Blockchain transactions are verifiable and transparent — which means if they’re stolen, you can see the theft in plain sight, even if you don’t know the identify of the crook.
On Saturday, Steven Galanis, CEO of celebrity shout-out app Cameo, posted on Twitter that his Apple ID was hacked. Among the crypto assetsGalanis said the thief took was his Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT (pictured above), which he had purchased in January for nearly $320,000 in cryptocurrency. Whoever hacked Galanis’s account sold the Bored Ape NFT for 77 Ethereum (worth $130,181.59 at the time of the sale), per the record of the sale on OpenSea, the industry’s biggest NFT marketplace.
The account that allegedly stole and then resold the NFT, DCC10E, is no longer active on OpenSea. Galanis said he also was robbed of other NFTs, including for the forthcoming Bored Ape Yacht Club metaverse from Yuga Labs (the developer behind BAYC), plus around $69,000 worth of the ApeCoin cryptocurrency.
Galanis appealed to OpenSea for help. As of Monday, OpenSea has suspended buying and selling of the NFT that Galanis reported stolen (Bored Ape #9012).
It’s not the first time NFT have been pinched. Actor Seth Green, creator of “Robot Chicken,” was developing his own TV series, “White Horse Tavern,” based on a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT he owned (dubbed “Fred”) — before the NFT was stolen in a phishing hack and evidently resold by someone going by the moniker “Mr Cheese.” In June, Green bought it back for about $260,000 in Etherum.
And in June, developer Yuga Labs said an attacker engaged in a series of phishing attacks on Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Discord server — and made off with 200 Ethereum (about $360,000) worth of NFTs from members.
