The world is getting intoxicated with the lure of earning more money by any means. There are good and bad, right, and wrong, tangible and intangible ways by which the common man is getting trapped into vicious circle of making money. The world has transitioned from the currency in the form of notes, to plastic money and now crypto currency. The so-called crypto currency has originated recently and is overlapped by different terms, it’s unseen but it exists.
When currency can be converted to crypto in digital form, why not art? That’s where NFT comes to picture. NFT stands for Non-Fungible Tokens.
NFTs are digital collectibles (A digital collectible is a unique or a limited-edition copy of a virtual item). It has a visual element such as digital art, a video clip, or a digital trading card. In more simplified terms, NFT is a digital file that comes with ownership rights. It could be in the form of paintings, artwork. Each of this NFT has a unique code and stored with blockchain technology. This is called “Tokenizing”. Tokenizing these NFTs enables them to be traded in the online marketplace thereby reducing the probability of fraud.
I am not going in depth process of NFT and each of its elements that facilitate buying and selling. I am here to discuss the prevalence of theft in digital media via NFTs.
I would like to draw your attention towards the few NFT scams that might help you to exercise caution before pursuing any deal on social media. In today’s world, NFTs are a lucrative source of transactions which brings in plethora of opportunities for investors, however one must be aware of the scammers to have an edge over them and succeed in avoiding digital NFT scams.
1. Fake NFT Stores
One of the most authentic and popular NFT marketplace is OpenSea. The scammers take advantage of even the most experienced NFT buyer by replicating the original site and duping them to spend large amounts of money on fake artwork that is not worth a penny. To avoid being a target to such a scam, it is very important to research on the NFT of your interest and find out the actual worth of it. It’s easy to fall in the trap of “I’m getting a good deal” when the buyer is not sure of its actual worth.
Another point to note is that the fake NFT store will host unverified buyers. The official stores will have sellers with the blue verification tick next to their username, as seen on twitter or Instagram. So always check that the seller is verified. The real NFTs will have unique properties listed as against the fake NFTs where none of the properties are listed.
Yet another factor to consider is to always check the address of your chosen NFT, since a legit NFT will show exactly where it was minted.
2. Social Media Personification
The scammers are way ahead of you. The most common practice followed by scammers is that often they copy popular NFT accounts, thus creating fake pages, resembling the originals. Through these fake accounts, the scammers can convince the buyers and pass off fake artwork for a profit, Unknown users can also fall trap to fake giveaways which is yet another way of deceiving them into buying fake artwork. Always keep awareness about suspicious messages, accounts, and verification tick next to username as a precaution.
To further add on to the same point, make it a common practice to:
· Run a Google search for NFT creator’s social media pages to see his other accounts if they are linked, no. of followers to check about legitimacy of the page.
· Not only there could be fake NFT company accounts, but NFT artists accounts too. Scammers can pose themselves as a popular NFT artist and try to sell false versions of famous artist pieces at a considerably low price.
· Do not be lured into deep discounts on NFTs as it might be “too good to be true” scenario and probably not true at all.
3. Phishing
It sounds like an old term, but still, it is popular. Phishing scam could be identified in terms of fake advertisements, emails, pop ups directing buyers to a fake website. What you must ensure is that not to give your Private Wallet keys to scammers to let them have access to your digital wallets. Any negligence might lead the scammers to obtain your private information and enable them to deplete any NFT collections or cryptocurrency in the digital wallet.
4. Investor Scams
If people remain anonymous when selling or buying NFTs, it is easy to create an attractive project to invest into. Once money is collected, these scammers, just vanish.
5. Pump and Dump
This is a type of scam where, in order to escalate the price up for demand, the scammers buy large amounts of cryptocurrency. Once the price increases, they sell the holdings to cash out on gains, while everyone else loses.
These are few of the key areas which trigger NFT scams. I feel this blog would help my readers to gain more insight into these NFT scams and help them consider the important factors as outlined above to broaden their perspective and be more cautious in preventing NFT scams on social media.
Always conduct a thorough research, being wary of too-good-to-be-true offers and use trusted platforms.
You are a real artist, and a true buyer will value your creation. The trustworthy will go above and beyond to secure your favorite masterpiece and no matter what the price be, you will be paid a real currency that is genuine, has credibility to be used in market as real money, with no fake strings attached to it.
This is your Blogger “Charu” on behalf of my artist Amogh Katyayan.
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Few words about my artist Amogh Katyatan:
Amogh is an artist who has gathered all his artistic abilities to transform his passion of visualizing concepts into reality by portraying them on the canvas.
His desire is always to produce the work of art that reflects his ultimate passion, the way he looks at things, the way he analyzes the characters, and how he portrays himself. This all is reflected in his paintings. Each of his painting narrates a story.
While you are here, try to visualize what he might be representing in his work of art.
