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Comment by malka | Hacker News Reader

This comment could be talking about all art.

I will make a bold prediction and say we won't find out all art is money laundering and wash sales soon.

The high art scene is the evolved form of this. It knows to maintain enough legitimate artistry jammed in the crevices between the tax avoidance, money laundering, fraud, and flexing to cement the whole thing together and weather the occasional public ire. NFTs will be gone next season, but the high art grift will endure.

“All art” is obviously a hyperbole, but my impression is that it is widely known that high-end art auctions are used for money laundering. There are plenty of news articles about various governments making big busts and attempting cracking down on this.

> This comment could be talking about all art.

Here's what I predict we'll find out:

* Some high-value traditional art sales are "wash trades and money laundering."

* Nearly all high-value NFT sales are "wash trades and money laundering."

There's an important different between some and nearly all, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader to work out.

Yeah, high art will have proportionately less money laundering -- because it has proportionately more tax avoidance, and that's a much larger industry.

Also some part of tax avoidance requires real deals. That is keeping valuations of artists works high so that other works already owned have "realistic" market value for tax reasons. Unless entire supply is owned by same group. If not they have to pay money for any pieces that enter to market that they don't own.

Yes. It's a bit of both, of course, but you know those little art galleries in NY that everyone always wonders about? No visitors, but the lights are always on, even in a pandemic? This is their business. They swap art pieces to generate proof-of-value. For a fee, of course.

I agree with this message.

But the "traditional" art market has been successful for thousands of years. Comparing selling a tweet for millions to the Mona Lisa is pretty weird. People are ready to pay the museum fee to see the real art, while I'm sure nobody would pay to access a tweet. So the ownership is meaningless.

I'm sure NFTs have a place in today's art market, but it won't totally replace everything, so no, don't invest all your money on somebody's auto-generated monkey.

You’ll be excited then to learn that I’ve both bought art and sold art I’ve made, and it was all actually used for decoration and priced reasonably for that utility - no scam involved!

Yes. That too.

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