It's not okay to sell a claim that isn't true. Satoshis don't move. Enemies of bitcoin desire there to be a commonly followed system of provenance which pretends that they do move, and I'm not talking about ordinal or inscription enjoyers.
Discussion
I think people are differentiating how the seller markets what they are selling. "I'm selling an epic sat," vs "I'm auctioning a UTXO produced from the coinbase transaction of block 840,000 and you can interpret that however you want," the later should be much less controversial.
By extension, "I'm selling a UTXO that, viewed through the lens of ordinal theory, contains an 'epic' sat" or "I'm selling a bundle of sats, one of which you might consider epic" seems fine. It's factual and upfront that a certain viewpoint is required.
"I'm selling an epic sat according to ordinal theory" or "I'm selling an epic sat" seems like shorthand for the above... not nuanced, but also not necessarily malicious. I'm not sure where people are drawing the line.
I think the responsibility falls more on the buyer's side.
It's all imaginary nonsense, though. You can't sell a utxo. You might sell the service of signing a utxo encumbrance, but it ceases to be a utxo the moment miners agree it should be spent. A utxo doesn't move, and neither does a satoshi. Accepting a "lense" by which to imagine satoshis are moving between parties is dangerous. It's not a reality, but enemies of bitcoin would like for it to be the commonly held belief about how bitcoin works. There is no FIFO accounting in bitcoin, but enemies would like there to be.
"You can't sell a UTXO" ... "A UTXO doesn't move and neither does a satoshi." This seems like you're picking on the use of imprecise language, irrelevant to the actual phenomenon itself.
It's clear that if Alice mines a block and has a 3.125 coinbase reward, and Bob wants to own a UTXO that came from Alice's coinbase reward, they can make that happen. Alice can use her 3.125 bitcoin as an input, and deliver him an output. If Bob thinks it's cool to say "look at me, I have a UTXO that came from this coinbase transaction!" good for him. Nobody can deny the truth of the statement, either.
Now if Carol is jealous of Bob, and wants to be the owner of a UTXO traceable back to Alice's coinbase, can Bob facilitate this? Technically, yes. He can use his UTXO from his transaction with Alice as an input to a transaction with Carol.
This could continue across many people, and would be quite simple to follow, if there were only 1 input and 1 output each time. A value of 3.125 slowly deteriorating due to fees. But obviously things can get messy and confusing if multiple inputs and outputs begin to get involved.
We could say "stop being sentimental, it's dumb." Rather than listen to this advice, they've decided to use ordinal theory, to keep track of "the traceability which matters for sentimental reasons." (Lots of collector cultures set various boundaries as to what they consider valid, special, interesting.) If you believe they should be stopped, how??
You're arguing that the tailors of the emperors new clothes did not defraud the emperor. UTXOs do not move. FIFO satoshi accounting is not contained in the transaction. None of this is the reality of a bitcoin transaction. It's an imaginary system on top of the communication and with that comes implied meaning.
If a majority are convinced that the emperors clothes do exist, then you are forced to respect the clothes or face a beheading.
A “UTXO moving” are your words not mine.
It can be obvious what input(s) led to the creation of a UTXO. If someone is sentimental about one of those inputs and it affects their behavior, that’s pretty hard to stop.
And clearly, people can come up with whatever arbitrary system they’d like (FIFO), to play games they want to play. If they understand it’s a collective hallucination that only has relevance so long as other players keep playing, then I don’t see the problem. There are many communities that invent parameters for games or collectibles that amount to “let’s agree to pretend such and such matters.”
I realize I did say “sell a UTXO” but that can be interpreted and understood in different ways.
You seem to interpret it as “moving ownership of a UTXO from one person to another” while someone else might interpret it as “using the UTXO as an input to create a new UTXO”. The people playing these games don’t care about being technically precise with their language.
To the extent that the imprecise language misleads people about how bitcoin works, I’m against it.