During the last week, an advertisement was made on the website of Banksy (an infamous artist of graffiti) through a link as the first non-fungible token (NFT) of the creator.
NFT auction disaster
The collector remained successful in winning the auction by collecting $336,000 for the short NFT art purchase. However, then he came to know that the product was fake. An NFT has a unique characteristic of an NFT related to the art is that it contains a distinctive ownership certificate that can be sold and bought. The page for distributing the NFTs ‘Banksy.co.uk/NFT’ was instantly removed when the auction was over. A statement was noted by the banksy’s team in which they denied any affiliation of the NFT auction with Banksy in terms of any form or shape.
The collector having a username @Pranksy attracted the audience by offering 90% additional than the competitor bidders. Pranksy, who is a fan of Banksy, stated that he felt burned and frustrated after collecting $300,000 value in cryptocurrency. Banksy’s team was pleased to know that the scammer surprisingly paid back a large portion of the collected amount within the same day. The collector disclosed that there was a possibility that they could guide the community to the identity of Pranksy, fearing which he was compelled to refund the money except $5,000 because the collector could not refund the transaction fee.
Warnings went overlooked
Banksy’s team had been seemingly warned by an expert of cyber-security that there were some weaknesses in the website and thus it could be exploited easily. Nonetheless, such warnings were unnoticed by the team. Sam Curry (a whitehat hacker and a security consultancy Palisade’s founder) revealed that he first identified the shortcomings of the website through Discord (a platform of social network) in the last month. He then quickly informed Banksy through email; nevertheless, the information was supposedly went ignored.
One more stunt from Banksy?
Some people are of the view that the move might be a stunt by Banksy. However, the vice-chancellor and principal at Arts-University-Bournemouth “Prof. Paul Gough” explained that the setup, style, and timing don’t make it a prank by Banksy. He added that the context does not seem to be adequate for this activity. Moreover, he stated that to stunt with fake artwork is not included in the iconic style of Banksy.
