Direct from the desk of Dane Williams.
Those buying cheap BAYC NFTs knew they were stolen, but does the supposedly elite community even care?
I’m sure by now you’ve seen the story that hackers have been stealing NFTs from OpenSea and reselling them.
The NFT marketplace confirmed that it wasn’t actually a hack of their system, but a simple phishing attack where users literally gave away access to their wallets.
Hacked, lost, gifted, whatever you want to call it, the bottom line is that $1.7 million worth of NFTs were stolen and resold.
Ouch.
I take a look at another angle, asking will the BAYC community welcome new members holding stolen NFTs?
As a supposedly elite community, you’d certainly hope so.
What gives art collection NFTs value?
We see the question of what gives NFTs value, being asked a lot.
This is magnified when the NFT is simply part of an artistic collection who’s beauty is entirely in the eye of the beholder.
The answer we’re told is that their value comes from the ability to join and access an exclusive community.
Take the BAYC collection for example.
You have celebrities like Justin Bieber and Neymar in that community.
If you were a businessman working in the music or football industries, how much you pay to be a part of an exclusive community with men like this?
Whether the Biebs is actually accessible in the BAYC private Discord server is another issue, but there’s no denying the value of accessing a community like this.
However, is this really the case for BAYC NFTs in reality?
But with NFTs within these collections being stolen, I'd be interested in hearing from someone who bought one of the stolen NFTs.
I take it that there are some extremely valuable ones going for quite a discount (but obvs still for a shitload).
The buyers would surely know that they're stolen, but do they care?
And how are they being welcomed into the community they've just joined?
Certainly an intriguing angle that needs to be explored.
Flipping to the other side, I’d also be extremely interested in hearing from people within those communities.
How does the OG community perceive those who have bought stolen NFTs, technically granting thieves access to the community.
If the value of a Bored Ape comes from joining an ELITE community, surely that community has standards and won't accept this shit?
I just picture what would happen if someone phished, say Khal's Hive account (which is essentially the same thing.
A Hive account is an NFT that gives you access to a community.
Even though it is an account that has a high rep on Hive, the community wouldn't just accept the new owner of the account because we would know it's not him.
If the BAYC community doesn't reject them, then doesn't that extremely devalue the NFT because it shows how shit the "elite" community is?
Literally what's the point of paying through the nose to be a part of it?
How the community reacts to the entrance of new members holding stolen NFTs has the potential to throw the entire concept of what gives them value, on its head.
Oh to be a fly on the digital wall of that Discord.
The value of BAYC NFTs is really on the line
One of the arguments raised here is that OpenSea has blacklisted the sale of these stolen NFTs.
But as OpenSea is nothing more than a centralised front-end, does blacklisting the sale of certain assets even matter?
I mean even if OpenSea blacklists the sale of certain Ethereum-based assets on their front-end, can’t they just sell it somewhere else?
It's an ETH transaction that doesn't require a 3rd party to approve so the NFT is gone.
They're not getting it back.
Once again, all this shows is that Hive is in another stratosphere compared to everything else.
The way we saw the Hive community understand the social implications of Justin Sun’s takeover and fight back against what were technically the same accounts as everyone else's, but known sock puppets under the control of Sun, was a sight to behold.
It showed that the community at layer-0 and the reputation that they hold certain accounts in is more valuable than money, assets or anything else for that matter.
Will we see that same pushback from the BAYC community?
A fascinating angle that I haven’t read being covered from any of the mainstream crypto media outlets reporting on the story.
If the value of the BAYC NFT comes from being a member of an elite community, layer-0 can make that particular NFT worthless by just not including them.
But perhaps most importantly, it would protect the value of being part of the elite community.
If they fail to do this, then it’s hard to argue that there is any value in their community and thus their BAYC NFT.
Best of probabilities to you.