All my apes gone: Twitter users revel in $2.2M Bored Ape NFT theft

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—by Protos Staff
A Bored Ape Yacht Club member who lost more than $2 million worth of NFTs to phishers has inspired a slew of savage crypto memes.

A Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) member turned to Twitter for help when he lost $2.2 million worth of the NFTs to phishers. Instead, he became a meme.

Artist Todd Kramer recently waved goodbye to a collection of 16 BAYC and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFTs when he clicked on a malicious link disguised as a crypto app gateway.

After realizing his mistake, Kramer took to Twitter to post the superbly-worded:

“I been hacked. all my apes gone. this just sold please help me.”

Kramer’s original tweet has now been deleted but persists on internet archives.

But Kramer didn’t find an outpouring of support from a sympathetic community.

He just got screwed to the wall.

One of the most popular methods of skewering Kramer’s misfortune sees tweeters incorporate his plea into famous song lyrics:

1,000 likes on this tweet.
More than 52,000 likes on this one.

Despite the ridicule, Kramer’s efforts weren’t entirely in vain OpenSea “froze” the pilfered Apes.

This means those particular Bored Apes can’t be traded on the NFT marketplace until the freeze is lifted.

Some of the more helpful members of crypto Twitter also assisted Kramer in recovering some of his lost tokens.

Bored Apes have been on an upward trajectory in recent months. In December, the project flipped CryptoPunks when its “floor price,” the lowest price in the series, hit 60 ETH ($200,000) on OpenSea.

And this week, Bored Apes surpassed $1 billion in overall sales, having only launched last April.

CryptoSlam reports about $7.4 million worth of trades in the past 30 days.

Others widened their net and mixed things up with various pop culture staples:
They say every day’s a gift, but why does it have to be a pair of socks?

Bored Apes easy pickings for fraudsters

Rap mogul Eminem and tennis superstar Serena Williams recently joined a growing list of celebrities to buy Bored Apes, which includes Jimmy Kimmel and Shaquille O’Neal.

But famous holders and rising prices have signalled open season for hackers, scammers, and anybody else looking to make a dishonest buck from NFT newbies.

In early November, NFT collector Calvin Becerra trusted a link in a Discord server that let hackers abscond with three Apes, together worth more than $1 million at the time.

Discord phishers have found considerable success over the past few months.

Becerra thought it wise to plead Twitter to “NOT BUY OR TRADE these stolen apes.”

The overwhelming response was less than positive.

Many couldn’t pass up the opportunity to drag Becerra for being careless, while others suggested he get his artwork back by right-clicking and saving the images.

[Read more: OpenSea users lose pricey NFTs, crypto to fake support staff on Discord]

But whether they’ve been careless or just unfortunate, the whole situation somewhat analogous to the web’s former digital animal obsession, Neopets.

Neopets were all the rage with animal lovers in the early 2000s, but over the past decade thieves have leveraged swathes of compromised accounts to steal digital furry friends.

In fact, the seemingly-innocent pastime has actually fed a black market for rare digital collectibles.

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