Blockverse NFT – 1,200,000

Did you invest in an NFT project called Blockverse NFT, a so-called “play-to-earn” game built on the Minecraft universe? Then you have our condolences because whoever’s behind the project made off with an estimated $1.2 million this month.

Investors could purchase Blockverse characters through OpenSea and a cryptocurrency called $Diamond was launched in conjunction with the project. But the investors took all the real money invested in Blockverse and disappeared, deleting the project’s Discord and Twitter while making for the exits. The project’s website has also been deleted, but it’s still available through a snapshot saved on the Internet Archive on Jan. 12.

The website is filled with spelling mistakes, like “Cosemetic & Equippable Item Minting,” which are just some of the red flags any potential investors in NFTs should look for if they don’t want to get ripped off. But even projects with perfect spelling can still engage in a “rug pull,” as it’s called in the crypto community—raising tons of money and then quickly draining the liquidity pool, never to be seen or heard from again.

The Twitter account NFT Ethics asked if there should be some kind of centralized authority overseeing projects like these to protect consumers but that would seem to be antithetical to the decentralized nature of the NFT project. But who knows? The NFT community could wind up inventing its own version of everything from the SEC to the Federal Reserve if enough people get tired of their money being stolen.