I fell for every NFT scam in 10 minutes

I’m in a slump. I spent more than a year on an app that helped people build better habits. But it didn’t make any money, so I started working on an app for a big organization. Working there killed my soul.

I needed something new. While listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast, I kept hearing about Web3.

Web3 sounded like another crypto thing I didn’t want to hear about. But after the podcast; I became a believer.

Web3 was going to help us move away from big corporations to individual creators. Changing the web as we know it. No one knows where Web3 is going, but that’s part of the fun.

I started learning how to build applications for web3. Building the future would get me out of my slump. But learning takes time. I wanted to get involved right away.

A big part of Web3 is NFTs. When people think of NFTs, they think of weird internet images. People buy, sell and create these NFTs and they are all tracked on a big ledger called the blockchain.

Web3 proves who owns what. Owning an NFTs give you access to communities, bragging rights and a bunch of other stuff I don’t understand. NFTs would be my way of joining the Web3 revolution. It was the 1st of January 2022 and I wanted my own NFT.

Within minutes, it was clear I was late to the party. The most popular NFTs, “Crypto Punks” and “Bored Apes,” were going for millions. I’d missed the train before they’d released the timetable.

The lowest price I found for a popular NFT on the auction website Opensea was $30,000. What is going on? Maybe I could lowball someone for an NFT. It is an auction, after all. Fuck it, there was no minimum price to bid. I bid $20 on one of the “Cool Cats” NFTs, which go for thousands. Not sure if my bid went through. I tried again, bidding another $20 and paying the fee again. The fee had left my crypto wallet, but nothing appeared on the website. I refreshed the auction page. I had bid $20 twice. The fees I paid were almost higher than my bids. No one would accept these bids. I had just thrown money into the void.

I told myself it was ok, in uncharted land, explorers make mistakes.

I couldn’t afford anything from the auction. My low ball approach was dumb. How do I get an NFT before it’s on the auction? I then discovered minting. Minting is where you pay the fee for a new project to get your own NFT.

On the “Cool Cats” auction page, there was a link to the “Cool Cats” website. Maybe I could mint my own NFT there? The “Cool Cats” website was weird. It mentioned breeding NFTs and a lot of other things I didn’t understand. After scrolling, I realised “Cool Cats” had created all the 10,000 cat NFTs they had planned. If I wanted one, I’d have to buy it at the auction. Fuck.

On the “Cool Cats” website, they had a link to their Discord. I thought Discord was just for angry teenagers. But it’s where everything happens for NFTs. I clicked on the discord link.

I didn’t know how to use discord. When it first loaded up, I got a burst hose pipe of notifications. I was a boomer for the first time. People talking about trades, $50,000 purchases and roadmaps for new plans. I had notifications, but I had no idea how to make them disappear.

Along with the official messages, there were messages to join other communities. I joined a bunch of these communities at once. I wanted to sample all the ice creams in the store. These smaller communities had funny names like “Age of Sam”, “The Honey Badger,” and “Bored Apes Dad Club”. If Discord confused me before, I had full-blown dementia now. With each community, I got more notifications.

I tackled the groups one by one. First, I clicked “Bored Apes Dad Club”. It had 79000 members. Was that a lot? I had no idea. But if other people trusted it, I trusted it. All you had to do to verify was type a message saying ‘!join’ and then they channel messaged you with a link to a website to verify your wallet. The wallet that holds all your internet money.

I clicked on the verify link and a login popped up. This was strange. My wallet is a google chrome plugin that should always keep me logged in. Did it time out for a security measure? I typed in my password without thinking. The plugin accepted it. But it said for additional security information, it needed my secret phrase. Must be like when your phone says it needs you to enter your pin. I went and got my secret phrase and entered it. When I entered it, nothing happened. It just said error. I entered my password and secret phrase for the second time.

This is when I realized I had fucked up.

What I had entered my password and secret phrase into wasn’t the official plugin. It looked the same, but it belonged to some randomer living in a shack in a different country.

Giving away your password wasn’t the end of the world. The end of the world was that I had given away my secret phrase. You should never give away your secret phrase. With your secret phrase, anyone can access all of your accounts. I’d just given my secret phrase away twice.

I googled what to do if you’ve given your secret phrase away. Hoping for a reset password system or something. The website told me I’d fucked up. I had to transfer everything to a new account. Which meant fees to transfer and the guilt of being dumb.

Within ten seconds of not paying attention, a hacker could now access all of my internet money. This wasn’t the start I wanted for my new year.

A better person than me would have realised they needed to be more careful. But I’m not a better person. I still wanted my NFT.

I figured I had some time before the randomer would steal all my money. Like all addicts, I looked for my next hit.

Another community was offering a mint in six days. It cost about £150 to mint one NFT, this seemed expensive. But everything had been expensive. Maybe £150 was a good price? But I kept looking for a better deal.

I joined another community called ‘Littles’. Their verification didn’t require a password. This community had active members, people reporting scams, and FAQs. Maybe I just had bad luck with my first attempt?

While in the ‘Littles’. I received a message from “The little info” saying:

“WE ARE LAUNCHING A LIMITED SALE. For the new year we’re offering 777 pixels to be minted.”

I’m in luck! I clicked the link, and they’d minted 764 out of 777. Shit, I’m going to miss my opportunity. It cost £300 to mint here. I looked up the prices of the ‘littles’. The littles sold for $30,000. It was double the price to mint these compared to the other group. But these were making 100 times the rate of return. I refreshed the page, and the number had gone up to 770. There were only 7 left. It was now or never.

I scanned the website to make sure I wasn’t getting scammed. The website looked legit, with its own security certificate and the URL littlepixel.art seemed to match the discord channel.

Fortune favours the brave. I clicked on the link that said “mint”. This time, a real transaction came up with the correct price, including the fee.

Was I about to spend £300 to get my own online internet image of a cartoon bear? Yes… I was. I clicked ‘confirm’.

It went through and brought me back to the webpage. Bit underwhelming. I was hoping for some confetti. But the blockchain takes time. I went to my transaction history expecting to see a minting job; but it just said I had sent someone £300. I had no NFT in my wallet.

On the blockchain, you can see every transaction. Which meant I could look up my transaction to see where I sent my £300. Turns out I had sent £300 to a random wallet with $77,000 in it.

I went back to the littlepixel.art website. Everything looked legit, but the links on the top didn’t work. Fuck.

In the scam section of the discord, someone had reported the website as a known scam.

I thought the message from the ‘littles info’ had come from the official channel. Because of its name and profile picture. But no, it was a direct message meant to confuse boomers like me.

In only ten minutes, I’d given access to all my accounts to a randomer and then sent about £300 to another scammer.

This was a major defeat. Worst of all, it was the first thing I’d done in January 2022.

I had lost track of time as the NFT fever had taken over. I forgot my sister had got us a gift to go to a trampoline park. We were leaving for the park in five minutes. Before the person with my secret phrase stole everything I had left in my wallet, I needed to create a new account.

I set up a new wallet and attempted to transfer everything over. I clicked send. But it failed with some obscure message saying “gas fee to low”. Shit. I didn’t have time for this and didn’t feel like explaining to my sister we’d be late because I just lost £300 trying to mint an image of a teddy bear. I tried again by clicking the most recent contact in the list ‘OxFefhrysgjohjhljkklskd’ or whatever the address was. This time it sent. Thank god.

Destroyed, I walked away, never wanting to hear the word NFT again. I tried to persuade myself that it was ok. It was a tuition fee. But inside I was bitter.

On the trampolines, I tried to bounce out of my depression. Wondering if anyone else in the trampoline park had just lost money trying to buy their own “little” that morning.

After taking my anger out in the gladiator arena of the trampoline park, I got home feeling better. I still had some money to work with.

I loaded up the new wallet. It was empty. There was no way the money hadn’t gone through. It had been hours. I logged into my old wallet. It said I had sent the money.

What was going on? Maybe the person with my secret phrase had emptied the wallet? I clicked on the location I had sent the rest of my money to. It said I sent the rest of my money to the same scammers’ wallet with $77,000. That couldn’t be. I refreshed the page and tried again…

My gut tightened. I realised what had happened. When I tried to transfer the rest of my money to my new account, the first time, it error’d. Then when I tried again instead of pasting my new wallet address, I clicked the most recent contact in my addresses. Thinking it was like the most recent person you’ve called on your phone. It wasn’t. The address I clicked was the contact of the last successful transaction. I had just sent the same scammer the rest of my internet money.

This was the dumbest thing I’d ever done.

In denial, feeling like Liam Neeson, I tried to figure out who the owner of the wallet was. Hoping I could beg for my money back. I followed where the owner of the $77,000 wallet had transferred the money out. It was a bigger wallet with over $1 million. But the million dollar wallet had withdrawn the funds out in dollars via another website. I’d never know who they were. My money was gone forever, and I had no NFT to show for it.

I should scam people instead of learning how to build things.