Call 'em a "pyramid scheme" or the wave of the future (I lean towards the former) but NFTs are here to stay. Though, at the rate that Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collectibles are being stolen, they may not last much longer.
For those not keeping track, I don't blame you.
With an adidas collab in the bag, the Bored Apes are one of the most popular (and priciest) NFT collections on the market, as inexplicably popular as the Cryptopunks before them.
These static monkey pictures occasionally rake in the equivalent of a couple million dollars' worth of Ethereum, the NFT trader's cryptocurrency of choice. Even Eminem got in on the ape action, for some reason.
All this hype apparently makes the BAYC NFTs too desirable for their own good.
Since mid-December, there've been more than a few reports of BAYC collectors' prized chimps being swiped both inadvertently and on purpose, culling millions of dollars' worth of NFTs from their "owners" (adding quotes because, I mean, these are .JPEGs we're talking about).
There's essentially two types of Ape theft: accidental, wherein an NFT resale site like Rarible accidentally lists an Ape for sale even though it's already been purchased; and malicious, wherein a hacker nabs a cryptocurrency wallet by using a scam like a phishing email, for instance.
Of course, these NFT thefts have been widely mocked.
The irony of these collectors celebrating the deregulated nature of their NFTs and cryptocurrencies, then begging for a centralized platform like Opensea to course correct some mistakes hasn't been lost on Twitter at large.
In the end, some folks got their precious simians back, some didn't. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned from all this.
Securing your crypto wallet sounds like a good idea, sure, but perhaps it's even better to just avoid ever getting into the market at all.
