If they are paying themselves, why would it matter if they made the money gambling?
Also, I don't see the issue with someone buying an asset from themself for some inflated price.
Also, I don't see the issue with someone buying an asset from themself for some inflated price.
To the rest of the world, it looks like the value of this NFT grew by 2 orders of magnitude in a week. In reality, that person is leveraging the pseudonymous nature to just make it appear that way, in hopes that when they list it for $200k, someone else will actually buy it. They cleared $190k for making a couple of garbage auctions.
Lets say I run a lunar land registry like this: https://lunarland.com/. I have a friend of mine buy a worthless deed from me for $10, then "sell" it to himself for $10,000. Now $10,000 is the "market price." I then use that transaction as "evidence" to hype the idea that lunar land deeds are serious things, part a growing market, good investment opportunity, etc. In the ensuing tulip mania, I pocket a pretty penny selling a lot more worthless deeds to lunar land. The victims are the people convinced my misleading hype to invest in them.
Now I'm not claiming something like is actually happening here, but the whole thing is fishy and I think it's a serious possibility to be considered.
It is. But if you register it as a sale, you get to pay taxes on "the profit".