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It really is the Wild West out there.
The internet has been abuzz with schadenfreude after New York art dealer Todd Kramer tweeted a desperate plea on December 30: “I been hacked. All my apes gone. This just sold please help me.” Thieves had hacked his digital wallet and made off with at least 15 artworks—including five from the high-profile Bored Ape Yacht Club collection—worth an estimated $2.2 million.
The co-founder of Ross + Kramer Gallery, which has locations in New York City and East Hampton, has since deleted the tweet. But in yet another sign of the anything-goes nature of the NFT world, it recently resurfaced on OpenSea… as an NFT. Sold by a user with the name CarbonPaper, the NFT of the tweet is priced as of press time at 0.05 ETH ($180.81).
Alongside the NFT, CarbonPaper wrote: “get rekt noob maybe be a little safer next time crypto bro!! :p” He echoed a wave of users who chided Kramer for falling victim to a phishing scam. According to ARTnews, the works were stolen from Kramer’s “hot wallet,” a tool that is continually connected to the internet, as opposed to the more secure, physical “cold wallet,” which must be plugged in to connect to the web.
The viral tweet drew a dreaded ratio of 711 retweets, 3,582 quote tweets, and 3,375 likes, a surefire sign of being mocked online. Some users advised Kramer to adjust his profile picture since he technically no longer owned or had access to the ape NFT he had used as his icon
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toddkramer.eth
@NFTX_ these apes and mutants have been stolen and flagged on @opensea please remove them from your liquidity pool Ape 2771 Ape 6416 Ape 1623 Ape 1708 Ape 8214 Ape 7528 Ape 9988 Ape 9410 Mutants 25057 Mutant 11177 Mutant 28752 Mutant 24718 Mutant 2436 Mutant 9278 Mutant 24347:32 AM · Dec 30, 2021·Twitter Web App
Soon after Kramer’s wallet was hacked, the thief appeared to have sold a number of the works in his collection. But five hours later, Kramer tweeted that the NFTs—including seven Mutant Ape Yacht Club tokens and eight Bored Ape Yacht Club tokens—had been “frozen” by OpenSea, meaning they were unable to be bought and sold on the platform.
Some criticized OpenSea’s decision to freeze the tokens, which they considered an out-of-bounds move for a supposedly decentralized organization.
After the NFTs were frozen, according to a report in the Coin Telegraph, Kramer was able to retrieve a number of his Ape NFTs with the help of several NFT experts. In a tweet, the art dealer thanked two Twitter users for their support on “arguably the worst night of my life,” though he didn’t specify which works were recovered.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Kramer’s OpenSea account had seven Mutant Ape and three Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs, but only one of them (Mutant Ape 2434) had previously been identified as stolen.
Neither OpenSea nor Kramer responded to requests for comment from Artnet News.
Kramer isn’t the only collector to have been burned recently. OpenSea’s website includes a page with the heading: “What can I do if my art, image, or other IP is being sold without my permission?” It advises users to fill out a form and submit a dossier of information to the company by email or, incongruously, snail mail.
The art dealer’s now-infamous Tweet came only days after rapper-turned-NFT-entrepreneur Waka Flocka Flame Tweeted a video saying that his OpenSea wallet had been hacked after he solicited NFTs from fans. One of the NFTs he received, labeled as one of the “Desperate Ape Wives,” contained a smart contract that was executed when he tried to delete it from his wallet, costing him $19,000, he said.
“I have been hacked. All my apes went. This just sold please help me,” wrote gallery owner Todd Kramer, of New York’s Ross + Kramer Gallery, in a since-deleted tweet posted on December 30.
A phishing scam had drained his Ethereum wallet of 15 NFTs valued at a total of $2.2 million, including four apes from the “Bored Ape Yacht Club” collection. The thief seemed to have sold off many of the pieces in Kramer’s collection, and Twitter users jeered at Kramer’s bad luck, pointing out that he had bet on an unregulated, decentralized system that would be unable to help him.
“Man If only there had been some kind of Regulating authority in place that could like Insure your investments against theft and fraud,” wrote one user with the handle @anarchy_shark.
But in the end, an authority did come through. With the help of the buyers and the NFT platform OpenSea, Kramer was able to get back several of his NFTs. Five hours after his original post, he wrote, in a tweet that has also since been deleted, “Update.. All Apes are frozen,,. Waiting for opensea team to get in,,, lessons learned. Use a hard wallet…”
OpenSea’s involvement sparked a major controversy, with some alleging that NFTs could not truly be decentralized if it had “frozen” some, rendering them unsellable on the platform. Others pointed out that OpenSea had only frozen users’ ability to interact with the NFT through that one site alone—they could still be bought and sold elsewhere.
Neither OpenSea nor Kramer responded to requests for comment.
Phishing scams have become more frequent as NFTs have increased in value. However, most savvy users can protect themselves by using the hard wallet, also known as a cold wallet, which is physical and only connects to the internet when plugged in and engaged. Kramer had been using a so-called hot wallet, which is continuously connected to the internet and thus more vulnerable.
More common than phishing scams, however, is theft of a different kind. Some people have begun making NFTs of art that they did not create, an issue for which no easy fix has yet been developed.
