The last time I played with NFTs it was about $50 USD just in processing fees to mint the token; not sure if that has changed since then. So it's not necessarily the case that the author is making a bunch of money off of this project; they might actually be just passing along costs.
Author here. Gas costs have actually come down a lot over the past few years. It only costs me a few dollars to run the transaction. It's more that scheduling, setting up, conducting, and tearing down each burn session is a huge pain in the ass. So if I can burn 10 bills an hour, then I'd clear maybe $450 an hour after gas, which doesn't feel crazy for providing boutique financial services.
There may have not really been much prosecution for this historically but... also rarely is a crime so carefully and meticulously documented, and we happen to have an executive branch currently obsessed with patriotic symbology and aggressive responses to petty crime... this may been a uniquely bad time to do this.
It's a lot less insane than jumping out of an airplane and letting it crash for virality- but it's still in the same vein of vanity. Look at me, I'm doing something crazy.
I like this sort of performance art where someone becomes the thing they’re satirizing to point out its absurdities. It reminds me of when Stephen Colbert setup a super PAC to expose how corrupt it could be.
Issuing stablecoin legally requires collateral reserves to be held. When there is a bank run on the issued stablecoin, that's when this matters. Without the collateral, the value of the stablecoin risks dipping to zero. Faith alone isn't always sufficient.
