Where big money is spinning, there are always those who want to make money on it. And not always in fairways. Several high-profile stories related to the NFT.
$300,000 bug and other typo stories
The desire to sell a valuable asset often leads to inattention. One of the monkeys #3547 from the Bored Ape NFT project was sold 100 times cheaper than planned due to banal inattention in the winter of 2021. The seller mistakenly set the price for it at 0.75 ETH instead of 75 ETH. And he only received $3,000, not $300,000.
The transaction went through instantly because the price of NFTs from the collection now starts at $350,000 (106 ETH). The user who bought the token programmed a bot to search for lots at a price below the market price. And it worked. For an instant transaction, he had to pay another 8 ETH (about 32 thousand dollars). And then immediately put it up for sale for 59.99 ETH (approximately $250,000).
Another bright fail with NFT from the same collection occurred in March 2022. We are talking about token #835. It was sold for 115 DAI (or $115), which is 99.9% less than the actual price of the monkeys. At the same time, the seller bought this lot in the summer of 2021 for $50,000. It is not clear why this happened. There are 3 versions:
● Account hacking. Back in February, there were reports of problems on the NFT OpenSea platform, where most of the lots are placed. Then several market participants also suffered and announced the theft of valuable tokens.
● Error in cryptocurrency. The price in DAI is much lower than in ETH (it is in ethers that offers are usually placed). And, perhaps, this is a banal mistake when an offer was accepted in the wrong currency.
● Buyer trap. It turned out that the buyer repeatedly set the price at BAYC auctions in DAI. Perhaps to mislead the seller, which he eventually succeeded in.
But the exact reason for such a low sale was never found out.
Another fail happened to the seller and the popular CryptoPunk NFT collection. A comma in the wrong place led to the loss of several million dollars. A user placed a lot for 4,444 ETH ($19K) instead of 4,444 ETH ($19M). And ended up losing a lot of money.
Nike and the court with the creators of the NFT
And here is the first call for those who make tokens based on someone else's intellectual property. January 2022 began with a lawsuit by the Nike brand against the online store StockX. The main activity of the site is the resale of bags, clothes, and shoes. And they decided to create 500 NFTs for the sneakers of the said brand. Moreover, it was announced that the tokens would subsequently materialize, that is, turn into physical, and not just digital sneakers.
Damage to business reputation is the essence of the claim. The brand has received complaints from users. They were not satisfied with the incomprehensible conditions of the purchase and the inflated cost. The amount of the claim is not disclosed.
Perhaps this is just additional attention to the NFT. It is known that Nike itself plans to release several virtual items in the form of tokens.
Cashing in on the fans
Another unfortunate case with NFT occurred in the winter of 2022 due to an error in the link. Ozzy Osbourne has announced his CruptoBatz token collection of 9666 digital bats. The first link to buy NFT in Discord is discord. gg/cryptobatznft. Then they decided to make the address shorter and changed it to discord. gg/cryptobatz. But no one removed the first link from social networks and other sites.
The scammers took advantage of this and quickly set up a fake website. As a result, fans, moving from the celebrity's official Twitter, ended up with scammers. On a phishing site, users had to link their crypto wallet, from where the scammers stole funds. The number of victims and the amount of damage were not reported. And the old link from the publications was removed only after 3 weeks when cases of the theft of cryptocurrency became known.
The world of NFTs is a huge opportunity. But, as in any business, it is worth being careful here, checking and double-checking the data. Otherwise, it is easy to become a victim of scammers or lose hundreds of thousands of dollars due to your recklessness.