[spoiler]

You can't buy and sell the same item to yourself at an auction multiple times... Or am I missing the point you're trying to make?

Also, the value is in the art, not the receipt. With NFT, that's not the case... Unless it's an exchangeable NFT, like one you can exchange for a service (e.g. as a tick) or some goods, but that's not really how NFTs are being used.

[Cthulhu_]

> You can't buy and sell the same item to yourself at an auction multiple times

You don't have to; you get someone else to buy it, hold onto it for a few years, then sell it again on a different auction. It doesn't have to be short-term.

> Also, the value is in the art, not the receipt.

I would argue the value is not in the art in real life either, that is, it's not the artwork itself, but the 'object', its history, what people have paid for it in the past and how it increased in value over time. The main thing is that it has to be rare or one of a kind.

I mean more understandable is expensive, collectable whiskeys. They make a limited batch, say 100 bottles, sell it for $100 each. Ten years later, 90% of those bottles have been opened and drank, another 10% of the remainder was lost or broken, leaving you with nine bottles of a once-and-never-again rare batch. Collectors will pay more for it.

Anyway, NFT's, like cryptocurrencies, are investment products whose value is determined entirely by whatever a buyer pays for it.

[yunohn]

> It doesn't have to be short-term.

This is actually a really important nuance. NFTs/crypto have a really short turnaround time - which means they can run the scam much quicker and at massive scale.

[gandalfian]

Though whiskey doesn't age in the bottle making it a weird investment in itself. The ten year old bottle I bought twenty years ago now costs much more to buy it again, is rarer but the whiskey is not better, it forever stays at ten years old once out of the barrel.

[DennisP]

It's not completely nonsensical. The new whisky even from the same distillery won't taste quite the same, due to variations in climate and so on. The old and increasingly rare one isn't trivially replaceable, so if has a reputation of being especially good it can gain value. Even more so when the original distillery isn't in business anymore.

On top of that, the popularity of good whisky has increased a lot over the past few decades, and the higher age statements haven't been able to keep up.

[DennisP]

Plenty of high-end art investors never move the art from the specialized vault where it was already stored. The only change is a new entry in the public art registry. Seems like the receipt is carrying a lot of the value in that case.

[spoiler]

I wasn't aware of this. I guess that's a special way way of appreciating art (assuming the art isn't somehow volatile in "normal" conditions), if it's done out of legitimate interests (i.e. not money laundering)