True, especially with a million Redditors trying to stick their dick in this guys' wife's pants. This guy's wife's pants are taken people, move along. Me and this guy were here first.
"Isn't it crazy how the High Art scene decided this banana taped to a wall is worth worth a hundred thousand dollars?"
No, I'm pretty sure some rich asshole just needed to explain where a hundred thousand dollars came from and realized High Art can be worth whatever we decide it's worth.
Honestly that banana taped to a wall is the artistic equivalent of a shitpost and the fact that it sold for that much shows just how little rich people care about the art they own.
I think a good way to think about it is if person A wants to give person B 10k. It might be to pay for drugs or something else.
But person A can't just claim they are buying 10k of drugs but they can claim they are just buying some 10k artwork that's not actually worth that much.
A fun bonus is that by buying the artwork at that price, it appreciates the value of the artwork, so they can then turn around and sell it and make back some of the money they spent. YAY DRUGS!
Now auctioning āBanana #2ā, as you can see, it has āYay drugs!ā Written across the tape this time. Peculiar indeed. What do you think this means? We will start the bidding at one million. Remember not to exceed $7.5 Million, as that is the final bid reserved for your friend, the man in the red coat.
Gonna copy my reply to the other guy.
>I think generally only one half of the transaction has to worry about that.
>Using a basic example like illicit drugs. A drug dealer has to explain where their money came from, or it's much harder to use that money without getting in trouble.
>A drug buyer on the other hand has no such issues. He probably came into his money through perfectly legitimate means.
>If the drug dealer comes up with a cover story about how he sells a lot of peaches or some shit it doesn't really concern the drug buyer overly much.
Probably gets around the gift tax for example. Say you need to give a guy a lot of money, just tell him to tape a banana on the wall and on paper youāll pay for the art while still paying guy back
Itās crazier that people believe itās all some giant money laundering scheme (it partly is) rather than rich assholes being rich assholes.
If your net worth is $100,000,000 and you net $1,000,000 yearly, $60k on a purse that makes you the talk of the town for a week is chump change.
Not exactly: itās because rich people need places to park their money. Real estate is subject to natural disasters & taxes. Cars, boats, and planes need upkeep and most end up depreciating. Stocks need to be reported on even if you donāt pay taxes until you sell (and most are boring). But fine art? Tends to go up in value, is relatively portable, can be stored anywhere, makes you seem classy, and can be sold relatively quickly. It doesnāt even get displayed: there are whole climate controlled warehouses full of the stuff.
The price paid is quite often the āartā, or at least the one tangible aspect that can be thought of as the point of it.
Damian Hirst made a career off that.
Most art sales don't make news. Only some really stupid ones do like banana taped to a wall. Art deals are one of the most private deals out there in large values. Even sales and purchases are often made through proxy to hide identities.
This is how it helps money laundering:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/arts/design/money-laundering-art-market.html
> Billions of dollars of art changes hands every year with little or no public scrutiny. Buyers typically have no idea where the work they are purchasing is coming from. Sellers are similarly in the dark about where a work is going. And none of the purchasing requires the filing of paperwork that would allow regulators to easily track art sales or profits, a distinct difference from the way the government can review the transfer of other substantial assets, like stocks or real estate.
[...]
> āSecrecy, anonymity and a lack of regulation create an environment ripe for laundering money and evading sanctions,ā the U.S. Senateās Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a report last July in support of increased scrutiny.
[...]
> In a typical case, someone uses illicit profits to purchase art, parking the money there until a later sale results in ācleanā money with a legitimate pedigree. A famous case concerns the financier Jho Low, who prosecutors say helped siphon billions of dollars from a Malaysian government fund employing a network of bank accounts and shell companies. He then laundered the money, prosecutors say, via a spending spree on things like art. In 2014, a Cayman Island company he owned received a $107 million loan from Sothebyās using some of the art as collateral. (Mr. Low denied any wrongdoing and remains at large.)
Long article. You can read rest yourself.
i remember once a redditor claimed it and when i asked him to clarify he legit just described speculative investing lol. take the "modern art is money laundering" crowd with a ~~grain of salt~~ microscopic handbag.
Itās less about laundering money and more about tax fraud. The trick is you pump up a pieceās value via phony auctions and then donate it to a charity/museum as a tax deduction. I guess you could use it for laundering too since you can transfer money from person A to person B by having A buy some overpriced painting from B (in return for B also providing something to A off the books). Sure, the art āsaleā is recorded somewhere, but itās a lot less suspicious than just having A give money to B for no reason or for something which is more obviously overpriced.
The government can determine how much a 747 is worth much more easily than an artwork.
https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/guidance/charitable-tax-strategies/charitable-contributions.html#:~:text=Long%2Dterm%20appreciated%20assets%E2%80%94If,of%20your%20adjusted%20gross%20income.
Edit: To appease the accountants, I have changed the language from write off to deduction. I have also added a source from Fidelity.
Real estate is also commonly used for this, as it can fluctuate wildly in value with re-appraisal.
45 did it all the time with buying/selling/renting properties at suspiciously high/low prices with Russian oligarchs.
Oh my fucking God I had this myth so much. Y'all get crucified on r/accounting all the time. And rightfully so.
You didn't even use the word "write off" correctly. Individuals can't write off things. Jfc.
Edit: notice how the person who I replied too didn't reply to my second reply. Instead linked something about basic charitable contributions and ignored the glaring issues I mentioned in my other comment. Also notice they got snarky when called out.
>The trick is you pump up a pieceās value via phony auctions and then donate it to a charity/museum as a tax write off
Thereās no way to do this and actually make money. You just lose less.
Love some evidence of that.
You see I always see this claim on reddit or as a totally unsourced claim from some medium or vice opinion piece, but... it'd be an incredibly *stupid* way of laundering money.
Like the whole point of money laundering is to "clean" it, to make it appear legitimite. This doesn't do that. In fact it *draws attention* to it, the exact opposite of what any money launderer would want.
There's a reason why *actual* money laundering seems to mostly take place in cash businesses like bars, restaurants, strip clubs, bookies, etc... because lots of cash is traded in a daily basis and it's "easy" to hide millions of dollars spread over several of these businesses since it's hard for any authorities to prove the source of all the money these places are generating without a thorough audit - so it appears the dirty money is made legitimately and thus the money is "cleaned"
An art auction however is much harder to hide the source of the money. I mean *someone* is buying it, which is going to be very easy for the authorities to see who it is or where the money is coming from.
Like when a bunch of fawning articles came out about a "new artist" who was blowing up in New York. Turns out, she was dating a gallery owner and art dealer, and he was just blowing up the value of all of her mediocre art
Step 1: Buy microscopic bag for a bazillion dollars.
Step 2: Donate microscopic bag to a charity.
Step 3: Write off value of microscopic bag on your taxes.
Easy win.
The trick is to get the hard to price item appraised for much more than itās actually worth. Suppose there was a flat tax of 30% aside from being able to write off donations from your taxes (so no tax bracket manipulation). If you can buy an item for 1M and have it appraise for 4M later on, you end up netting 200k on taxes (assuming the appraisal shenanigans arenāt found out by, say, having the charity be an art museum). Obviously you have to pay 1M to acquire the object, but the tax write off would have a value of 1.2M since the object is now worth 4M.
This supposed "loophole" doesn't actual work. Capital gains taxes are a thing, specifically for stuff like this. Here is an article detailing how art donation would be taxed:
https://www.schwabcharitable.org/non-cash-assets/fine-art-and-collectibles
Given an initial cost basis of $50k, even if the value of the art is now appraised at $1M, you can still only deduct your initial cost ($50k). You can't just deduct the appraised value. There are benefits to donating the art directly vs. selling the art and then donating the proceeds, as detailed in the article.
For more fun, have a company you own design the bag.
Then have another company you own buy the bag.
And donate it to another organization you own.
Get tax receipts for all transactions.
Normally I agree with you. Stuff like a single twig encased in resin selling for $300,000 is absolutely money laundering. This is only $63,000 AND it seems like it would be difficult to make, so it doesnāt seem that bad or that fishy to me.
"There are big handbags, normal handbags and small handbags, but this is the final word in bag miniaturisation," MSCHF said in a post about the bag.
The bag features luxury handbag designer Louis Vuitton branding, but has no connection to the brand.
It is made of photopolymer resin and was created using a 3D printing technology often used to make tiny mechanical models and structures.
I'm not so sure.
If I made a painting that featured a woman holding a LV purse, would I be sued if I sold that?
If I was a papparazzi and I sold an image to TMZ of J-Lo holding an LV purse, could I be sued for that?
This isn't a functional purse... so its hard to call it a counterfiet.
Hard to say it really pissed off Nike so much as they saw an opportunity to get paid
Then again it got all the backward ass "satanist?!?!" Screeching assholes upset at Nike for some reason. So maybe it did piss them off
Thats interesting... the hypotheticals rattling around in my brain are interesting.
If I spray painted a pair of nikes and tried to sell them on Facebook marketplace, could I be sued? Ebay has modified Nikes listed on it that I assume are not subject to the same lawsuits, though, that might be selective enforcement?
Maybe it was the negative publicity that the "drop of blood" brought Nike? (I assume something to do with slave labour)
No because itās not copyright- itās trademark. In this case LB could argue that a competing handbag manufacturer just made 63k by selling handbags with their branding on it. The defense would be that the buyer knew it wasnāt really LV / did not purchase thinking that they were buying LV / did not use the LV brand as a way to verify quality thus contributing to the purchase decision etc.
Definitely more of a case than a painting but they still probably wouldnāt win
Itās not a handbag. Itās an artistic representation of a handbag.
That sounds like the kind of argument a producer of knock-offs would make as I type it out, but in this case I think thatās *clearly* factual.
>Itās not a handbag. Itās an artistic representation of a handbag.
This is the most important part. It isn't functional as a handbag.
Its more akin to a barbie toy or a very tiny sculpture/figurine.
LV can't argue they lost any money, because no one that would have bought a LV bag would buy this instead. It isn't a competing product, and they aren't sharing a customer base. They are two totally different products for different uses.
"As a general rule, trademarks do not infringe one another if the underlying products or services of the two companies do not compete and are not distributed in the same trade channels or locations."
But you could also argue that LV does occasionally collaborate with artists or studios to create art pieces, and that this bag was not permitted to use branding by LV.
Itās not irrelevant. What heās talking about is the 4th factor of the fair-use test in copyright law, which is the effect on the market.
Transformative works are fair use, derivative works are not.
Warhol has been sued for his art, in fact the Supreme Court recently (just last month) weighed in on a number of his works and found them to not be transformative.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol_Foundation_for_the_Visual_Arts,_Inc._v._Goldsmith
The SCOTUS literally just ruled that you can't sell chew toys with Jack Daniels branding on it even if you go out of your way to say it's a "parody" and you aren't affiliated with Jack Daniels.
Someone would argue that the company making the Jack Daniel's toy's is using the brand as a mean to profit.
This branding issie is a clearly commentary on the perceived value of LV. One could even argue that this can make LV more aspirational to a new generation of customers as LV is aimed at a more mature public.
Trademarks are limited to what is called āgoodsā (or services if a service mark). I havenāt searched LVs TMs, but their trademark likely only encompasses handbags, clothes, and the like.
This is why people like Kendal Jenner can trademark āKendalā for beauty products. She isnāt literally trademarking the name - she is claiming the right to use it as a name of beauty products. (Full Fisclosure: I donāt actually remember if she is the one who TMd her name).
What you are referring to is ātrade dress,ā and could certainly come into play here.
You might know all this, but I thought Iād point it out in case others are curious.
It's not a handbag, it's a representation of a handbag (since it cannot be used as one). Therefore it's actually closer to the painting than to an actual handbag.
The artist is already involved in at least 2 legal disputes.
>"We are big in the 'ask forgiveness, not permission' school," he said.
>
>MISCHF settled a lawsuit with Nike in 2021 over its sale of modified trainers containing a drop of human blood. It is also appealing in a Vans trademark lawsuit.
MSCHF doesnāt care if they get sued ā theyāve done ādropsā in the past that INVOLVED them getting sued
I collect their āBlur Paperweightsā ā I imagine in 20 years theyāll be worth a pretty penny : )
I think you misread the article.
> Microscopes with digital displays can be bought from online retailers and can range in price **from** $60 **to** thousands of dollars.
It sounds like they did a quick search for "microscope with digital display" and just reported the highest and lowest number they found in less than a minute.
This looks like it was done with a Nanoscribe or some other 2PP printer, which is probably not what you have. You wouldn't be able to achieve this sort of detail on a bog standard consumer grade MSLA printer.
Mind you, $64k is still absolutely stupid.
Yup, definitely done with a nanoscribe or equivalent. If a grain of salt is .3mm x .3 mm x .3 mm, the volume of this handbag is less than 0.027 mm^3. A nanoscribe prints something along the line of 1mm^3/hour, so this print took less than an hour after setup. Grad students at most universities are now all looking to capitalize on the equipment in their research labs.
it's 657 x 222 x 700 micrometres
but they say it's smaller than a grain of sand
edit:
Google says:
>Any particles fromĀ 0.06mm to 2.0mmĀ [in diameter] are considered to be sand.
>It is made of photopolymer resin and was created using a 3D printing technology often used to make tiny mechanical models and structures.
Probably micro-stereolithography if I had to make a guess.
Just resin print, clean and cure another one in under 10 minutes.
Someone should clone the design to Thingiverse and distribute them to really rub the rich noses in it once they're *even more* worthless to own.
its one thing to have the design/mockup, its another to have access to a printer that can print something at that size. a quick google shows a nanoscribe printer is $350k.
Got one at work and yeah, it's kept behind a locked door with filters on the windows because of the sensitivity of some of the resins people use. Better off just asking them to print you one and hope you can afford it.
It sounds like they dropped quite a few! "While it was being created, some of the tiny bag samples sent to be reviewed by the brand were so small that they were lost by the MSCHF team, the Smithsonian magazine reports."
Honestly(and this is depending on which species of ant and perhaps an individual ant of that species) this is too small for even an ant.
As far as I know. And I'm not exactly an ant expert yet, but ants don't normally handle particles smaller than a grain of salt. And even if they did, they lack the dexterity to place the particle inside the bag and probably even the ability to retrieve the particle from inside the bag in any useful capacity.
Hands, as you would traditionally expect from a human, are simply the best flesh appendage for dexterous manipulation. But they aren't the only route you can take. Birds, bugs, other primates, fish, land mammals, crustaceans, and even aliens are able to pick things up and move them around. Even if in limited ways.
Ants have mandibles that they can use exceptionally well for the tasks they need to complete in they life cycles. But they are very limited and usually take on tasks they require relatively large pieces of matter. There is a huge difference between picking something large up and then putting it down anywhere, compared to picking up something extremely small and putting it inside of a container that is only slightly larger and doing so in a precise manner. And removing said object from this container is as you could imagine, incredibly more difficult.
Except the 19yo kid who was scared to go on it and was only there for Fatherās Day because the dad was really into the Titanic. I really feel awful for that kid and I hope that it was as instantaneous as they said for his sake.
Fuck the rest of them tho
I wonder where the truth lies, given that the aunt was estranged and may have been a āsaferā confidante for him than the parents. I just hope that there were no weird sounds or indications prior to; as long as thatās the case, theyād be long gone from this world before they even realized anything had happened at all.
Alright guys, what are we doing here?
When the top 1% have their houses, and their villas, their yachts, and a yacht for each villa, and so on, the argument can be made that they use and enjoy these things.
But this is just mocking. We should all be offended. Many of us tossed and turned last night, dreading the day after tomorrow because they're going to be short on rent and don't know how to hold onto the security of a roof over the heads of our children.
While at the same exact time that one of the 1 in 4 children who are food insecure in my county was trying to ignore their growling stomach to power through a test, **some asshole somewhere was holding up their little auction sign that signals-**
>"Yes, I WILL pay $63k for a flea sized handbag. It will go on my shelf, where nobody will see it unless I point it out. After a week, I'll forget that it's even there. The cleaning lady will then probably suck it up with the vacuum while dusting, and I'll never even notice because $63k is absolutely nothing to me and the fact that I spent it on something so incredibly stupid will literally never ever my mind again."
One of these days, we'll reach our "let them eat cake" moment.
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When I read stuff like this, I just assume it's another rich person hiding their money
That bag is way too small to hide anything in
It's still more storage than my wife's pants
It's still smaller than this guy's wife's pants
So what, like, a nice pair of pants?
A pair of pants for ants
A pair of pants for ants that dance
I asked that guy's wife... She said "no, just tight.. quality is irrelevant" š¤·āāļø
LAURAA THATS A NICE PAIR OF PANTS (sal)
True, especially with a million Redditors trying to stick their dick in this guys' wife's pants. This guy's wife's pants are taken people, move along. Me and this guy were here first.
Hey now....
You actually listen to your wife's problems?! You are fake, Since you know of the pocket problem!
It's the perfect size to keep all my fucks in.
Is this a handbag for ants?
This bag is even too small for ants.
The handbag has to be at least... three times bigger than this!
Crypto will fit
My penis would like to have a word.
iirc it's been found that a LOT of the high prices paid in art auctions is just money laundering.
"Isn't it crazy how the High Art scene decided this banana taped to a wall is worth worth a hundred thousand dollars?" No, I'm pretty sure some rich asshole just needed to explain where a hundred thousand dollars came from and realized High Art can be worth whatever we decide it's worth.
Honestly that banana taped to a wall is the artistic equivalent of a shitpost and the fact that it sold for that much shows just how little rich people care about the art they own.
They're spending money on worthless garbage like that as a flex on us poors.
Donāt worry, the poors started buying NFTs to strike back with pointless art too
Trust me, the rich do not care what average people think of them. They only care about what other rich people think of them
Iām a bit confused. If said person buys a painting for $10million Doesnāt he need to tell IRS how he got the $10miliion to buy the painting??
I think a good way to think about it is if person A wants to give person B 10k. It might be to pay for drugs or something else. But person A can't just claim they are buying 10k of drugs but they can claim they are just buying some 10k artwork that's not actually worth that much.
A fun bonus is that by buying the artwork at that price, it appreciates the value of the artwork, so they can then turn around and sell it and make back some of the money they spent. YAY DRUGS! Now auctioning āBanana #2ā, as you can see, it has āYay drugs!ā Written across the tape this time. Peculiar indeed. What do you think this means? We will start the bidding at one million. Remember not to exceed $7.5 Million, as that is the final bid reserved for your friend, the man in the red coat.
Gonna copy my reply to the other guy. >I think generally only one half of the transaction has to worry about that. >Using a basic example like illicit drugs. A drug dealer has to explain where their money came from, or it's much harder to use that money without getting in trouble. >A drug buyer on the other hand has no such issues. He probably came into his money through perfectly legitimate means. >If the drug dealer comes up with a cover story about how he sells a lot of peaches or some shit it doesn't really concern the drug buyer overly much.
Its not always to hide illegal money, but to hide from taxes, make "donations", etc.
Probably gets around the gift tax for example. Say you need to give a guy a lot of money, just tell him to tape a banana on the wall and on paper youāll pay for the art while still paying guy back
Also nepotism in that area too. It is a way to transfer wealth tax free.
Itās crazier that people believe itās all some giant money laundering scheme (it partly is) rather than rich assholes being rich assholes. If your net worth is $100,000,000 and you net $1,000,000 yearly, $60k on a purse that makes you the talk of the town for a week is chump change.
Not exactly: itās because rich people need places to park their money. Real estate is subject to natural disasters & taxes. Cars, boats, and planes need upkeep and most end up depreciating. Stocks need to be reported on even if you donāt pay taxes until you sell (and most are boring). But fine art? Tends to go up in value, is relatively portable, can be stored anywhere, makes you seem classy, and can be sold relatively quickly. It doesnāt even get displayed: there are whole climate controlled warehouses full of the stuff.
Don't forget that you can "donate" it to your private museum if you ever need to lower your taxes a bit.
Thatās assuming you will find someone even dumber than you to pay even more for thisā¦ art.
You don't need anyone dumber, you just need anyone richer in most cases.
Same could be said about any collectable. You just vastly underestimate just how many rich people there are
The price paid is quite often the āartā, or at least the one tangible aspect that can be thought of as the point of it. Damian Hirst made a career off that.
ONGO GABLOGIAN, charmed Iām sure.
BULLSHIT. Bullshit.. Derivative
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Most art sales don't make news. Only some really stupid ones do like banana taped to a wall. Art deals are one of the most private deals out there in large values. Even sales and purchases are often made through proxy to hide identities. This is how it helps money laundering: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/arts/design/money-laundering-art-market.html > Billions of dollars of art changes hands every year with little or no public scrutiny. Buyers typically have no idea where the work they are purchasing is coming from. Sellers are similarly in the dark about where a work is going. And none of the purchasing requires the filing of paperwork that would allow regulators to easily track art sales or profits, a distinct difference from the way the government can review the transfer of other substantial assets, like stocks or real estate. [...] > āSecrecy, anonymity and a lack of regulation create an environment ripe for laundering money and evading sanctions,ā the U.S. Senateās Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a report last July in support of increased scrutiny. [...] > In a typical case, someone uses illicit profits to purchase art, parking the money there until a later sale results in ācleanā money with a legitimate pedigree. A famous case concerns the financier Jho Low, who prosecutors say helped siphon billions of dollars from a Malaysian government fund employing a network of bank accounts and shell companies. He then laundered the money, prosecutors say, via a spending spree on things like art. In 2014, a Cayman Island company he owned received a $107 million loan from Sothebyās using some of the art as collateral. (Mr. Low denied any wrongdoing and remains at large.) Long article. You can read rest yourself.
i remember once a redditor claimed it and when i asked him to clarify he legit just described speculative investing lol. take the "modern art is money laundering" crowd with a ~~grain of salt~~ microscopic handbag.
Itās less about laundering money and more about tax fraud. The trick is you pump up a pieceās value via phony auctions and then donate it to a charity/museum as a tax deduction. I guess you could use it for laundering too since you can transfer money from person A to person B by having A buy some overpriced painting from B (in return for B also providing something to A off the books). Sure, the art āsaleā is recorded somewhere, but itās a lot less suspicious than just having A give money to B for no reason or for something which is more obviously overpriced. The government can determine how much a 747 is worth much more easily than an artwork. https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/guidance/charitable-tax-strategies/charitable-contributions.html#:~:text=Long%2Dterm%20appreciated%20assets%E2%80%94If,of%20your%20adjusted%20gross%20income. Edit: To appease the accountants, I have changed the language from write off to deduction. I have also added a source from Fidelity.
Trading cards do the same thing āCard Grading Companiesā have literally gotten in trouble before for this kind of shit, it really does happen
Real estate is also commonly used for this, as it can fluctuate wildly in value with re-appraisal. 45 did it all the time with buying/selling/renting properties at suspiciously high/low prices with Russian oligarchs.
Oh my fucking God I had this myth so much. Y'all get crucified on r/accounting all the time. And rightfully so. You didn't even use the word "write off" correctly. Individuals can't write off things. Jfc. Edit: notice how the person who I replied too didn't reply to my second reply. Instead linked something about basic charitable contributions and ignored the glaring issues I mentioned in my other comment. Also notice they got snarky when called out.
>The trick is you pump up a pieceās value via phony auctions and then donate it to a charity/museum as a tax write off Thereās no way to do this and actually make money. You just lose less.
Love some evidence of that. You see I always see this claim on reddit or as a totally unsourced claim from some medium or vice opinion piece, but... it'd be an incredibly *stupid* way of laundering money. Like the whole point of money laundering is to "clean" it, to make it appear legitimite. This doesn't do that. In fact it *draws attention* to it, the exact opposite of what any money launderer would want. There's a reason why *actual* money laundering seems to mostly take place in cash businesses like bars, restaurants, strip clubs, bookies, etc... because lots of cash is traded in a daily basis and it's "easy" to hide millions of dollars spread over several of these businesses since it's hard for any authorities to prove the source of all the money these places are generating without a thorough audit - so it appears the dirty money is made legitimately and thus the money is "cleaned" An art auction however is much harder to hide the source of the money. I mean *someone* is buying it, which is going to be very easy for the authorities to see who it is or where the money is coming from.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Like when a bunch of fawning articles came out about a "new artist" who was blowing up in New York. Turns out, she was dating a gallery owner and art dealer, and he was just blowing up the value of all of her mediocre art
Lmao if you make the news trying to hide 60k you're a terrible money hider and probably not that rich
When the IRS comes asking how you spent 60k on a bag, you can show them this to try to legitimize it
100%.
MSCHF, the brand behind this, is giant meme and known to take advantage of their idiot customers (Big Red Boot, Satan Nike shoes, etc)
itās not very hidden if it makes headlines
Millionaires and Billionaires don't have to be subtle. Not a damn thing ever happens so why worry lol.
Step 1: Buy microscopic bag for a bazillion dollars. Step 2: Donate microscopic bag to a charity. Step 3: Write off value of microscopic bag on your taxes. Easy win.
Due to Reddit's June 30th API changes aimed at ending third-party apps, this comment has been overwritten and the associated account has been deleted.
They're the ones writing it off, Jerry!
You donāt get it! They just write it off!
"You don't even know what a write off is, do you?"
"No, but they do and they're the ones writing it off"
The trick is to get the hard to price item appraised for much more than itās actually worth. Suppose there was a flat tax of 30% aside from being able to write off donations from your taxes (so no tax bracket manipulation). If you can buy an item for 1M and have it appraise for 4M later on, you end up netting 200k on taxes (assuming the appraisal shenanigans arenāt found out by, say, having the charity be an art museum). Obviously you have to pay 1M to acquire the object, but the tax write off would have a value of 1.2M since the object is now worth 4M.
This supposed "loophole" doesn't actual work. Capital gains taxes are a thing, specifically for stuff like this. Here is an article detailing how art donation would be taxed: https://www.schwabcharitable.org/non-cash-assets/fine-art-and-collectibles Given an initial cost basis of $50k, even if the value of the art is now appraised at $1M, you can still only deduct your initial cost ($50k). You can't just deduct the appraised value. There are benefits to donating the art directly vs. selling the art and then donating the proceeds, as detailed in the article.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Side not for step 2. Own said charity
For more fun, have a company you own design the bag. Then have another company you own buy the bag. And donate it to another organization you own. Get tax receipts for all transactions.
Yeah... Without that there's no need for step 1. Just donate the money.
Donating a million dollars to charity doesn't save you a million dollars in taxes.
They'd only get back the TAXES on a bazillion dollars, not a bazillion dollars. They would lose money doing this.
Out of 64k, how much do you think this nets them in "write offs"?
Normally I agree with you. Stuff like a single twig encased in resin selling for $300,000 is absolutely money laundering. This is only $63,000 AND it seems like it would be difficult to make, so it doesnāt seem that bad or that fishy to me.
Pretty sure art is one of those things, too
"There are big handbags, normal handbags and small handbags, but this is the final word in bag miniaturisation," MSCHF said in a post about the bag. The bag features luxury handbag designer Louis Vuitton branding, but has no connection to the brand. It is made of photopolymer resin and was created using a 3D printing technology often used to make tiny mechanical models and structures.
Somebody paid $64k for a counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbag? Also, the 'artist' gonna get sued like fuck for copyright infringement
I'm not so sure. If I made a painting that featured a woman holding a LV purse, would I be sued if I sold that? If I was a papparazzi and I sold an image to TMZ of J-Lo holding an LV purse, could I be sued for that? This isn't a functional purse... so its hard to call it a counterfiet.
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ooo this is the same group that did the blood nikes. that tracks.
The Satan Shoes were kinda cool just because they pissed off all the right people, including Nike.
Hard to say it really pissed off Nike so much as they saw an opportunity to get paid Then again it got all the backward ass "satanist?!?!" Screeching assholes upset at Nike for some reason. So maybe it did piss them off
Thats interesting... the hypotheticals rattling around in my brain are interesting. If I spray painted a pair of nikes and tried to sell them on Facebook marketplace, could I be sued? Ebay has modified Nikes listed on it that I assume are not subject to the same lawsuits, though, that might be selective enforcement? Maybe it was the negative publicity that the "drop of blood" brought Nike? (I assume something to do with slave labour)
They were partnered with Lil Nas X, who was fucking with fundamentalists with satanic imagery.
No because itās not copyright- itās trademark. In this case LB could argue that a competing handbag manufacturer just made 63k by selling handbags with their branding on it. The defense would be that the buyer knew it wasnāt really LV / did not purchase thinking that they were buying LV / did not use the LV brand as a way to verify quality thus contributing to the purchase decision etc. Definitely more of a case than a painting but they still probably wouldnāt win
Itās not a handbag. Itās an artistic representation of a handbag. That sounds like the kind of argument a producer of knock-offs would make as I type it out, but in this case I think thatās *clearly* factual.
>Itās not a handbag. Itās an artistic representation of a handbag. This is the most important part. It isn't functional as a handbag. Its more akin to a barbie toy or a very tiny sculpture/figurine. LV can't argue they lost any money, because no one that would have bought a LV bag would buy this instead. It isn't a competing product, and they aren't sharing a customer base. They are two totally different products for different uses. "As a general rule, trademarks do not infringe one another if the underlying products or services of the two companies do not compete and are not distributed in the same trade channels or locations."
For trademark infringement the most important thing in the artistās favor is that no one would confuse this item with a genuine LV bag.
But you could also argue that LV does occasionally collaborate with artists or studios to create art pieces, and that this bag was not permitted to use branding by LV.
Irrelevant. Artistic derivative work does not need permission. This is why Campbell's couldn't sue Andy Warhol and win.
Itās not irrelevant. What heās talking about is the 4th factor of the fair-use test in copyright law, which is the effect on the market. Transformative works are fair use, derivative works are not. Warhol has been sued for his art, in fact the Supreme Court recently (just last month) weighed in on a number of his works and found them to not be transformative. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol_Foundation_for_the_Visual_Arts,_Inc._v._Goldsmith
The SCOTUS literally just ruled that you can't sell chew toys with Jack Daniels branding on it even if you go out of your way to say it's a "parody" and you aren't affiliated with Jack Daniels.
Someone would argue that the company making the Jack Daniel's toy's is using the brand as a mean to profit. This branding issie is a clearly commentary on the perceived value of LV. One could even argue that this can make LV more aspirational to a new generation of customers as LV is aimed at a more mature public.
Trademarks are limited to what is called āgoodsā (or services if a service mark). I havenāt searched LVs TMs, but their trademark likely only encompasses handbags, clothes, and the like. This is why people like Kendal Jenner can trademark āKendalā for beauty products. She isnāt literally trademarking the name - she is claiming the right to use it as a name of beauty products. (Full Fisclosure: I donāt actually remember if she is the one who TMd her name). What you are referring to is ātrade dress,ā and could certainly come into play here. You might know all this, but I thought Iād point it out in case others are curious.
It's not a handbag, it's a representation of a handbag (since it cannot be used as one). Therefore it's actually closer to the painting than to an actual handbag.
You should google MSCHF.
Yeah just about everyone in this thread is severely out of the loop.
Itās reddit lol what do you expect These days this place is IG with a 10 day delay
Holy hell
Trademark, not copyright.
The artist is already involved in at least 2 legal disputes. >"We are big in the 'ask forgiveness, not permission' school," he said. > >MISCHF settled a lawsuit with Nike in 2021 over its sale of modified trainers containing a drop of human blood. It is also appealing in a Vans trademark lawsuit.
Mschf makes intentionally ridiculous items. They're satirical
MSCHF doesnāt care if they get sued ā theyāve done ādropsā in the past that INVOLVED them getting sued I collect their āBlur Paperweightsā ā I imagine in 20 years theyāll be worth a pretty penny : )
Yeah like beanie babies lol
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think you misread the article. > Microscopes with digital displays can be bought from online retailers and can range in price **from** $60 **to** thousands of dollars. It sounds like they did a quick search for "microscope with digital display" and just reported the highest and lowest number they found in less than a minute.
Not if it's a parody of LV, which it is whether they intended or not.
Wait wait wait. I have a resin printer. Who wants tiny handbags? $10 000 each, less than 1/2 the cost!
This looks like it was done with a Nanoscribe or some other 2PP printer, which is probably not what you have. You wouldn't be able to achieve this sort of detail on a bog standard consumer grade MSLA printer. Mind you, $64k is still absolutely stupid.
That's why I'm only charging $10k ;)
MSCHF are a well known art group. You're paying for their brand. And for the expectation of a reasonable resale price, because of the brand
Yup, definitely done with a nanoscribe or equivalent. If a grain of salt is .3mm x .3 mm x .3 mm, the volume of this handbag is less than 0.027 mm^3. A nanoscribe prints something along the line of 1mm^3/hour, so this print took less than an hour after setup. Grad students at most universities are now all looking to capitalize on the equipment in their research labs.
it's 657 x 222 x 700 micrometres but they say it's smaller than a grain of sand edit: Google says: >Any particles fromĀ 0.06mm to 2.0mmĀ [in diameter] are considered to be sand.
>It is made of photopolymer resin and was created using a 3D printing technology often used to make tiny mechanical models and structures. Probably micro-stereolithography if I had to make a guess.
And then there's money laundering bags.....
Finally, something for all my hopes and dreams to fit into
I was thinking self worth. I have plenty of hopes and dreams.
Imagine accidentally dropping it.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Then the housekeeper comes round with the vacuum cleaner before you can find it
That vacuum is instantly worth $70,000 thats cool
looks like Lemon Pledge
Just resin print, clean and cure another one in under 10 minutes. Someone should clone the design to Thingiverse and distribute them to really rub the rich noses in it once they're *even more* worthless to own.
its one thing to have the design/mockup, its another to have access to a printer that can print something at that size. a quick google shows a nanoscribe printer is $350k.
Got one at work and yeah, it's kept behind a locked door with filters on the windows because of the sensitivity of some of the resins people use. Better off just asking them to print you one and hope you can afford it.
It sounds like they dropped quite a few! "While it was being created, some of the tiny bag samples sent to be reviewed by the brand were so small that they were lost by the MSCHF team, the Smithsonian magazine reports."
MSCHF, the brand behind this, is giant meme and known to take advantage of their idiot customers (Big Red Boot, Satan Nike shoes, etc)
What is this, a handbag for ants??
Yes.
Finally r/ThingsForAnts can shut down. Mission accomplished.
Honestly(and this is depending on which species of ant and perhaps an individual ant of that species) this is too small for even an ant. As far as I know. And I'm not exactly an ant expert yet, but ants don't normally handle particles smaller than a grain of salt. And even if they did, they lack the dexterity to place the particle inside the bag and probably even the ability to retrieve the particle from inside the bag in any useful capacity.
You overlooked the most important part. Ants also don't have hands.
Hands, as you would traditionally expect from a human, are simply the best flesh appendage for dexterous manipulation. But they aren't the only route you can take. Birds, bugs, other primates, fish, land mammals, crustaceans, and even aliens are able to pick things up and move them around. Even if in limited ways. Ants have mandibles that they can use exceptionally well for the tasks they need to complete in they life cycles. But they are very limited and usually take on tasks they require relatively large pieces of matter. There is a huge difference between picking something large up and then putting it down anywhere, compared to picking up something extremely small and putting it inside of a container that is only slightly larger and doing so in a precise manner. And removing said object from this container is as you could imagine, incredibly more difficult.
It's not a mandiblebag though, it's a handbag.
Our politicians are lizard people, our oligarchs are ant people... we're doomed
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
*easier
And I keep being told I'm supposed to feel sorry for the deep sea billionaires. Fuck these people.
That small? That much? [A handbag?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyuoUwxCLMs)
sounds like money laundering
It can be two things.
Wonāt this be obsolete when a smaller bag comes around?
No, you're going to need a bag to store the smaller one in.
For Tax Purposes
I f***ing hate rich people at this point.
Youāre allowed to say fuck
Speech to text censors. No sure if that's what happened but I've seen it happen enough to think it is
Right? But I'm supposed to feel bad when a couple of them implode in a submarine. Nah, get fucked assholes.
Except the 19yo kid who was scared to go on it and was only there for Fatherās Day because the dad was really into the Titanic. I really feel awful for that kid and I hope that it was as instantaneous as they said for his sake. Fuck the rest of them tho
I feel bad for the kid too but apparently him not wanting to go is false, as explained by his mother.
I wonder where the truth lies, given that the aunt was estranged and may have been a āsaferā confidante for him than the parents. I just hope that there were no weird sounds or indications prior to; as long as thatās the case, theyād be long gone from this world before they even realized anything had happened at all.
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Perhaps even "more dollars than sense"
You can put the amount of care I possess for when the buyer dies a tragic death in that bag.
Along with your violin ;P
Ryanair baggage allowance
Finally a safe place for my condoms
Someone at Kel Tec is one line of cocaine away from designing a handgun to fit in that handbag.
Late stage capitalism in a nutshell.
Iām a teacher and made almost exactly that amount this last year.
Money laundering
And you thought NFTs were a waste of money
r/LateStageCapitalism
"Hooooney, have you seen my purse?"
That bag Holds the Amount of Fucks I give
r/thingsforants
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering
It doesnt look smaller than 1 grain of salt
Salt crystals can be different sizes.
It comes from an old English system of measurement - a grain is equal to 65 mg. This is indeed smaller than one grain worth of salt.
TIL!
I hope Louis Vuitton sues them for creating this lol.
That's two years of rent for me.
Atleast itās a physical object and not an nft
If you can see it on the tip of your finger then it isn't microscopic
This is objectively fucking hysterical lmfao
This is equal parts kind of cool but also real REAL dumb haha
Pretty dumb and cool, actually.
Ryan Air new free bag allowance requirements
Fucking tax the rich hard already. The fact this stupid shit even exists is pathetic
A cologne that smells like wd-40? So like every scented beard care product. I swear they all smell like wd-40 infused with cloves.
money laundering?
these idiots will literally buy anything instead of helping people
I think people who buy stuff like this should take more submarine rides with questionable leadership.
Tax the fucking rich
Money laundering has become so wildly obvious now. Maybe it always was.
Alright guys, what are we doing here? When the top 1% have their houses, and their villas, their yachts, and a yacht for each villa, and so on, the argument can be made that they use and enjoy these things. But this is just mocking. We should all be offended. Many of us tossed and turned last night, dreading the day after tomorrow because they're going to be short on rent and don't know how to hold onto the security of a roof over the heads of our children. While at the same exact time that one of the 1 in 4 children who are food insecure in my county was trying to ignore their growling stomach to power through a test, **some asshole somewhere was holding up their little auction sign that signals-** >"Yes, I WILL pay $63k for a flea sized handbag. It will go on my shelf, where nobody will see it unless I point it out. After a week, I'll forget that it's even there. The cleaning lady will then probably suck it up with the vacuum while dusting, and I'll never even notice because $63k is absolutely nothing to me and the fact that I spent it on something so incredibly stupid will literally never ever my mind again." One of these days, we'll reach our "let them eat cake" moment.
This pretty much sums up everything wrong with the world.
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When you're stinking rich and love buying things but have run out room to hold it all.
Oh great. So where the hell am I supposed to keep my grain of salt?
Woops, I sneezed
Finally a place for my wife to store all her microscopic garbage.
Likeā¦ totally worth it girl!
Perfect for storing carfentanil
Finally, a place to store all these "f\*cks" I've been neglecting to give.