Last week a drama unfolded in the world of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. People had invested cryptocurrency worth several million US dollars in the virtual apes of “Evolved Apes”, but the developer reportedly absconded with the money. He allegedly made off with units of the cryptocurrency “Ethereum” worth 2.3 million Euros.
This is Evolved Apes:
- The idea of Evolved Apes was for players to buy one of 10,000 “unique apes”. The ape serves as their limited, signed digital property through NFT technology – a type of collectible and investment.
- The apes, living in a “lawless land”, were expected to battle each other in a fighting game, where the “strongest ape prevails.” The battles were supposed to involve rewards like the cryptocurrency “Ethereum”. Without these virtual fights, the virtual apes were essentially just JPG files.
- The apes were sold at auction. The money was actually intended for the project’s further development.
All project accounts deleted – Project head “Evil Ape” has vanished
This is the problem with the project: As reported by Vice, the project head, a certain “Evil Ape”, absconded with 2.7 million US dollars in Ethereum. He secured the money in several transactions.
Meanwhile, the official Twitter account of the project and the website have been deleted.
It is said that all the money intended for the development and financing of the game is now gone. Even the one who created the images of the virtual apes has not been paid.
Trust no “Evil Ape”
Was nobody suspicious? Customers had noticed some irregularities in the operation: The announcements appeared unprofessional and some of the project’s leaders had disappeared. However, it was attributed to the inexperience of the actors.
Ultimately, the community realized that the winners of promotions on social media were not receiving NFT prizes. The community then came together and elected one of their investors, “Mike_Cryptobull”, who had invested about $10,000 in the project, as their spokesman. He then found out that the project head, “Evil Ape”, had absconded with the money.
What happens now? The investors do not want to be satisfied with their loss, but instead want to relaunch the project as “Fight Back Apes”.
They have now declared the villain “Evil Ape” as their arch-enemy.
Here’s the background: On Twitter, a user writes that he does not understand how such a scam works. One just has to paint “ugly pixel art” and someone pays $40,000 for it? Someone should create a guide for him on how to set up an NFT scam so he can pay off his student loan (via twitter).
For many people, it is completely incomprehensible how one can spend tens of thousands of Euros on virtual items, even if they are limited through the NFT system. For them, such operations are anyway a virtual “scam”.
In the case of “Evolved Apes”, the worst fears have now come true.
How much money can be made with NFTs is demonstrated by a former Twitch streamer:
Twitch bans streamer – She now sells “NFT” clips to fans for around €300
