Not to mention NFTs, but it seems impossible to convince the HN crowd that there is a real art market in them, with real buyers and real artists using it. Any attempt to demonstrate this is met with wild leaps of logic - it's wash trading, it's not big enough, it's all a scam. I point to Beeple, Wes Cockx, DeeWay sales and all they tell me is it must all be a fraud. I show them markets with vibrant activity - Versum, FXhash, Foundation - and all I get is repetitions of memes around how NFTs are dead.
Successful scams have customers - the presence of people putting in money isn't a defining trait.
However I do think it's a bit harsh to call these things a scam - I mean take the art market itself - value is entirely subjective - doesn't mean it's a scam ( though scamming things happen in the normal art market to try and inflation prices ).
The question you have to ask yourself is:
Are you buying the NFT as an investment - because you think other people will value it, or are you spending the money because you are quite happy to own that thing forever and never sell - ie the value is to you.
I'd argue if you are doing the former you are more likely to be 'scammed' than the latter.
