NFT scams and rug pull is one of the reasons I have been skeptical towards getting involved in NFT. I know everything in the crypto space is risky, but there are some outrageous NFTs and their values I see and I just wondered, why would people get involved with such project. Those prices are outrageous.
It could just be the broke part of me talking because I can’t afford them yet.
Well we the people determine what should have value and not to have value. Crypto scam is normal, during the 2017 ICO days, lots of people were scammed through crypto. But right now, most people are wiser now since they have learnt the criteria required to consider a crypto legitimate or scam. But how do you do that for NFTs? So I guess we can consider 2021 the ICO days of NFTs.
The latest NFT project that got rug pulled is the Evolved Ape NFTs. These NFTs looked like an obvious rip off of the bored ape yacht club NFT, as they claim to have minted 10,000 NFTs. The theme of the NFT is based on APEs trapped in a lawless land left alone to survive.
Just as other NFTs the official release brought in a lot of hype, lots of people minted and the developers made more than $2 million from the minting. All it took was like 2 or 3 weeks and the developers, who are anonymous, bailed with the minting money and disabled their website and Twitter account. Now the holders hold lots of worthless NFTs that is of no difference with a regular jpeg.
Just like some other NFTs that promised a use case and utility on their NFTs, the developers also did the same. They promised a game play that involved these NFTs. Giveaways and airdrops were also promised. The creators were so selfish that they didn’t pay the artist behind the creation of these NFTs.
I really can’t imagine what new NFT investors who participated in the minting are going through. Imagine investing in it for the first time and getting rug pulled, that’s a first time sad experience.
