Source: China Fund News
On April Fool's Day, Jay Chou posted on social media that his NFT had been stolen, and stressed that it was not a joke! Attracted everyone's attention. It is reported that Jay Chou's stolen NFT belongs to one of the hottest projects in the current circle, the Boring Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), at the current price, the NFT is worth more than 3.2 million yuan.
Millions worth of NFTs stolen
On April 1, Jay Chou posted on Instagram that he was told by phone that the BAYC #3738 NFT he had previously received had been stolen by a phishing website, and he thought it was an April Fool's Day joke, but he did not expect to check it and found that it was really gone. And attach the labels "Everyone please be careful" and "This is not an April Fool's Joke".
Source: Instagram
It is understood that BAYC #3738 NFT Department Jay Chou received a gift from a friend in January this year. LOOKSRARE information shows that after the NFT was transferred out of Jay Chou's address earlier today, it changed hands several times in just 1 hour, and changed hands at the price of 130 ETH and 155 ETH respectively. At current ETH prices, Jay Chou's stolen NFTs are worth more than $500,000, equivalent to more than 3.2 million yuan.
Source: LOOKSRARE
In this regard, many netizens said that NFTs are not as safe as they advertise, and due to the low cost of theft, the benefits are extremely high, so we should be more careful about the security of NFT accounts.
Collections worth tens of millions of dollars were stolen and resold at low prices
2021 is the year when the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) exploded. According to DappRadar data, NFTs traded more than $23 billion for the full year of 2021, with the reserve price of the top 100 NFT collections reaching $16.7 billion.
However, with the soaring value, NFTs have also become the target of some criminals and hackers, and related NFT thefts have emerged in an endless stream.
In February, the fund Jun reported a theft of sky-high NFT collections, and an overseas user posted that he had just lost all the BAYC series NFTs, which were then resold by hackers at a price of about 10 times lower. He said the hackers sold all of his collections for 100 Ethers, with a total value of only $275,000 (about 1.8 million yuan), but according to the scarcity and non-reproducibility of the collection, his collection should be worth 1,000 Ethereum, about $2.7 million (about 17.28 million yuan).
Afterwards, although these NFTs were "frozen" by the trading platform Opensea. Unfortunately, according to blockchain data, the e-wallet of the hacker who committed the theft has successfully transferred about $1.5 million worth of 600 Ethereum to its Tornado Cash account.
It is worth noting that Jay Chou's stolen NFT collection belongs to the same project as this user - boring ape yacht club and its derivative mutant ape yacht club.
According to Opensea, the Boring Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) was launched on April 30, 2021, consisting of 10,000 ape NFTs with different characteristics and attributes, priced at about $200 a piece when it went online. On the night of launch, 10,000 generating cartoon apes were all sold out. At the time, the cost of these cartoon apes was only 0.08 Ethereum.
Soon after, the price of these "apes" soared and became one of the hottest projects in the NFT market, with NBA star Stephen Curry, singer Lin Junjie, Justin Bieber, Jay Chou, Madonna and other celebrities starting boring ape NFT avatars. Among them, Justin Bieber's boring ape NFT transaction price reached 1.3 million US dollars (about 8.3 million yuan).
DappRadar data shows that as of now, in the secondary market transactions, the total sales of the Boring Ape NFT project exceeded $1 billion, the total market value exceeded $3.5 billion, the number of traders exceeded 10,000 people, and the market floor price was nearly $350,000. It is reported that the most expensive NFT (numbered Bored Ape #8585) sold in the series is currently priced at up to 2.7 million US dollars (about 17.28 million yuan).
Domestic platforms go to financial properties
In addition to the risk of hacking theft, the NFT project with soaring value also has extensive controversy in the field of regulatory standards and nature standards, and there are risks such as speculation, money laundering and financial productization on the domestic side, so the focus of digital collections on domestic platforms is currently on collection attributes, rather than financial attributes.
According to the research of Tianfeng Securities, there is also a problem of speculation in the NFT, that is, the limited issuance and scarcity of the NFT are easy to cause speculation and price bubbles; the second is the problem that the original assets cannot be confirmed, that is, although the blockchain technology can trace the information of the digital content that has been on the chain to ensure the authenticity and ownership of the digital content after the digital content is on the chain, there are loopholes in the asset confirmation link before the digital content is minted into the NFT, and the mint platform cannot confirm the copyright ownership of the digital content; the third is the energy consumption problem. That is, the surge in NFT products and trading volumes consumes a lot of energy, which has a negative impact on the climate.
The People's Daily commented that at present, the legal nature, trading methods, supervision subjects, supervision methods, etc. of the NFT have not yet been clarified, and there are risks such as speculation, money laundering and financial productization in the NFT, and we should maintain a cautious attitude towards NFT investment and be wary of financial scams that "beat the drum and spread the flowers".
From the current development of domestic NFT digital collections, the larger digital collection platforms "Whale Detective" and "Magic Core" will focus on the issuance of digital collections, and do not allow the resale of digital collections, and have taken measures to rectify the over-the-counter trading and speculation of digital collections. Tencent's WeChat platform has also recently removed the relevant digital collection platform Mini Program and banned a large number of WeChat public accounts suspected of "NFT digital collection transaction" business.
For the development of digital collections in China, CITIC Securities said that the technical characteristics of NFTs make it a possible solution to the problem of digital assets, but many issues such as commercialization and follow-up development paths are not yet clear, and it is also necessary to pay close attention to market uncertainty and policy supervision guidelines.
Cinda Securities pointed out in the research report that the development path of NFTs in China will follow a different business model from overseas markets, more from copyright protection and asset rights confirmation, explore the development path of no coin, and explore and establish Chinese rules and standards in the issuance, sale and circulation of digital collections.