[sertorius]

It was the perfecting money laundering vehicle. "I made a picture of an ape and 'some random anonymous person' bought it for $1M!"

[sosuke]

I always assume it was that, speculators and ridiculously rich folks making impulse buys.

[missedthecue]

How is that money laundering? You'd have to buy ethereum with cash, but at that point why bother with the NFT? Just sell the Ethereum on coinbase and you've laundered the money.

[sertorius]

Coinbase has KYC ("Know your customer") policies explicitly to comply with anti-money laundering.

https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/managing-my-account/up...

Edit: besides that, the point of 'laundering' money is basically to get it into a form where it is officially yours, in the light, with taxes paid. The NFT is a conceivably 'legitimate' transfer of value. I made a thing and sold it for money, and declared and paid tax on the capital gain - boom, legitimate.

[missedthecue]

well coinbase was an example. You can simply 'sell' yourself the ethereum. I just don't see the need to involve NFTs after you already own the crypto.