Fake Banksy NFT Sells For $340,000 Amid Suspicion the Artist’s Website Was Hacked

While most of us see that non - fungible token ’s are atremendous scam , it ’s not every day you see full - onart capershappening in the populace of digital NFT ’s . But we got a taste of what that might attend like on Tuesday when one anon. investor spent $ 340,000 on an NFT from Banksy ’s website , only to get wind it was a fake .

The forged piece of digital art popped up on Banksy’sofficial siteon Tuesday sunrise under the now - erase universal resource locator “ banksy.co.uk/nft.html . ” The only affair on the page was a JPEG of what was presumably Banksy ’s take on the$1 billion dollarCryptoPunk hype train , featuring the artist ’s common kind of social comment , this prison term about theawful carbon footprintthat NFT artwork leave behind . The form of address , in case you were wondering , was “ Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster . ”

An effigy of say Disaster waslistedon the Opensea NFT marketplace earlier today by an creative person die by “ gaakmann , ” which matches a pseudonym Banksy had usedin the past tense . In other words , it seemed legit — or about as legit as an NFT artwork can be , anyway — so the great unwashed set forth bidding . The winner of the auctioned artwork cease up being an anonymous crypto - prowess collector name “ Pranksy , ” who spent a whopping 100 ETH ( a piffling over $ 340,000 USD ) on the work , according toblockchain records .

A screenshot from the (now archived) page on Banksy’s site.

A screenshot from the (now archived) page on Banksy’s site.Screenshot: Shoshana Wodinsky (Gizmodo)

That ’s when things start out become weird . The Thomas Nelson Page on Banksy ’s website was quiet taken down , with no word about how that page appeared on the web site in the first place . Talkingwith the BBCabout the incident , the anon. buyer said that he suspected Banksy ’s site was hacked , and some random scam artist was really the one who put up the ostensibly legitimate webpage .

In a statement sent to the BBC , Banksy ’s team told the outlet that “ any Banksy NFT auctions are not associate with the artist in any human body or form . ” We ’ve also reached out toPest Control , the means that pretend as Banksy ’s public embouchure for the military press , about any update .

At least thus far though , the bizarre NFT scam does seem to have a happy end . Gaakman has apparentlyrefundedthe 100 ETH back into Pranksy ’s account just hours after the auction bridge on his faked piece was closed in . The buyerconfirmed to Motherboardthat he ’s planning on keeping the artwork — at least for right now .

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