7 Crypto Projects That Were Total Scams (January 2022 Edition)

At first look, the NFT venture Big Daddy Ape Club seemed like both a parody or a rip-off of the far more well-known Bored Ape Yacht Club, arguably probably the most profitable NFT venture on the earth. But whereas Bored Ape has attracted movie star consideration from the likes of Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, and Gwyneth Paltrow, the Big Daddy Ape Club received’t be featured on the Tonight Show anytime quickly. At least not for something good.

As the Twitter account NFT Gurus points out, the scammers behind Big Daddy Ape Club had been in a position to get individuals to try to “mint” their NFT with a surcharge of 1 Solana, which price about $135 on the time. The transaction would fail, however the Solana nonetheless went by.

The scammers had been in a position to get no less than 9,041 individuals to aim their mint of the ape knock-offs, which means they collected over $1.2 million. But as SolRarity notes, this isn’t the scammer’s first rodeo. This is no less than the third rip-off pulled by the particular person or individuals behind the Big Daddy Ape Club, based mostly on the wallets the place the cash was funneled. It’s clearly a worthwhile enterprise if you happen to don’t thoughts being evil.

Strangely, the venture was “verified” by Civic, a crypto firm that supposedly audits NFT initiatives. Civic says it’s working with authorities to trace down the perpetrators, in accordance with the information outlet Decrypt.

All of the social media accounts for Big Daddy Ape Club have been wiped however you’ll be able to nonetheless see an archived model of the web site on the Wayback Machine.