5 ms·

NFTs: the thing nobody needed, let alone wanted, but which proved to be a sufficiently effective money laundering (sorry, "speculative") instrument that we all

by faefox 4y ago

NFTs: the thing nobody needed, let alone wanted, but which proved to be a sufficiently effective money laundering (sorry, "speculative") instrument that we all had to have it shoved down our throats for the better part of a year anyway. Goodbye and good riddance.

eric-hu 4y ago
What makes NFTs any more effective at money laundering than cryptocurrency?
- DebtDeflation 4y ago
  You can sell them to yourself (at arm's length, using separate entities) to establish a price, and then sell them to yourself again (using a different entity) to take the profit and launder the money. Crypto may be manipulated, but you can't just set an arbitrary price equal to the amount of money you need to launder.
- michaelt 4y ago
  Hypothetically? If I made $1M of bitcoin proceeds-of-crime and I put it through a coin tumbler then cash out, it can't be directly linked to the crime - but I also can't explain where the money came from. On the other hand, if my legitimate account creates some shitty digital art and auctions it, then my proceeds-of-crime account buys it, I get slightly less money (auction fees etc) but a good explanation of where I got the money from: I'm an artist, you don't understand my work because you're a dumbass. Of course, there are plenty of other ways to launder money - feed the proceeds of crime through a fixed-odds betting terminal and I'm just a lucky gambler. Anonymously buy fine art with a suitcase full of cash, then resell it as something I found in grandpa's attic. Sue my own anonymous tax-haven company, and report a big payment as an out-of-court settlement. And so on.
  - mikhael28 4y ago
    This was a great explanation.
- SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
  The price is more flexible. Any given coin pair is worth a certain exchange rate at a certain time, and an investigating entity could analyse historic coin prices, compare to the amounts exchanged as recorded on the blockchain, and deduce the actual value gained or lost. With NFTs, each one is valued independently and the price is what you and someone-who-definitely-isn't-you-wink-wink traded it for most recently.
weberer 4y ago
>NFTs: the thing nobody needed, let alone wanted Its a good idea to handle ownership of finite digital assets. Imagine buying a song or video game online, and then being able to sell it or give it to a friend later, without having to go through a central authority (and not be breaking copyright law). Just like with a CD. Unfortunately, 99% of NFT projects have been essentially penny stock schemes, so now that's what everyone thinks of them as.
- harph 4y ago
  > finite digital assets That's a nice oxymoron you have there. Digital assets are not "finite" or scarce, that's their biggest strength: that they can be copied and shared infinitely. I know that some people hate that, and would love to change it (see DRM). But to hell with that.
  - PurpleRamen 4y ago
    That's not true at all. Any deed of ownership can be finite, especially if they refer to a physical object where there is a natural limit on the number of owners. Just because you can make infinite copies of the document, doesn't mean the legal system allows you to do that.
    - adammarples 4y ago
      And there we end up relying on a legal system again to verify the asset and we're back to square one. If my NFT needs to be verified when I sell it, which it will, because there will be fakes, then we still need a third party.
      - PurpleRamen 4y ago
        Welcome to the real world, where technology can't solve social problems.
        fknorangesite 4y ago
eric_cc 4y ago
The tech isn’t going anywhere. Perhaps the speculative bubble over gif NFT’s is behind us but I guarantee there will be uses for unique on-chain tokens for a long time to come.
- oblio 4y ago
  > The tech isn’t going anywhere. When people say "good riddance" they don't expect all NFT code to vanish from existence. They're just saying that it will be tucked into its own dusty corner of tech history, to be forgotten by the masses and especially by tech professionals.

by faefox 4y ago

eric-hu 4y ago

What makes NFTs any more effective at money laundering than cryptocurrency?

DebtDeflation 4y ago
You can sell them to yourself (at arm's length, using separate entities) to establish a price, and then sell them to yourself again (using a different entity) to take the profit and launder the money. Crypto may be manipulated, but you can't just set an arbitrary price equal to the amount of money you need to launder.
michaelt 4y ago
Hypothetically? If I made $1M of bitcoin proceeds-of-crime and I put it through a coin tumbler then cash out, it can't be directly linked to the crime - but I also can't explain where the money came from. On the other hand, if my legitimate account creates some shitty digital art and auctions it, then my proceeds-of-crime account buys it, I get slightly less money (auction fees etc) but a good explanation of where I got the money from: I'm an artist, you don't understand my work because you're a dumbass. Of course, there are plenty of other ways to launder money - feed the proceeds of crime through a fixed-odds betting terminal and I'm just a lucky gambler. Anonymously buy fine art with a suitcase full of cash, then resell it as something I found in grandpa's attic. Sue my own anonymous tax-haven company, and report a big payment as an out-of-court settlement. And so on.
- mikhael28 4y ago
  This was a great explanation.
SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
The price is more flexible. Any given coin pair is worth a certain exchange rate at a certain time, and an investigating entity could analyse historic coin prices, compare to the amounts exchanged as recorded on the blockchain, and deduce the actual value gained or lost. With NFTs, each one is valued independently and the price is what you and someone-who-definitely-isn't-you-wink-wink traded it for most recently.

weberer 4y ago

>NFTs: the thing nobody needed, let alone wanted Its a good idea to handle ownership of finite digital assets. Imagine buying a song or video game online, and then being able to sell it or give it to a friend later, without having to go through a central authority (and not be breaking copyright law). Just like with a CD. Unfortunately, 99% of NFT projects have been essentially penny stock schemes, so now that's what everyone thinks of them as.

harph 4y ago
> finite digital assets That's a nice oxymoron you have there. Digital assets are not "finite" or scarce, that's their biggest strength: that they can be copied and shared infinitely. I know that some people hate that, and would love to change it (see DRM). But to hell with that.
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  That's not true at all. Any deed of ownership can be finite, especially if they refer to a physical object where there is a natural limit on the number of owners. Just because you can make infinite copies of the document, doesn't mean the legal system allows you to do that.
  - adammarples 4y ago
    And there we end up relying on a legal system again to verify the asset and we're back to square one. If my NFT needs to be verified when I sell it, which it will, because there will be fakes, then we still need a third party.
    - PurpleRamen 4y ago
      Welcome to the real world, where technology can't solve social problems.
      - fknorangesite 4y ago

eric_cc 4y ago

The tech isn’t going anywhere. Perhaps the speculative bubble over gif NFT’s is behind us but I guarantee there will be uses for unique on-chain tokens for a long time to come.

oblio 4y ago
> The tech isn’t going anywhere. When people say "good riddance" they don't expect all NFT code to vanish from existence. They're just saying that it will be tucked into its own dusty corner of tech history, to be forgotten by the masses and especially by tech professionals.