Yesterday, Bored Ape Yacht Club alerted users of a hacker breach of their Instagram and Discord accounts. 

In the process, a fraudulent link was circulating in the chats and the scammers managed to compromise some wallets, stealing NFTs. 

Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs stolen by hackers

The team behind the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection have issued an alert to their users, warning them not to mint anything.

There is no mint going on today. It looks like BAYC Instagram was hacked. Do not mint anything, click links, or link your wallet to anything.

— Bored Ape Yacht Club (@BoredApeYC) April 25, 2022

“There is no mint going on today. It looks like BAYC Instagram was hacked. Do not mint anything, click links, or link your wallet to anything”.

Basically, the hackers apparently broke into BAYC’s Instagram account, forwarding fraudulent links to users inviting them to mint OthersideMeta “land”, which will be launched on 30 April. 

Users who fell into the hackers’ trap and clicked on the link saw their wallets compromised and some NFTs stolen. 

Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT and the fake launch of OthersideMeta

A real phishing scam that seems to have led to the theft of BAYC, MAYC, BACK and other NFTs, as claimed by the following Twitter account:

Damn the BAYC Instagram hacker stole 4 BAYC, 7 MAYC, 3 BAKC, 1 CloneX, & more ( 91 NFTs in total)

Hacker Address:https://t.co/0ngJ4SKV4G pic.twitter.com/9U2OGPKMmP

— zachxbt (@zachxbt) April 25, 2022

“Damn the BAYC Instagram hacker stole 4 BAYC, 7 MAYC, 3 BAKC, 1 CloneX, & more ( 91 NFTs in total)”.

The deception was executed in honour of OthersideMeta who, just hours ago, with a roundup of tweets described how the launch scheduled for Saturday will work, noting as follows:

“Safety tips:

• Nothing will be announced or cross-posted anywhere else. NO ONE involved in Otherside will be posting on Instagram.

• No contests or giveaways. No surprise/early drops. Everything will happen on 4/30, and only on http://otherside.xyz.

• Don’t reply to or click on anything from any other accounts, tags, DMs, or emails.

• Animoca, Otherside, BAYC, Yuga Labs, founders, and mods will not tag nor DM you first.

• Never share or type your seed phrase”.

OthesideMeta: the metaverse of BAYC and ApeCoin (APE)

OthersideMeta was already foreshadowed by Yuga Labs last month, and is the metaverse of BAYC and ApeCoin (APE). 

The new metaverse also involves Animoca Brands, the online gaming giant, possibly linking the NFT and gaming sectors. 

The rationale behind this decision appears to have been to give the APE governance token a new use case, as its price performance has been rather turbulent. 

Starting with its launch in March 2022, APE saw an 80% collapse in its first few hours of trading, dropping from $39.40 to $6.48. 

At the time of writing, APE is in the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, priced at $18, recording a pump of 7.60% in the last 24 hours and 42% in the last week. 

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After extensive research, BuzzFeed News reveals the real names of two of the founders of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), the multi-million dollar NFT collection. 

Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, the true identity of its founders

According to a report on BuzzFeed News, Bored Ape Yacht Club’s (BAYC) celebrated million-dollar NFT collection now has two real names out of 4 of its anonymous founders. Here’s the tweet from Katie Notopoulus, author of the revealing article:

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is the biggest NFT group (the ones Paris Hilton and Gwyneth Paltrow own). Reported the company is raising money at a $5B valuation. But the founders are all pseudonymous. Which is, confusing. My story: https://t.co/fA61yOHHWL

— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) February 5, 2022

“The Bored Ape Yacht Club is the biggest NFT group (the ones Paris Hilton and Gwyneth Paltrow own). Reported the company is raising money at a $5B valuation. But the founders are all pseudonymous. Which is, confusing. My story:”

So two of BAYC’s main founders are Greg Solano (pseudonym: “Gargamel”), a 32-year-old writer and editor, and Wylie Aronow (pseudonym: “Gordon Goner”), a 35-year-old Florida native.

Basically, Yuga Labs, the company that produces BAYC, and its CEO, Nicole Muniz, confirmed the identities of both men to the magazine, and so it’s finally possible to know the true identity of at least two founders of the most popular NFT collection of the moment. 

The other two identities of BAYC’s co-founding engineers, under the pseudonyms “Emperor Tomato Ketchup” and “No Sass”, remain unknown. 

The pseudonyms of Web3

Notopoulus herself in her article raises the question of how it could be possible that a 10,000 NFT collection of “bored monkeys”, which has become so expensive (the floor price to buy the cheapest BAYCs is now over $280,000), could have founders with identities made up of pseudonyms. 

The data exposed speak that the collection currently has a market cap of about $2.8 billion, while Yuga Labs is reportedly in talks with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz for an investment that would value it at $5 billion. 

Staggering numbers that, in the traditional market, could not even be named without the first and last name, the identity, of the founders of the startup or project. 

Apparently, however, pseudonyms are typical when it comes to Web3, of which blockchain technology is also a part. In this regard, Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur and owner of two Bored Apes, responding to the question of whether or not blockchain heralds a new and better form of transparency, said:

“Yes, there can be accountability. The reason is that all transactions are based on smart contracts and written to the blockchain, which is the antithesis of traditional business. What other collectibles business publishes all their sales and business processes?”

The explosive success of BAYC’s NFT collection

As BuzzFeed News already points out, Paris Hilton claimed to own an NFT from Bored Ape Yacht Club purchased at a price of $300,000, while host Jimmy Fallon reportedly said he paid for his digital monkey around $216,000. 

A few hours ago, the official Bored Ape Yacht Club channel retweeted the latest sale of Bored Ape #4523 for 129,129 ETH, the equivalent of over $400,000, at the time of writing. 

Bored Ape #4523 was purchased for 129.129 ETH
https://t.co/1nEKXTZAy1

— boredapebot (@boredapebot) February 7, 2022

During last summer, 101 of the Bored Ape Yacht Club tokens sold for $24.4 million in a Sotheby’s auction. A few weeks later, it was the turn of competitor Christie’s, which auctioned off four Bored Apes, for $12 million.

In September 2021, directly on the OpenSea platform, a mysterious user paid about $2.6 million for a character in the collection.

 

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