system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How does buying expensive paintings etc. help with money laundering?

 I have read about it in a lot of places and saw it in many TV shows and  movies. People will buy a painting for millions of dollars. Now, it is  much easier for them to move the painting than such a large amount of  cash. But the painting is still worthless if no one else agrees to pay  that much for it.
gpt
This isn't really an economic question, but in short: art is a potentially convenient way to store value in something that is readily portable and can be hidden away and stored or moved across borders with less effort and often while attracting less regulatory attention than commensurate amounts of cash.

Lines can get blurred sometimes about how art purchases are funded, and even if pieces are only valued at a fraction of their value on illicit markets it still tends much better than nothing.

Many modern above-board marketplaces often tend to be more conscientious about the provenance of pieces offered for sale/auction, but this is far from universally true. Some buyers too might be willing to turn a blind eye, either just to have the pieces for their own enjoyment or else hoping that provenance might still be camouflaged into the future.