NFT collector Todd Kramer, who runs the Ross&Kramer art gallery in New York, has had his collection of 8 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs worth $1.9 million stolen after being hacked.
Kramer said he had clicked on a link which appeared to be a genuine NFT dapp (decentralised application), however, it turned out to be a phishing attack and 16 of his NFTs were stolen.
He said: “I been hacked. All my apes gone.”
The NFTs stolen from Kramer’s collection included eight Bored Apes, seven Mutant Apes and a Clonex NFT.
Bored Ape Yacht Club is currently one of the most popular NFT collections and nearly $1 billion has been spent on trading them.
Dappradar estimates the total value of the Bored Apes stolen from Kramer is around $1.9 million with Bored Ape 9410 alone being worth $299,000.
While, the total value of the seven Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs stolen is estimated to be worth around $300,000.
Kramer later tweeted that OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace, has frozen his NFTs and was helping him recover his stolen assets.
He said: “Update.. All Apes are frozen,,. Waiting for opensea team to get in,,, lessons learned. Use a hard wallet… never knew so many troll accounts existed, Kindness prevails, and the community is really great. i know #wagmi just a rough night.”
Kramer went onto add he would use a hardware wallet to keep his assets safe in future.
A hard wallet, also known as a cold wallet, is a crypto wallet that doesn’t connect to the internet until it’s manually plugged into a computer.
Each transaction then needs to be approved using physical buttons.
Kramer’s experience is not unique to NFT traders.
As NFTs have soared in value over the course of 2021, they’ve become a more tempting target for hackers and phishing attacks.
In March, tens of thousands of dollars worth of NFTs were reportedly stolen from the Nifty Gateway marketplace.
While in August, developer Stazie lost 16 CryptoPunks NFTs in a phishing attack.
On December 26, NFT collector bergpay.eth claimed five Jungle Freaks and two Sandbox NFTs were stolen from his Ethereum wallet and his ENS domain was transferred to a new address.
