Okay, so why would I go through all this trouble then? I could think of other hobbies to escape a "cookie-cutter" life.
Wasn't that about street gang members and not the mafia?
I vaguely recall it was something about working at McDonald's pays better than being a street-level drug dealer.
You can't help that you're a famous and wealthy artist.
I never heard of this usecase, which makes me believe it's too convoluted to be true.
It's not convoluted at all; it's actually pretty elegant when you get down to it. It's almost enough to make the entire NFT phenomenon make sense.
Or alternatively, you can double your net worth, because you go from having $200,000 ETH to having $400,000 ($200,000 ETH and a $200,000 NFT). This can then be used to fool naive lenders (or buyers) to giving you money at a fraction of the amount the NFT is worth, which is still a net gain for you.
If you're buying NFTs like they're legitimate "art" and not aware that NFTs exist for these purposes, then you shouldn't be playing the NFT game.
the NFT scam is a tax evasion thing - much like much of fine art.
I wonder if this could be tracked somehow. NFTs used as 'receipts' probably never get sold again.
We make a deal via some marketplace. Doesn't matter. We agree on a price and an amount, and some other specifics.
In a different marketplace, you offer up a jpg of a monkey. I offer thousands of dollars to own it.
In the real world, you ship me a big box full of dope, and email me a hyperlink to a jpg. I send you bitcoin, and all of a sudden, we're both legitimate actors in this little NFT art biz.
Its still better if you already have a lucrative clean-money life, which means it is easier to quickly intermingle uncleaned money into it.
It seems the best way to do it would be to be sponsored by the FBI or whatever in your country - use your expertise to setup a honeypot system with their prior knowledge and you'll feed them data when it is setup... they get info feed to collar criminals, no cost to their budget, are they going to care if you make your cut along the way?
[note the "It seems" — I have zero experience with what the FBI may or may not require for such an operation]
Part of the goal of reducing corruption is having alternative behaviors that are more attractive
But in any case there are lots of useful laundering techniques that can pass scrutiny
Just wait for the next darknet pastebin to have that debate