If Ghozali Everyday is from NFT, this one is the opposite. A student in China claimed to have lost millions of dollar worth of non-fungible tokens (NFT) through a phishing scam. The student is indeed known for his full commitment to NFT.
Niq Chen, a final year student at Tongji University, Shanghai, said he lost a rare NFT worth 200 Ether last Monday. The NFT is an asset that he bought through the OpenSea platform.
In his post on the Discord group, Chen said OpenSea had banned the sale and purchase of the stolen NFT at his request. But it was too late because the thief had already sold it to other users.
The stolen NFT is part of a collection created by Doodles, one of the most popular collections. Chen said that the missing NFT was worth almost half of all his NFT assets.
Chen is a fairly well-known figure in China's NFT community, a country that prohibits crypto transactions and mining. He is best known for writing 'all in on NFTs' while filling out a university survey questionnaire on student career choices.
Even though crypto is banned in China and OpenSea doesn't operate there, that hasn't stopped the community of activists and investors from getting into the world of NFT. Chen himself also sells his art as NFT on OpenSea through a collection called LuckyCot 3D.
To the buyer of the stolen NFT, Chen said that they bought the assets illegally. He then offered to buy back the NFT, but the buyer refused on the grounds that he did not want to lose the asset after paying a lower price.
Chen hopes he can negotiate further with the buyer after OpenSea froze the stolen assets. Despite the loss of assets with a fantastic value, Chen admitted that this incident would not change his ambition to pursue a career in the NFT world.
"Crypto art is still a career I want to pursue. I couldn't do it without this community," Chen said, as quoted by the South China Morning Post, Sunday (27/2/2022).
NFT theft is now indeed rife considering that this area is not regulated so it is prone to fraud. Last week, 17 OpenSea users reported that their NFTs totaling around USD 1.7 million were lost through phishing attacks.
Authorities in mainland China and Hong Kong are now increasingly warning about the risks associated with NFTs and cryptocurrencies. Once an asset is stolen, it can be difficult for victims to find a solution due to the anonymity of the blockchain and the fact that crypto transactions cannot be changed or reversed once initiated.