On Sunday, the Twitter account of one of the most successful NFT artists was hacked, resulting in the loss of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency.
Beeple, a digital artist, was hacked on Sunday by a scammer who posted two tweets from his account. The first tweet touted an exclusive NFT drop with Louis Vuitton, while the second revealed that Beeple would issue a set of NFTs for free.
Both tweets were fake, and anyone who clicked on the links in the tweets had one Ethereum taken from their accounts. An estimated $71,000 in cryptocurrency was stolen from users’ accounts, according to reports.
Winklemann regained access to his account a few hours after the attack, which he announced in tweets.
“Stay safe out there, anything too good to be true IS A F******G SCAM,” Winklemann tweeted after recovering his account. “And as a side note, there will never be a SURPRISE MINT I mention one time in one place starting at 6 am Sunday morning.”
In reaction to Winklemann’s tweet, many individuals reported their encounters after clicking on the scammers’ links.
“My only blue-chip NFT was stolen this morning to this scam. I had the misfortune of bad timing- saw the tweet about 30 seconds after it was posted and thought it was just the sort of crazy random charitable thing you might do to change random people’s lives. Tough, valuable lesson,” tweeted one user.
Others questioned whether Winklemann would do anything to help victims of the phishing honeytrap.