The non-fungible token (NFT) allows its users to sell and buy ownership of digital items by keeping track of owners using Blockchain. It can contain anything digital, including animated GIFs, drawings, songs, or video games. The NFT is a real-life trading card but the Blockchain keeps track of the ownership files. NFTs are part of Ethereum Blockchain at a very high level. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, but it also supports NFTs that store information. Every system has flaws, no matter how perfect is its history in the market. Something similar happens with the NFTs when a collector buys fake Banksy NFT from a scammer. Let’s have a deep insight into the matter to know what happened.
Collector Buys Fake Banksy NFT:
We have talked about how NFTs is a selling and buying platform, but the chance to buy Banksy’s attack into the lucrative world of NFTs. The piece “great redistribution of climate change disaster” convinces a pranksy named buyer to pay thousands of pounds by a scammer. The people called it a publicity stunt, but the incident has shown the weaknesses of NFT and its trading. The artist also criticized it because they say that their work has been sold without having permission from them.
Banksy’s official website has a deleted page named NFT that included a link to the website selling the same name piece, so people can relate to this issue. The pranksy said that he had been scammed when his bid of the equivalent of £244,000 was accepted immediately. He further concluded that the seller returned the money with a transaction fee of around £5,000. So we cannot conclude that the whole system is based on flaws, but the issue is the authenticity is dependent on the seller.
Authenticity:
The incident is a fact that NFTs provide cryptographically secure authenticity. Some artists said their artwork was sold without permission, but some of them embraced the NFT market. However, NFT services make easy tokenization of others’ content. For instance, the artwork has become a famous item for tokenization. Pranksy says that he would not conduct a hoax that could damage the future potential of NFT. He further highlighted the vulnerabilities of NFT trading by pointing out that someone was looking to make a bigger point than money. According to the statement of pranksy, the hacker has more intentions than money.
Final Talk:
Before the incident of pranksy, Banksy’s work was the subject of NFT controversy. The burned Banksy NFT was sold for £300,000 with an image of Banksy print titled Morons. Moreover, the tokenized print was burned publicly because its creator argued that the token is minted. Pranksy said that he was expecting to hear back from the Banksy team about his site security, and it was hacked. He further added that the incident had not decreased his enthusiasm for Non-fungible tokens.
