If it makes everyone feel better, they didn't pay almost $70M for the art. The buyer paid almost $70M to post their id, a guid, some metadata and a link to a site neither the buyer or the seller controls.
I still don't get why this is a scam, there is a SHA-256 hash of the whole image in that token, complete with timestamp and a buyer signature - the buyer can certainly prove he was first (or Nth) to buy this exact thing anytime he wants (if he doesn't lose his private key ofc). Who cares if some URLs included do rot?
It's almost the same idea [0] Galileo used 400 years ago to prove he was first to see Saturn rings by hashing the image description and distributing the hash.
What would that achieve? If you're late to the blockchain (or really any other distribution channel, like https://truetimestamp.org/ or something like this) your timestamp is greater than original and you own nothing. I don't really know how selling 2nd place works with NFTs but I assume you only can get it from 1st place owner (he has to sign it with his private key), so the scheme is solid. You cannot change a pixel and claim something.
The only problem I see is how the 1st buyer knows the seller is the artist not some random dude who changed 1 pixel (or even didnt). You actually cannot reliably sell something that has been published before cause everyone and their mom can claim ownership before 1st token.
I guess I'm misunderstanding what value people see in the NFT. If they really are paying for the right to claim the first entry in some blockchain then I guess it works as intended.
Well, physical art reproductions are high quality already (I have some Van Gogh canvas prints I bought for like 50$ a piece on my walls). So you can't really say traditional art images are scarce too.
The thing is whoever is owns the original in some sense, even if you eventually cannot discern it with a microscope.
Since the buyer is in the NFT business, it seems obvious to me that what they paid for was marketing for themselves and their space. I'm not sure $70M on advertising would be better spent. As the old adage goes, "you can't buy publicity like this".
A Twitter thread explaining how absurd this is: https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1372163423446917122
There's already URL rot going on: https://twitter.com/CheckMyNFT/status/1372253288863825925