📳Scammed Bored Apes Worth $1.9M 'Frozen' by NFT Marketplace OpenSea
⚔️When a collector said he lost his NFTs in a phishing attack, the top NFT marketplace reportedly stepped in to help him recover the assets.
A few weeks ago a 75 ETH Bored Ape—which by today’s price is approximately $300,000—but the NFT holder accidentally listed and sold for less than $3,000 price of 0.75 ETH.
A non-fungible token (NFT) collector today declared that his collection of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs worth $1.9 million was "hacked," and then said NFT marketplace OpenSea had "frozen" the assets for him.
Todd Kramer, who runs an art gallery in New York, tweeted that he had clicked on a link that appeared to be a genuine NFT DAPP (decentralized application). But it turned out to be a phishing attack—and 16 of his NFTs were stolen. “I been hacked,” he wrote. “All my apes gone.”
A non-fungible token (NFT) collector today shared that his collection of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs worth $1.9 million was "hacked," and then said NFT marketplace OpenSea had "frozen" the assets for him.
NFTs are digital tokens that prove ownership of physical or digital content such as art, GIFs or music files; Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the most popular PFP (profile picture) collections, a series of cartoon ape images with randomly-generated attributes. They’ve proven popular among celebrities and influencers, with the likes of Post Malone and Logan Paul among those who own Bored Apes. So far nearly $1 billion has been spent on trading Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
Kramer later said tweeted that “All Apes are frozen” and that OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace, was helping him recover his stolen assets.
“Update.. All Apes are frozen,,. Waiting for Opensea team to get in,,, lessons learned. Use a hard wallet... never knew so many troll accounts existed, Kindness prevails, and the community is really great. i know #wagmi just a rough night”
The news prompted criticism from some corners, with some people arguing that appealing to a third party to freeze NFTs flew in the face of crypto’s claims to be decentralized. “Feels pretty anti-crypto to be asking third parties to do this and ideally they shouldn’t be able to,”
As NFTs have shot up in value over the course of 2021, they’ve become a tempting target for hackers and phishing attacks. In March, tens of thousands of dollars worth of NFTs were reported stolen from the Nifty Gateway marketplace by cyber thieves, while in August, pseudonymous developer Stazie lost 16 CryptoPunks NFTs to a phishing attack involving a malicious pop-up that requested their MetaMask wallet seed phrase.
