The money masters have unlimited funding. They have means and motive to waste all the money they want. They know they cant stop it, but after previous jpeg BS they saw how it clogged block space and artificially increased tx fees. So, they finance it this time and make it much worse. Look at it as a DDoS-type attack on block space. So until someone comes up with a better explanation why so many idiots are paying these prices for jpegs, and now insane prices for dust, Im sticking with my theory. You can disagree all you want, does not change the fact that this is clearly an attack. There is literally no other rational or logic reason for it.

they are paying miners out-of-band, with fiat, to fill blocks with jpegs, and ignore actual economic bitcoin transactions.

this is decidely harmful to anyone who wants to use bitcoin as an economic payments network.

if they were paying the miners with bitcoin, it's possible they would eventually run out of money, and the attack would stop, but they aren't. they're paying miners with fiat, which they can print, indefinitely, therefore they can sustain this attack as long as the fiat money printers continue to exist.

what is the difference between a State actor censoring the bitcoin network, by paying pools large amounts of fiat, to mine empty blocks.. vs a State actor paying pools large amounts of fiat, to fill blocks full of jpegs? ... the outcome is essentially the same.

What if they have calculated that ETF fees can pay for transaction fees to make self custody prohibitively expensive.