What was once obscured, the crypto industry is now a phenomenon, a meme, a blooming community. ‘The crypto guy is now officially a personality trait, and in most contexts, carries a not-so-positive implication. This is because to the majority of people, the word crypto almost rearranges into ‘scam’ in their heads, and it’s too easy to see why.
The Barrage of Discord Scams
If you follow any crypto-related server on discord, you will experience first-hand an absurd number of people trying to scam you with tactics that don’t make any sense. The other day I asked on the Dogechain discord (which already seems like a sus project) whether I can see a list of apps being built on the chain. After a period of silence, in came a savior from heaven with the name ‘MetaRayJr’. He said:
“Have you seen the list of app coins or should I inform the team about it?”
First of all, I never mentioned anything about app coins. And the question is just too funny. If you’re ‘in the team’ and have a list of apps, just give it to me man. Why do you have to INFORM THE TEAM that I’m offering you a deal?? Of course, I didn’t say any of these, but then mister MetaRayJr hit me with the:
“But has your wallet been validated before?”
I said no (I’m already checked out at this point, I just followed along to hopefully find whatever resembles a closure.)
“I’ll send you how to go about that and that’s the first thing you should have done.”
You’re telling me to simply know what apps are being developed on the chain, I have to VA.li.date my wallet. Then of course he directed me to some third-party website that I didn’t even click in, for my good. The point is, that these scams happen all the time, and if scammers are willing to spend so much effort in convincing strangers, it must work on some, if not many people. And it baffles me that you can go out there making bags doing this.
Fake BAYC NFTs are Popping, Real BAYC NFTs are Sus?
There are so many scams in the crypto sphere that you would have to put them into categories: airdrop scams, rug pulls, Ponzi schemes, fake exchanges, p2p scams… And recently, one scam that cements my feeling of living in a simulation is that fake Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are outselling the real ones.
Now, this is not because I have tremendous respect for the original BAYC collection or anything like that. I frankly think they are overhyped, overpriced, and uninteresting. What’s weird is that the implementation of NFTs is supposed to be a verification mechanism but it doesn’t look like it’s doing its job very well.
The idea is that you can use the token address as a verification code, but BASIC doesn’t have a list of these codes for people to cross-check. So to examine this, you would have to go to Etherscan and look through every single trade from BAYC. With that much effort required, I bet many people either don’t know or don’t bother to check it.
Want to take one more step into the madness? This scam is not done for financial gain, but to raise awareness. You see, the rip-off logo of RR/BAYC (created by the man behind this fake collection: Ryder Ripps) says “this logo is based on the SS Totenkopf”, which is an elite division of Nazi Germany during World War II. Ryder made this fake collection as a satire to spread his suspicion that there are many hidden messages/symbolisms surrounding BAYC that connect to racism and white supremacy.
Check out the__Bored Ape Nazi Club youtube video__ for a deep dive into the rabbit hole. Not only the logo, but there are also puzzles, clothes/headwear, and founders’ names in the BAYC project that contain esoteric references to Hitler, Rudolf Hess (a Nazi ‘hero’), and other racist symbolisms.
Of course, all the references are intentionally too abstract so it’s not like you can point something out as concrete evidence. But the fact that the most popular NFT collection with dozens of celebrities like Post Malone, Eminem, Jimmy Fallon, and Justin Bieber… involved can potentially be a massive, elaborate white-supremacy dog whistle scheme is so trippy.
Am I the only one that feels like everything crypto-related has gotten ten times more insane in the past 2 years? I feel like we’re living in the Wild West of the digital age where the only constant is chaos.