The suspected-bot buyer also paid very high "gas" fees - which determine how quickly the Ethereum network processes a transaction - of 8 ETH ($32,000), to ensure the sale went through almost instantly.
Imagine if money charged you $32k on a $3k purchase to process that sale "almost instantly". NFTs should be an opt-in card for organ donation.
Don't most currencies gain legitimacy from government state power? I still don't understand how cryptocurrency can be truly decentralized when the government could just ban all companies from using crypto?
That's the elephant in the room. NTFs are a Ponzi scheme that will end once governments say "Enough of this shit" and ban them. I used "will" because I think it's only a matter of time.
Unsophisticated and small investors will get fucked.
Wouldn't that require some kind of functional state tho? I don't think the USA can do anything like that but maybe other places could.
China has already banned them, but Venezuela has actually created their own in order to skirt sanctions (they can't use international banking because of the embargo). And shipments of cash are difficult to get past a blockade without the US stealing it.
So there are legitimate, anti-imperialist uses for crypto. It's just that the majority of the use right now is literally money laundering for international crime syndicates, billionaires, and cartels.
Crypto owners can trade among themselves and then eventually you use an exchange to convert it to real money. You can definitely try to ban all business from accepting crypto which means it is very hard for it to become mainstream, but it is much harder to stop crypto transactions over the internet because not every country will ban crypto, you could say it would be almost impossible to ban crypto worldwide.
But in general yes the whole idea of decentralized currency is fundamentally at odds with a central government with the power to enforce(at whatever cost) a ban on crypto use within the real economy. Usualy they argue something something the internet but then that is conceding that the average person would never use crypto regularly.
As long as one computer is running the Bitcoin code, the Bitcoin network can keep processing transactions. There's already a decent size OTC market for tax dodgers and criminals and there's always the old "lost it in a boating accident" trick.