The $69m NFT buyer & seller were partners

[dothebeats]

Other NFTs that are not works of art, I will understand reaching such prices. But for the jpg NFT market? I have lots of doubts. I mean, what prevents anyone from creating their own multi-million pixel NFT nowadays? They can pair it with some preposterous claims about the origin of the NFT then bam, value is created out of nowhere. As what one user mentioned here, this sale is a perfect example of money laundering through NFTs. It's the next level of idiocy but hey, if it works, it works.

[ene1980]

So what does it even mean, that the highest bid was just to attract everyone. They need to send out the fees which will not be that huge considering they shelled out $69 million to create the hype around the NFT market. I know that some of these things are stupid and even i was thinking why would anyone shell out millions for stupid digital art when they can do everything in the world that has some meaning .

[EdenHazard]

So what does it even mean, that the highest bid was just to attract everyone. They need to send out the fees which will not be that huge considering they shelled out $69 million to create the hype around the NFT market. I know that some of these things are stupid and even i was thinking why would anyone shell out millions for stupid digital art when they can do everything in the world that has some meaning .

well collectible thing always had its value, sometimes it is about satisfaction ... and for those people who have too much money, they often spend money on stupid things just try to not get bored.
this just remind me on netflix serial called squid game,  a group of rich people get bored and created crazy game for the sake of satisfaction.

but this NFT thing way more complicated, the vision of NFT itself is really really great, but there is always an obstacle and write off the good instention of NFT invention. f*ckk them and we just moving on.

[hatshepsut93]

You have clean crypto from selling NFT. What can government do? Say that its impossible that you sold nft for 100k$ (for instance). Well I know people who get 20k$ from ... bounty program in 2017. I get 1500$ from 1inch aidrop. This guy get 2 mln $ from uniswap aidrop - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5276637.0 Everything is possible here. I doubt that government will stop someone from taxing 1 mln $ earned from selling NFT.

It's not clean crypto is government can investigate it and find that the buyer and seller are connected and that the money involved were dirty. Fine art is used for money laundering and NFT can be used too, but this method is very far from perfect. Big criminals invest in legitimate business that generates clean profit so that their actions raise minimum suspicion.

[worle1bm]

https://mailchi.mp/brianlivingston.com/034-2#free1

Who knew there was collusion at the OverPriced JPG market?

The NFT trend is at most of the hype this time nothing else and people are spending millions for just a single piece of monkey only.They just want to remain popular in the market and as said money laundering is also being conducted through this trend.Why would anyone spend $69 million for just a jpeg file whereas high quality projects are unable to raise funds for the project.But still we see people usually prefer to be part of the hype whatever it costs.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

It's not clean crypto is government can investigate it and find that the buyer and seller are connected and that the money involved were dirty. Fine art is used for money laundering and NFT can be used too, but this method is very far from perfect. Big criminals invest in legitimate business that generates clean profit so that their actions raise minimum suspicion.

I think its much easier to connect a real legitimate business with scam activity if balance sheet does not match (huge amount of money out of nowhere, deposits from shady bank accounts or margin significantly exceeding industry standards) rather than 2 random ETH addresses. Especially now, in 2021, when this technology is so new that governments has not developed technology and regulations to detect and prove in court that someone is guilty. Especially if someone knows what he is doing and we are talking about < x mln $ scam.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

So what does it even mean, that the highest bid was just to attract everyone. They need to send out the fees which will not be that huge considering they shelled out $69 million to create the hype around the NFT market. I know that some of these things are stupid and even i was thinking why would anyone shell out millions for stupid digital art when they can do everything in the world that has some meaning .

That's the most likely reason or that they overpriced and overhyped the product so they can make as much profit as possible, this isn't anything new, most art dealers and auction house do this so they can inflate the prices artificially and the owner of the product gets more benefit.

[bussybuddy]

Artistic NFTs with such great value are truly absurd in value, and perhaps we all see the hype. I think that if not clarified, this is not an issue that receives much attention, because money laundering or PR tricks will apply.

[ivankoh]

In fact, the art NFTs are an abstraction that has multiple theoretical meanings and is endless in value. As evidenced by an NFT monkey sold for 2M1$, it has become the most expensive NFT work on the Solana ecosystem. Lol, a lot of interesting things in NFT showed many surprises.
But with a different story, it can completely contain tricks with many literal meanings.

[fiulpro]

Now what they did is similar to what big business companies do usually, they generally try and overprice their products by using such strategies of strategies similar to these therefore what the guy did was honestly not just a scam but also he unfortunately stained the NFT industry, now people are not just going to be more aware but at the same time some might decide to ward off from them.
The whole point is, if you do a thing like that, you generally ruin the image of the whole industry alongside your company as well, therefore I do hope that in the future people can have better options to investigate the meaningless and super high value themselves before making any decisions.
The whole point would be to :
1. Investigate
2. Be extra careful
3. Have an idea about pricing things according to their value.
4. Learn to tackle such scams using blockchain technology.

[MNbag]

If you need to actively promote your investments, that ain't a good investment.

Good investments often speak for themselves.

They don't need a PR team.

[Dragonfund]

https://mailchi.mp/brianlivingston.com/034-2#free1

Who knew there was collusion at the OverPriced JPG market?

NFTs aren't something I have never been in support, it's just another scheme of crypto that would soon end and be forgotten and the surprising thing now is that celebrities have taking to the next level of minting for fans in exchange for their finance. I know how valuable art work can be sometimes but I would rather have a hold of two btc than buy an NFT art of $90k, that is foolishness.
The last time, snoop dog was something called metaverse and was making all the crypto media and I just wondering what people are thinking.
Don't be surprised when SEC start going after them the moment the NFT frenzy start to cool off.

[justdimin]

https://mailchi.mp/brianlivingston.com/034-2#free1

Who knew there was collusion at the OverPriced JPG market?

I would say this "partnership" is not as bad as it sounds. When I first heard they were partners I assumed they just made a fake money movement, like "I will pay 69 million dollars for your NFT and then you will pay it back to me, that way we both get famous and nobody loses any money" type of deal.

However it is not like that, they are just partners in business and they share marketing between each other and then the income from it as well. This is sort of understandable because of how the crypto world works, I personally believe that marketing should be done in bunches, as a whole community, it would make things a lot easier for people.

[ven7net]

https://mailchi.mp/brianlivingston.com/034-2#free1

Who knew there was collusion at the OverPriced JPG market?

And you know, I'm not surprised that it all happened. I have been making money over the Internet for a very long time and have been able to see many different fraudulent schemes during this time, so why can't they be with NFT? Of course, they are and will be everywhere, and it is important to know about this for everyone who is going to deal with this or that asset. Moreover, everything that we can see now, everything is created and launched with one goal, to earn as much and faster as possible, that's all.

[wxa7115]

I doubt that the government is so stupid to actually get fooled by something like this. Like you have a guy who is friends with drug dealers or other criminals, and he declared $$ milions in profits from selling an NFT, of course someone will start investigating this deal.

The complex scheme with manipulating some secondary tokens is more realistic than plainly using NFT to launder money. And also NFTs are good for making pump and dump schemes.

You have clean crypto from selling NFT. What can government do? Say that its impossible that you sold nft for 100k$ (for instance). Well I know people who get 20k$ from ... bounty program in 2017. I get 1500$ from 1inch aidrop. This guy get 2 mln $ from uniswap aidrop - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5276637.0 Everything is possible here. I doubt that government will stop someone from taxing 1 mln $ earned from selling NFT.

I agree with this, it will be one thing if a person had one million dollars in cryptocurrencies and they wanted to spend that money without telling the government, in that case the government will without a doubt investigate that person to the best of their abilities, but what we are talking about here is that those people are using the market of NFTs to try to legalize that money.

So they are trying to launder their money and make it clean by paying taxes and by creating a transaction to make it seem legitimate, and while it could seem suspicious I have no doubt that many government agencies are not going to ask any questions as long as they can tax that transaction in full.

[agg2702]

Most of big NFT trades are simply money laundering [*1] or just a way to find next big investor by creating a trading history.

[*1] You have 1 mln $ of dirty money stolen from exchange hack, rugpull or ICO exit scam? All you need to do is create a shitty picture, create NFT out of it using different ETH address and buy it using dirty money from first ETH address. Now you have clean money earned by selling NFT on 1 ETH address, you can pay tax from and spend. And NFT worth 1 mln $ (based on trade history) on other account.

So it does not surprise me at all that 1 trade was set up.

when looking at this case it is true what you say and it will be very easy to launder money in this way especially since it is something that is quite cheap for gas there and indeed when doing this there are several advantages they get.
apart from what you said in money laundering, this will also be a bit of a strategy to engage the next investors.
but unknowingly things like this can affect the image of NFT which is currently booming. and maybe they don't care about it.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

but unknowingly things like this can affect the image of NFT which is currently booming. and maybe they don't care about it.

They don't care. Just like ICO scammers did not care in 2017 about destroying one of the best inventions in economy we had in last century - create a company, collect millions from investors all around the globe in a fair way by giving back "shares" that can be easily traded right away. In a matter of 1 hour without leaving your home. This was huge. No one use it now only because 99/100 of projects are scams so that this 1/100 will have to spend millions for marketing to be more visible than those 99 scammers which made it one of the most expensive way of collecting founds for legit businesses.

But so far this big trades (money laundering trades) are in fact bringing all the hype into NFT. Most of people speculate them because they hope to sell it for millions just like XYZ nft was sold last day (which was money laundering trade).

[GubiMixa1292]

https://mailchi.mp/brianlivingston.com/034-2#free1

Who knew there was collusion at the OverPriced JPG market?

The truth behind the people who buy and sell NFTs are money launderers, it's ironic and funny not to know which works can sell for real millions of dollars. I suspect that behind those auction transactions is a conspiracy of a money launderer and they only do this by converting those funds into NFT then auctioning them into legal money to evade the law. 

[wxa7115]

but unknowingly things like this can affect the image of NFT which is currently booming. and maybe they don't care about it.

They don't care. Just like ICO scammers did not care in 2017 about destroying one of the best inventions in economy we had in last century - create a company, collect millions from investors all around the globe in a fair way by giving back "shares" that can be easily traded right away. In a matter of 1 hour without leaving your home. This was huge. No one use it now only because 99/100 of projects are scams so that this 1/100 will have to spend millions for marketing to be more visible than those 99 scammers which made it one of the most expensive way of collecting founds for legit businesses.

But so far this big trades (money laundering trades) are in fact bringing all the hype into NFT. Most of people speculate them because they hope to sell it for millions just like XYZ nft was sold last day (which was money laundering trade).

It is depressing how scammers or in this case money launderers are destroying yet another good idea, when I first heard of NFTs I thought the idea had some potential but it is obvious scammers and money launderers thought the same albeit in a different way.

Now the market of NFTs is completely inflated with sales which are not real, they are just buying their own NFTs in order to legalize the funds they got through shady means, and instead of understanding this people see this and they want to be part of it and that is when they become victims of the scammers waiting for them or they try to sell their own NFTs and no one is interested in buying them.

[timerland]

I see a lot of people who have millions locked up in NFTs thinking that it's liquid wealth.

It's not. The exact same reason why NFTs are able to appreciate so much in value over a short period of time means that the entire market can silently crash overnight as well.

If these wash traders stop pumping up prices all of a sudden, you could price your NFTs at sky high values and no one will bat an eye at you.