Owner of Bored Ape NFTs Falls Victim to Phishing Attack, Losing 3 Rare Tokens
In a devastating turn of events, a phishing attacker has successfully stolen three highly valuable Bored Ape Yacht Club nonfungible tokens (NFTs) from a single unfortunate holder. The total worth of these tokens amounts to approximately 56 Ether (ETH), equivalent to $167,500.
The suspicious transaction was initially observed by on-chain investigator ZachXBT, who noticed the movement of the three Bored Apes from the wallet labeled “tatis.eth” to a known phishing wallet identified by Etherscan.
Although the exact method of attack remains unknown, it appears that the attacker’s wallet utilized the services of a wallet drainer called Pink Drainer. Typically, phishing attacks of this nature involve impersonating legitimate crypto projects like Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs. Users are enticed to connect their wallets with the promise of rewards, only to have their assets stolen once connected to a drainer.
In this instance, the phisher managed to acquire Bored Apes #7531, #6736, and #2100. These particular NFTs possess rare traits, such as white fur (found in only 4% of the collection), a small grin (found in only 3%), and the unique “Bored Pizza” trait (which is present in just 0.5% of the entire 10,000-strong collection), according to OpenSea.
Meanwhile, fantasy.top, a project featuring NFT trading cards adorned with images of crypto influencers, has surpassed the blockchain Tron in terms of fees generated over the past week. Since its launch on Coinbase’s Ethereum layer 2 Blast on May 1, fantasy.top has accumulated $9.3 million in fees within seven days, making it the fifth most profitable crypto project and outperforming Tron’s earnings of $8.73 million, according to DefiLlama.
The platform enables users to trade cards featuring crypto personalities, with the featured individuals receiving 1.5% of the trading volume and 10% of the fees generated from card “packs.” This incentive has encouraged influencers to promote the protocol to their followers, resulting in fantasy.top distributing a total of $1.25 million worth of ETH to the influencers featured on the cards on May 7.
Additionally, Ethereum briefly regained its status as the leading chain for NFT sales as the CryptoPunks collection witnessed trading volume exceeding $1.1 million across seven transactions in the last 24 hours. This propelled Ethereum’s sales volumes to over $6.7 million, surpassing Bitcoin’s consistently strong NFT sales numbers since at least March.
However, Bitcoin quickly reclaimed its position at the top, with $6.6 million in volume compared to Ethereum’s $6.2 million at the time of writing. Despite a drop in 24-hour sales volumes by nearly 14%, Ethereum was unable to keep pace with the growing volume of Bitcoin Ordinals.
In other news, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo’s motion to dismiss a $1 billion class-action suit related to his Binance-tied NFTs has been denied by a Miami federal judge. The suit, filed by a group of Binance users in November, alleged that they suffered losses on “unregistered securities” due to Ronaldo’s promotion of the exchange. Ronaldo’s lawyers argued that he had no involvement in the alleged actions of Binance and that the American-based complaint had no jurisdiction over him as a Portuguese-born resident of Saudi Arabia.
Lastly, former President Donald Trump recently hosted a dinner for holders of his NFTs at his Florida residence. This event took place while Trump faced legal charges for allegedly falsifying business records to pay $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to conceal an alleged affair.
In the world of NFTs, DCinvestor, an avid collector, poses the question: Is this the best NFT collection in the world?