NFTs — not a scam. Three theses in defence of non-fungible tokens

Non-fungible tokens — a convenient instrument for money laundering, a way of avoiding taxes and simply “air trading”? Neither of the above, nor the third, says Web3-entrepreneur Vladimir Menaskop. Read a detailed analysis of how myths about NFTs as scams originated and why they are easily debunked.

Blockchain, cryptocurrencies and other Web3 innovations are surrounded by a multitude of myths. They have not spared the market for non-fungible tokens either. Three of the most common allegations can be highlighted:

• Money laundering takes place through expensive NFTs;
• Non-fungible tokens are merely hype;
• The NFT segment is useless.

To begin, let us tackle the most contentious claim—the first thesis.

Antithesis No. 01. Laundering via NFTs will be costly

Hardly anything has provoked as much as the claim by a Hacker News user who called NFTs “the best way to launder money in the crypto world.” More on this can be read in the article on ForkLog.

Authors of such statements typically argue that NFTs are used, firstly, to launder illicit gains, secondly, to evade taxes, and thirdly, to “sell air.”

Let us sketch how this might look in practice. Suppose you have a sum — $10 million or even $100 million. These funds were obtained illegally (arms, trafficking, psychoactive substances etc.). The sum somehow ends up in your crypto wallet. And one fine day, through a handful of large trades, you decide to launder the illicit funds by selling an NFT (to yourself or a trusted associate).

From my perspective, as someone who has worked on anti-fraud systems since 2010, there is not a single appealing aspect to this approach.

1. We do not split the large sum into smaller pieces or stagger the operation over time; we do it in one large (and highly noticeable) lump sum.
2. Rather than using established schemes to obscure traces (from Tornado Cash to Monero), we use transparent blockchains that have long been analysed by Crystal, Chainalysis and other firms, which have accumulated substantial data for investigating crypto crimes of any complexity.
3. Although it would be logical to cash out the funds immediately, which is the aim of all laundering schemes, for some reason an intermediate solution is created.

But these are merely logical constructions, so let us turn to numbers. Since 2012 we have had to argue again and again that cryptocurrencies are of little interest to criminals. Various studies indicate that illicit transactions account for between 1% and 6% of cryptocurrency activity (in my view, these figures are greatly overstated).

Take the market’s maximum capitalisation at $3 trillion, yielding 1% as $30 billion. A huge sum, and enough to mount charges (though to do so one would have to discount many obvious “but”s: namely that over the last decade the amount of illegal activity involving digital assets has stagnated or declined rather than increased). See the statistic).

«According to analytical data from The Block, NFT turnover grew by an astonishing 43,000% in 2021. If in 2020 NFT turnover was $33 million, by 2021 the volume of completed transactions rose to $13 billion».

Now, looking at the market in 2023: «NFT sales fell by 92% from the autumn peak»; Bitcoin NFTs show similar figures (the surrounding text refers to a 2023 Forbes piece).

Let us piece the puzzle together. It appears that the NFT market can be used for laundering funds only during hype, and during crypto-winter it becomes markedly harder. This is where the first major discrepancy in the logic of such accusations emerges.

You cannot plant poppy fields in Afghanistan and run laboratories making illegal drugs while waiting for two, three or more years for the NFT market to improve — it is simply not economically viable: too expensive. Remember how one of McDonald’s top executives effectively and quickly demonstrated that they do not make hamburgers from worms? Because it is economically irrational.

In money-laundering through NFTs, the risk is higher: laundering tends to rely on fast schemes, not probabilistic ones that occur every two to three years. And even less so every five years, as the 2017 and 2021 booms suggest.

Moreover, there is a clear divergence between NFT trading and volumes on black markets:

To construct this chart, I used the simplest and most reliable model: evaluate illicit markets’ capitalisation at the lower bound and the NFT market at the upper bound. Even so, the discrepancy is obvious. It is unlikely to single out the NFT segment as meaningful. (You can verify these data with various sources, for example by consulting DappRadar.)

At the same time, wash-trading schemes are usually not accounted for in relevant reports as self-evident. Example: “Wash trading often occurs when traders sell their own NFTs between controlled wallets at inflated prices, often in an effort to beat the token-reward model on marketplaces. Consequently, data excluded the billions of dollars of trading bubbles observed on platforms like LooksRare and X2Y2, which offered trading incentives.” A reasonable question arises: if there is no secret, why attempt to launder illicit funds in this way that should remain invisible? Moreover, to classify such actions as crimes is not hard: the methodology is well developed.

But the core point is that this is a loss-making scenario for the overwhelming majority: among thousands of buyers, only a handful engage in wash-trading, and only a small share profit rather than incur losses. Successful instances are one-off trades by professionals, but not a motor for NFT-market trading.

According to Chainalysis, the profit of these wash-traders in 2021 stood at $8.9 million against $44.2 billion for the entire market, i.e. a modest 0.02%. Therefore, the numbers do not support NFT critics and experts who argue the market exists for laundering, fraud and similar activities.

Analyses also show that most primary NFT sales were for $100 or less. It is hard to believe in an $1 million one-shot laundering scheme, and even harder to imagine a stream of $100 deals through which billions must be legitimised.

But that raises another question: could NFTs be effective for tax avoidance?

Antithesis No. 02. NFTs are not about taxes

A participant in a crypto chat proposed the following scheme.

1. I have cryptocurrency with which I must pay tax.
2. But I do not want to pay a lot.
3. I anonymously generate an NFT, list it on a marketplace from an address that has not appeared in analytics systems.
4. Then buy this NFT with a non-anonymous address.
5. I file a tax return showing income and expenses.

Here one recalls the case of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting “Cannibal.” Brazilian banker Edemar Cid Ferreira sent the canvas to the United States, declaring a value of $100. Customs allowed the shipment, but, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the painting’s real value was $8 million. When seized, it was sold at auction for $13.1 million.

At first glance, the scheme might seem to work, if one does not count three obvious caveats:

1. The person ends up de-anonymising themselves via a tax declaration.
2. They will leave behind many verifiable digital traces.
3. Most importantly, they will reveal the location of the funds, since they are linked to them by the first point.

There are also several challenges: firstly, the purchase must not be deemed fictitious; secondly, it is crucial to maintain a minimal secondary market for NFT. Moreover, there is a notable precedent: a British tax-collection case:

“Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs seized three non-fungible tokens in an investigation into suspected VAT fraud involving 250 shell companies. The agency said three people were arrested on suspicion of attempting to defraud the department of £1.4 million.”

So, laundering £1.4 million via the scheme cited involved two and a half hundred companies — and it did not help. Why? Once you step outside the crypto-shore, you immediately fall into tried-and-tested identity-and-value-matching schemes, which FATF describes in detail.

When you read that “the anonymous spent $1.3 million on an NFT-stone painting,” he is no longer anonymous.

Antithesis No. 03. Analysis of top trades

The allure of cryptocurrency and blockchain lies in their strong self-defence. The openness allows us to monitor holders of any NFT online, including the largest ones.

As an example, consider Beeple — the artist who sold for $69.3m a collage of digital copies of his paintings. It is fairly easy to analyse such deals using open statistics: these collections have fallen in price just as the crypto market has, but not in terms of recognisability or popularity, which in itself contradicts the accusations.

Yet many overlook the crucial nuance: the sale actually boosted subsequent NFT activity. Advertising on a crypto market dominated by giants such as Facebook, Google, Baidu and others is incredibly expensive.

Another nuance that escapes attention: “Christie’s admits that NFTs help attract younger bidders (the majority of bidders are under 42). No wonder 88% of new clients came to the auction house for this segment.”

Obviously, fraudsters exist on every market, but since 2016 no objective, verifiable analysis has shown any meaningful impact. Rare cases where such mishaps occurred were soon uncovered, whether it was Baller Ape Club, Blockparty or someone else.

Moreover, there is a report that states “crimes in the NFT space make up a small but notable share of overall trading activity not related to NFTs.”

The greater problem is the literacy gap among newcomers who fall for scams that have persisted since ancient Persia tactics. It is no coincidence that “in the 12 months from July 2021, criminals stole NFT worth more than $100m in fraud.”

Why myths of NFT scams arise?

The first reason is simple: laziness. In the postmodern era we rely on big data, on ChatGPT, yet clip-thinking detaches us from reality. Plenty of NFT-market examples exist. One such: “NFT collector accidentally burned a Crypto Punk worth $129,000.”

The second aspect is that the crypto market contains vast potential, and thus charity is unusually developed here. Consider the latest poll, which found that 32% of philanthropists use only digital assets. Of course, many are unsettled by the idea that one could obtain $1m or more by simply asking. Yet this is a fact.

The third and perhaps most important point is the attempt to graft fiat-world trends onto the crypto market. But must the Web3 sphere mimic these trends? Certainly not.

One can verify these theses by looking at statistics: here is Dune analytics, not from a large service, and its DAO, in which I participate. On a bear market, their NFT show growth because tokens are used to access various communities. A similar pattern can be seen in liquidity. Yet people tend to overlook this because it is easier to believe in a dirty NFT market.

There is also another set of statistics showing that the number of wallets trading NFTs surged in 2021: from 545,000 in 2020 to about 28.6 million. The most sought-after instances tend to be the most volatile. It is odd that the price-wallet correlation peaks at roughly this moment. I would argue not, if you trust the data rather than opinions.

It is hard to believe, if you are not a collector, that “the overall sales volume of projects such as NBA Top Shot amounted to about $1 billion.” There is also another audience that has welcomed NFTs: enthusiasts of digital collecting.

«NFT enthusiasts are most receptive to esports: 58% of respondents indicated some level of interest, with 35% of esports fans saying they are somewhat interested and 23% very interested inNFTs.»

Moreover, there is statistics showing how popular digital collecting has become. In 2020–2021, 3% of Americans owned NFTs, roughly 10 million people. And in 2023, informed about NFTs rose to >70%.

So what explains the hype?

The first reason is the move into the XR continuum. Where did NFTs begin? With profile pictures and those very “digital images”: it is easiest for people to perceive avatarisation of profiles through such simple things.

The second point is that, for instance, account abstraction is the next step, as is the creation of platforms of independent avatars. Most of us are not ready for that, just as we were not ready for relativity, yet we use GPS devices.

The second reason, inherited from the digital world, is rarity. No wonder Crypto Punks and similar collections from 2016–2017 surged in 2021–2022. The fact that many NFTs are now falling in price is a consequence of the anti-fragility of the crypto market, which we have observed for more than a decade, since 2009. The goal of rising to $20,000 and falling to $3,500? A test easily met by Bitcoin. The rise to $1,400 and fall to $140 (and even lower) is also feasible for Ethereum. Not everyone likes the notion of “1 bitcoin = 1 bitcoin,” which implies that crypto assets priced in fiat can be worth any amount, at any time.

Third, mass information attacks mean individual cases become “trends,” which become myths, and myths are what people live on.

So it is difficult to reach a level of truth or objective figures, and we take everything as given.

This article might not have appeared if I had not spent many years observing how the ICO market was destroyed: clean, fast, young, interesting, producing a huge number of projects — from Ethereum and Tezos, Cosmos and Polkadot to Bancor and Brave — merely because it became a direct competitor to the VC sector and corporate lending. A similar story happened with mining myths, DeFi and other sectors.

And all this against the backdrop of corporations not only partnering with governments (as recently in El Salvador and Google via Bitcoin Ordinals), but also differentiating themselves sharply:

«A recent example is Steam. They aggressively banned anything NFT-related, and shortly after China banned Steam too. Gamers who recently mocked GameFi and the NFT market in general have little choice but to consider migrating.»

Finally, one should not forget what the old financiers, and with them governments and monopolies, feared: artificial intelligence. Here is an example: “An AI algorithm called Botto earned about $1.3m from its first six NFT works.” Many platforms simply ban photos, videos and other AI-generated products. Yet for Web3 AI is a standard SaO—an actor with will and intelligence, and therefore money. And for it NFT is a native instrument.

Prospects

We, you, I — all of us are NFTs. Our non-fungibility is what civilisation is built on: a world where a person becomes a cog in the system, triggers processes of obsolescence (whether in Ancient Rome or in modern totalitarian regimes).

Digital art has a right to evolve (as shown by the evolution of the ecosystem), and XR assists this. Popular 3D paintings inside the metaverses are a future not as distant as it may seem. Yet many still fail to see this as true, authentic art. At one time the public rejected modernism with its Dada, Cubism and even Impressionism, and now the world’s top museums are ready to acquire such works for tens of millions of dollars.

Therefore do not take everything you hear at face value. Follow the principle «don’t trust — verify» and boldly participate in creating the new, rather than awaiting the approval of the majority. I will end, therefore, with a 2020 quote:

«Market volumes remain relatively modest, but the short history suggests that interest in NFTs is growing».

Sources

If you wish to verify information in this article, consult the following studies:

• Coinmarketcap (2023);
• Statista.com (2023);
• Demandsage (2023);
• Nansen (2023)
• Influencermarketinghub (2022);
• BanklessTimes (2021);
• ExplodingTopics (2021);
• Decrypt (2021);
• OKX (2020).