Screengrab: Twitter/@calvinbecerra
Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
Advertisement
Becerra is a self-described “business builder” and “motivational speaker” and he is also a collector and creator of NFTs. He's also a member of the so-called Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), an NFT collection whose founder called it “a collaborative art experiment for the cryptosphere” in an interview with Rolling Stone. The magazine described the group’s apes as “edgy, haphazardly constructed art pieces that also act as membership cards to a decentralized community of madcaps.” They are also JPEGs that people really love to use as profile pictures, basically.
Advertisement
Becerra said on Twitter that his complaints convinced OpenSea, as well as Rarible and NFT Trader to “do the RIGHT THING” and unlisted the three stolen apes from their platforms. The NFT listings are greyed out on Rarible, with a note saying "item has been temporarily blocked from public access," but they are still viewable on OpenSea with a warning that they have been flagged as suspicious. One of the stolen apes currently exists in a staked vault of other Bored Apes on the NFTX platform, which lets people turn their NFTs into liquid tokens backed by the NFTs that can be used for other purposes. Blockchain records show that Becerra paid 70 ETH for it in September, or roughly $245,000 at the time.Do you have more information about a hack or a scam involving NFTs? We’d love to hear from you. You can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, Wickr/Telegram/Wire @lorenzofb, or email lorenzofb@vice.com
Advertisement
Advertisement