like the concept of people buying random NFT images for such huge prices. It doesn't really make any sense.
I like the NFT technology but when people pay millions for pixelated images I get crazy.
It's just the hype or a way of money laundering.

I collect bitcoin and for many other people this would be a waste of money.

So let them waste their money, I don't care. How's that different from someone paying a lot of money for a physical coin just because it has a rare flaw? I was surprised when I found out there's a large market for things that were made with flaws, like bank notes, coins, stamps, even money printing matrices and people are paying big if you find that special one in a million item.

What about collections? People pay a lot of money for things like post cards, legos, dolls, autographs... Sure these are physical items, but I wouldn't pay 100x the price of an item just because it was signed by someone.

I never got involved with NFT stupidity. I don't see why I should pay for something that is only art or an image on the internet. Why do I have to win it anyway? I'm not sure if it's money laundering or just a stupid act. NFT is nothing for me, though I buy alt coins sometimes but never NFT. From the beginning, I hated NFT and didn't bother myself with any NFT printing or buying. You guys may love or like it, but I don't see the reason.

The reason is clear that most people got involved in NFT for profit.  Because of the promised earnings many people get involved in NFT through play-to-earn games.  Others get involved in NFT for flipping intention and have profit.

Now, those who bought NFT for a huge amount are probably for publication or marketing exposure.  I do not think they buy them for bragging rights.  I simply don't think that people get involved in NFT because of curiosity and huge price sales might be executed as part of the scheme of the person involved in the trading to bait and catch unsuspecting and naive investors to buy their upcoming/existing NFT series.