“Worst Night Of My Life,” Says Bored Ape Yacht Club Owner After Losing Over $2 Million Worth Of NFTs

• Ethereum proponent Todd Kramer loses his NFTs to hackers.
• OpenSea’s alleged action has triggered a stir over the low level of decentralization.
• Though NFT thefts are not common, other scams have plagued the space.

An NFT owner decries the loss of his NFTs to hackers. Todd Kramer, the BAYC NFT owner, revealed the information to the public.

15 NFTs Lost, Including 8 BAYC Apes

Todd Kramer, with the Twitter pseudonym toddkramer.eth, took to the social media platform to reveal he had lost his NFTs to hackers who gained access to his hot wallet after he clicked a phishing link in a now-deleted tweet. Kramer stated that it was “arguably the worst night of his life.”

The theft saw the collector lose about 7 MAYC and 8 BAYC NFTs, all thought to be worth about 615 Ethereum, or roughly $2.2 million at the time. He went on to alert NFTX about the theft, asking that the apes and mutants be removed from their liquidity pool. In his tweets, Kramer requested assistance from the NFT community and OpenSea.

“I have been hacked. All my apes gone. This just sold please help me”

While Kramer received a lot of indifference and even backlash from the Twitter NFT community, it was alleged that OpenSea had frozen the stolen digital assets. Though OpenSea is yet to confirm carrying out this action, it has sparked outrage and some level of distrust in the community, which feels such an action should not be possible in a truly decentralized environment. 

American software engineer, Grady Booch, responded by saying, “Silly me. And here I thought that the code is the law and that one of the very ideas of cryptocurrencies was the elimination of any possibility of centralized intervention.”

Such thefts remain rare in the space but raise issues like the importance of NFT collectors knowing about security measures as well as the security of NFT platforms themselves. Todd Kramer, in another tweet, said, “lessons learned. Use a hard wallet. “

NFT Scams

Last week, Grammy award-winner Eminem purchased a BAYC NFT for about $450,000 on the OpenSea platform. With an exclusive collection like BAYC that is favored by celebrities, news of a heist can cause quite a stir in the community. 

While 2021 was a great year for NFTs, the asset class has also had to deal with its fair share of fraudulent activity. Though direct NFT thefts are not so common, art thefts as well as minting scams through discord hacks have led to artists and prospective investors being defrauded.

A fortnight ago, accomplished comic book artist Liam Sharp claimed some of his art had been stolen, minted on OpenSea, and monetized by these bad actors. Also, in a culmination of a series of discord hacks in 2021, Fractal community members hoping to purchase rare NFTs from the platform later realized that the minting link they had been sent via the marketplace’s official discord was set up by scammers who obtained over $150,000 in crypto from the scheme.