Fake $140K NFT Art Project Leaves Buyers With Emojis Instead Of Actual Work
Image via AngieYeoh / Shutterstock.com
Non-fungible token (NFT) collectors got more than they bargained for when a digital art project worth US$140,000 only delivered a set of emojis.
As Coin Rivet reports, the project had promised to generate 8,000 original randomized NFT artworks depicting 3D busts. It would have a presale for 2,000 of the pieces, priced at 0.5 SOL each, which were snapped up pretty quickly.
Sadly for those who wanted first dibs, the “busts” were indeed digital sculptures of heads, but of a different variety. What they received, instead, were 25 hoax emojis easily accessed via a smartphone.
repeat after me:
— Cel◎n 🚧 (@0xCelon) September 30, 2021
rugged iconics are the new gmoot pic.twitter.com/RVAge9fT0N
After the presale, the creators—who went by the handle Iconics, with one of them claiming to be a 17-year-old—took off with all 1,000 SOL (about US$140,000). This was after assuring the community that they would reveal their identities when the art had been minted.
Going against their word, they promptly deleted their Twitter account and disabled their Discord chat channel, so the remaining 6,000 NFTs are believed to be non-existent.
In the crypto sphere, the stunt is considered to be a “rug pull,” referring to the event of a project’s organizer under-delivering and escaping with all funds.
The project runs vague parallels with a recent art collaboration in the real, non-NFT world, where an artist took a museum’s money and ran off, calling the stunt “art.”
Posed as a 17 year old kid building an NFT brand with his dad. Just scammed 2k people for over 3k SOL.
— Scott likes NFTs (@scottlikesnfts) September 30, 2021
ICONICS had all of the right signs of a good project. Except he wasn't building a team. I need to do a better job of looking for signs of scam and trusting my gut. pic.twitter.com/4CUm1nr0PC
Did I become a part of Rug pull too?
— TittyTrump (@TittyTrump_) September 30, 2021
I heard about ICONICS from some of the influencers (don't want to name them) and got into the discord.
The art was legit. The guy was new and was lacking marketing so I offered him to help with marketing. LESSON LEARNT.
[via Coin Rivet, cover image via AngieYeoh / Shutterstock.com]
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