[pavlov]

> “… it doesn’t seem to be the starving artists making money on NFTs”

Starving artists are the marks for this scam. They spend $50 on Ethereum and other fees to mint some NFTs, nobody buys them, and they remain starving — but the crypto ecosystem has extracted another chunk of real money from hopefuls at the base of the pyramid.

[willcipriano]

A few of them have to make money, otherwise the ponzi scheme blows up right away. Some of the artists involved likely understand that dynamic and they are betting on being a early adopter, getting paid and getting out before the flames consume the house. Some of the victims are merely aspiring coconspirators, if not most.

[findalex]

> aspiring coconspirators

I feel like this describes the majority of "victims" here.

[rchaud]

We saw the same thing with the dropshipping craze.

The real money was made after one got in early, made some money, then began selling dropshipping courses to other hopefuls.

[nickthegreek]

Agreed. I have had several artists reach out to me to help them mint NFTS and I explained to them why its a bad idea and how they will most likely lose money. Only one of them ended up minting an NFT and are still in the red.

[raxxorrax]

But at least he always will have a non-fungible token of appreciation and maybe some allegedly unique cat picture.