According to an industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, a Chinese player has designed and set up their own in-game store that receives real money from others who visit their island. As you can see in the image below, the player has added their WeChat Pay and AliPay QR codes (which can be used by other people to quickly transfer money as Apple Pay) to receive real, real world currency.
Ahmad says that the set is used to design custom items for the game (considering it's great pieces of clothing or well-crafted art). We are not sure how successful th is new business is for the player, but it is a vision. In a way, it feels very smart and very wrong at the same time.
Of course, you can just reprint any painting you see online by drawing it, so we're not sure why anyone would want to pay for such a thing in real money. However, if the quest is there …