Whale ‘Pranksy’ tricked by fake NFT Banksy for 100 ETH

Collector NFT Pranksy spent about 100 ethers on NFT work, which fraudulently claimed that its author was the popular artist Banksy.

Pranksy

The latest story from the NFT environment, which traditionally belongs to the strangest corners of the cryptworld, sounds like a pun. Strange and remarkable things are happening here. This time, the Pranksy whale fell victim to a trick with fraudulent NFT artist Banksy, and eventually won it all. OpenSea, but from the beginning ..

Pransky – collector NFT tokens – On August 31, he saw a page on the official street art website of Banksy promoting a NFT auction on a popular market OpenSea. Despite some doubts about its authenticity, he decided not to let the intangible object slip through his fingers and buy it. He thus participated in the auction and increased the highest bid of about 87 ETH (304,500 USD) to almost 100 ETH. So he paid around $ 341,500 in Etherium to get this “rare” work:

Happy ending

Pranksy hoped he had the real Banksy, though he wasn’t sure. His bid was accepted, but after the link to the OpenSea auction was removed from Banksy’s website, the NFT investor he began to fear that he might be a victim of fraud. Just an hour after sharing the auction on Twitter, he published:

“My offer of 100 ETH was accepted as potentially the first #Banksy #NFT on @opensea. The link was removed from his website, so it could have been a very elaborate scam, I guess that will be it, time will tell! ”

Banksy’s spokesman later said: “Artist Banksy has not created any NFT artwork. No Banksy NFT auctions are associated with the artist in any form… “ However, he did not comment on whether the artist’s website was hacked. Pranksy thus did not get to the potentially very rare NFT, but on the contrary, he became a victim of fraud and the owner of a worthless imitation. However, the whole escapade came to an unexpected conclusion when the fraudsters returned the money. The perpetrators sent Pranksy back 97.69 ETH a few hours later.

“The refund was completely unexpected, I think the press coverage of the hack and the fact that I found the hacker and followed him on Twitter may have led him to a refund.”

Conclusion

Commenting on the drama, Cryptochild remarked on Twitter that OpenSea was the only winner of the debacle in the end, pulling 2.5% of Pransky’s considerable offer into his pocket. Banksy is the pseudonym of an English street art artist from the Bristol underground scene, whose true identity is unknown.