In an ironic turn of events, Pranksy (an avid NFT collector) was recently tricked into purchasing a fake Banksy NFT for $336,000 USD worth of Ethereum. Initially, there was a link on Banksy’s official website that redirected audiences to the NFT marketplace, OpenSea, which the collector hurried over to outbid for a work, titled Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster. Subsequently, the link was then removed on Bansky’s website, causing the collector to question the purchase.
My ETH from the #Banksy #NFT purchase was just returned to me, ethical hacker proving a point?https://t.co/idDNEsEIhK
— Pranksy ? (@pranksy) August 31, 2021
Remarkably, the fraudster refunded the money (minus the $5,000 OpenSea transaction fee), which Pranksy took to Twitter describing them as an “ethical hacker” — a real oxymoron of sorts. Humbled by the unusual day, Pranksy warned others to watch out for the various types of fraud in both the NFT marketplace and the internet as a whole.
Also in the news, the city of Amsterdam is returning a Kandinsky painting to its pre-war heirs.