Art And Money Laundering; Use NFT For Money Laundering
The Hot NFT Trading Market Has Raised Concerns About Money Laundering. Is Money Laundering Irrevocable With Tokens? Yes!
In the last few months; The NFT fever is rampant among Chinese blockchain activists, especially artists, and if we look a little closer, we will see clues to money laundering and tax evasion.
Wal (Whale), one of the world Crypto enthusiasts and a popular commentator on the website this area Medium, audience attention is directed to the dark depths of NFT. Wall published an article last week attributing the popularity and notoriety of NFTs to their ability to facilitate the money laundering and tax evasion of the rich. He said about this:
Behind the scenes of the impatiently wealthy who buy digital artwork at exorbitant prices, there is a sophisticated and sophisticated money laundering scheme that has served the very wealthy owners of the cryptocurrency world to legitimize their illicit profits.
He says that because art is a subjective and intrinsic subject and is valued in the eyes of the viewer, lawyers and legislatures often do not examine NFTs. This aspect of art is the main reason why art has been used as a means to circumvent financial flows for the past several centuries.
According to Wall, the real side of money laundering is very simple. Buying NFT on your own using illicit money is an easy way to make money. It ostensibly claims that money pay to buy legal artwork, and the tax process is automatically eliminated.
Earlier this year (Winter 2014), Isaiah McCall, a former USA Today journalist, published a report on the Medium website, citing an example of this process.
McCall said:
It is not a complicated process. Suppose you have $ 1 million in illegal money. You build an NFT and buy it for a million dollars. You can do this with your account or another third-party account. Then, you sell the token again and even profit from selling it.
“ NFTs are playing a role in the money laundering process today, in the same way that physical artwork use in money laundering,” said Katherine Grafham, a faculty member at the School of Art and Design at Lasell University. Grafham believes that there are advantages to using NFTs for money laundering compared to the physical arts. He explained:
The use of tokens facilitates the transfer and circulation of dirty money; Because they are in a decentralized environment. Also, the transfer and storage of digital artwork is not the same as physical artwork.
With these interpretations, the NFT scene is likely to focus on lawmakers and tax officials soon. Wall believes that governments will no doubt get involved in the issue of donations and predicted that although there are now several NFT exchanges regardless of anti-money laundering laws, we will certainly see fundamental changes in this area in the future.
As Quintel Telegraph reported in early 2021, U.S. investors who purchased NFTs with the benefit of keeping their cryptocurrencies must pay the prescribed tax when paying income tax.
