Car manufacturer Porsche has ceased minting a line of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital art with an assigned “owner” in its metadata after just two days following a lack of interest and backlash from crypto enthusiasts, but threat actors are picking up the slack.
Reports from BleepingComputer claim there were delays in the issuing of the initial NFTs on January 23, which included a replica of the Porsche 911 priced at 0.911 Etherium (ETH). At the time of writing, this is around $1,500.
The delay made “the community” angry enough, but it also allowed for a secondhand market to emerge on NFT marketplace OpenSea, where the NFTs were devalued immediately, upsetting anyone still, for some reason, seeing NFTs as stable and worthwhile investments.
Scammers flock to an NFT fad
While any kind of community project might have noble intentions, it was, in Porsche’s case, its commitment to this feedback loop that has now created additional problems for the company’s NFT project, and no doubt the Porsche brand overall.
With scarcity of the NFTs rising after the mint’s discontinuation, Porsche itself has warned of fraudulent phishing sites, claiming to offer the NFT collection, being shared via direct messages on Twitter.
At its worst, BleepingComputer found a (as of January 30, now defunct) Twitter account with over 11,000 followers impersonating Porsche and recreating its website as part of a phishing campaign.
The real site states that the mint is closed and refers users to OpenSea. However, the fake one allowed users to link their cryptocurrency wallets, upon which the site would try to embezzle their funds.
Users can rest easy knowing that one phishing site has stopped functioning, but more are likely to spring up in their wake, and it’s unknown as to when the controversy will die down
As a result, given that the official word from Porsche is that it doesn’t have any further NFT mints in the pipeline, enthusiasts are advised to stay well away from uncorroborated claims regarding Porsche’s Web3 activity
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