Beyond the new technical and ecological problems with NFTs, there are old-fashioned wheezes at hand: many of the prominent purchases with enormous price tags may be wash sales, round-trips or hype for pump-and-dump scams. Hell, you can simply buy your own asset to establish a price for the next sucker, no shill buyer necessary. After mucho speculation, Bloomberg Business reports that a former first lady is among them: "Money That Won Melania Trump NFT Came From Melania Trump Wallet"
The source of funds for the winning bid in Melania Trump's first NFT auction appears to be the creators of the project themselves. A series of blockchain transactions show that the cryptocurrency used to purchase Trump's nonfungible token came from a wallet that belongs to the entity that originally listed the project for sale. The former first lady began an auction in January for a collection of NFTs on the Solana blockchain, with art from her first official state visit in 2018.
It would be trés Trump to be caught so baldly, to not care at all about getting caught, and to suffer absolutely no consequences for it.