Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), thanks to their popularity and celebrity endorsement, have emerged as a trendy virtual asset category to buy and hold in recent times. However, this sector of digital assets is under constant threat from hackers intent on stealing digital collections from expensive, proprietary NFT lines. In a latest report, market research firm Elliptic has said that $100 million worth of NFTs (about Rs 800) were stolen only between July 2021 and July 2022. The report issued a warning to the NFT community to keep their wall against hackers and scammers higher.
Vandals are affiliated with the NFT stolen may have picked up large sums of up to $300,000 (approximately Rs.2.40 crore) in each incident.
Elliptic has informed its 11.4k followers on Twitter about its findings.
: Rot_light: Over $100 million worth of NFTs were publicly reported stolen through scams between July 2021 and July 2022, with perpetrators collecting $300,000 on average each. cheat.
Towards https://t.co/u6iPLjXgpR to read our NFTs and Financial Crime Reports.#nft #crypto #aml– elliptic (@elliptic) August 24, 2022
According to its findings, Ellipse also noted that these stolen NFTs are being used as tools to launder stolen crypto funds.
“Over $8 million (approximately 63 crore) of illicit funds have been laundered through NFT-based platforms since 2017 – 0.02% of trading activity originating from known sources,” Elliptic said. said in a official blog post.
Cryptocurrency Mixer such as Tornado Cash has also been used to launder proceeds from the resale of stolen NFTs.
According to the report, Tornado Cash was used to launder $137.6 million worth of crypto assets (approximately Rs 1,099) processed by NFT markets and emerged as a hacker’s favorite privacy mixer.
Just this week, the creators of SudoRare NFT Marketplace shut down their operations just six hours after launching the platform in a classic case of pulling the rug. Around $850,000 (approximately Rs 68 lakh) was turned around before SudoRare’s Twitter manager ceased to exist.
The Elliptic report noted that $24 million (approximately Rs 191 crore) in NFT was stolen through scams in May 2022 alone.
Meanwhile, July 2022 became the highest month on record for the number of NFTs stolen. About 4,600 NFTs were stolen last month.
Elliptic said the majority of NFTs lost to scams include Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, Azuki, Otherside and CloneX.
Compromised social media platforms and phishing messages sent to potential victims resulted in 23% of stolen NFTs.
