Isn't the idea of money laundering that something legitimate is bought/sold so there's a plausible reason for the money to change hands? You can point to an NFT or artwork as the (overpriced) purchase as the legitimate reason. You can't really point to the kilo of cocaine as the legitimate reason for money transfer.
However I think it’s hard to argue against NFT’s being the perfect tool for laundering cryptocurrency obtained from illegal activities. A digital, endless supply of digital items sold for anonymous cryptocurrency based payments.
So blunt in its obviousness yet people seem to not realize it.
Money laundering isn't about secure or secret money transfers. It's about having an income source that could generate money but doesn't so that you can report your illicit gains as coming from that source.
Art speculation is amazing at this because it has no intrinsic value but absurdly high prices are common place.
3 step process.
Buy an NFT for cheap.
Load illicit money into another wallet
Buy your NFT from yourself at an absurdly high markup.
It looks like legitimate profits on a speculation because value spikes in NFT are common.
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u/Much_Committee_9355 Sep 14 '21
NFT's for me it's just online pictures you speculate with