- APE price slid on news of stolen NFTs.
BAYC warns of ongoing attempts to send fake links with a promise of exclusive mint.
High-profile Ape NFTs found in hacker’s wallet.
ApeCoin (APE) arrived to significant success, becoming a representative of the NFT space in just a couple of weeks. But the APE airdrop also generated a new type of scam – a honeypot that led to the loss of some high-end Apes from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection.
The scam promises an additional airdrop, which can only be received after paying an ETH gas fee. The fake offers have infested the Twitter and Discord spaces of BAYC and APE holders, and are using a faked website to make users sign the fake mint with their wallets.
The ETH fee was not the only loss – because users approved and signed with their wallets, the site could also make a claim to rare and valuable Ape NFTs held in those wallets. Some high-profile Apes were stolen and may be blacklisted for further sales.
The scam also affected the Doodles NFT community, again by compromising their Discord server.
How BAYC and APE Prices Reflected the Scam
BAYC was still in the top 3 NFT Collections in the past months, commanding a floor price above 80 ETH.
The news of the scam also affected APE market prices, making the token slide from nearly $15 down to $12.92, crashing just as the news of the exploit was announced.
The good news is that the scam is easy to avoid, and BAYC already warned about trying to mint anything from Discord links.
The BAYC social media community is also busy reporting the faked accounts. Some of the solicitations come from verified Twitter handles with blue checkmarks, adding to the confusion. The scams are also coinciding with a series of giveaways and incentives for APE.
The telling sign of faked BAYC accounts is that they are too numerous, more than the number of existing Ape NFTs. They are also verified and aggressive about following users and soliciting the fake minting site. Invitations also come from accounts dedicated to APE tokens.
