I say it can be very well all three. Just the groups involved are different.
It clearly is bubble with insane valuations for nothing on expectation of growth.
It is scam, due to wash trading and all other fun stuff. And fundamental way of trying to sell something worthless with implication that it will go up in value with rest of the bubble.
And yeah, point three is back to wash trading and laudering.
There's a lot of evidence that the inflows to NFTs are extremely small, and that the VAST majority of NFT sales are wash trades.
Why would anyone do this when the fees to trade are so high? Everyone thinks the end goal is to fake it until you make it, and sell the wash-traded pumped up tokens to an unsuspecting victim.
It's not.
The goal is to create fake wealth from nothing. There are banks now that will lend using NFTs as collateral.
You get millions of dollars in loans, then you spend millions, then you go bankrupt. Oopsie.
Step 3. Put ill gotten gains in the wallet in step 2.
Step 4. Purchase your own asset with money from step 3.
Step 5. Cash out.
Because there appears to be no reason behind the valuation of NFTs, it's pretty hard for the tax man to determine that "Oh hey, this doesn't look above board!". Because wallets are pretty easy to create and fund from all over the place, it makes the perfect mode to turn anonymous money into real money.
Oh, and bonus points, you still have the NFT, so see if you can't unload it on a rube for less money.
