The world of crypto and NFTs is very complicated but it is interesting if you know what you’re doing. As cryptocurrencies and NFTs continue to rise in popularity, with projects such as Bored Ape dominating the market, there are a few that are seen as scams or suspicious. And along with those shady projects are influencers being paid to promote such projects to help bring up the hype, only to have their NFTs lose their value.
This is a tale that repeats itself again and again, but the result is always the same. It’s a story about how an online influencer scammed their audience into buying NFTs.
Online influencer and YouTuber David Dobrik decided that he should also dip his toe into the trend. For those who don’t know who David Dobrik is, he’s a vlogger on YouTube with 18.3 million subscribers. A majority of his content is surprising his friends, family, and sometimes fans with lavish gifts and experiences. Dobrik won the 2020 Streamys Award for Best Collaboration and is currently nominated for Favorite Social Media Star in this year’s Kids’ Choice Awards.
Dobrik posted a story on Instagram, pushing a project known as Bored Bunny, an NFT that’s similar to Bored Ape. The project was first introduced back in December of 2021. Dobrik wasn’t alone in promoting this NFT as other influencers such as Chantel Jeffries, and Floyd Mayweather were involved as well.
What makes Dobrik different from Mayweather and Jeffries is that he has a really young and impressionable online audience.
Bored Bunny was selling nearly 5000 mint NFTs for 0.4 ETH ($1303.60). The project had plans to release merchandise, hold events, private metaverse, etc, promising buyers that their token will be 5-10x the value in the future. According to Twitter user @zachxbt, Bored Bunny has sold $7.5 million worth of NFTs in under an hour since the sale started.
3/ The roadmap included things such as release, merch, irl events, breeding multiple NFTs, private metaverse, marketing & more TBA.
— zachxbt (@zachxbt) March 31, 2022
Oddly enough it promised the benefit of “2x, 5x, or maybe even 10x the value of your investment within a few days” pic.twitter.com/W1i3wTHSuL
Zachxbt has also pointed out the red flags that Bored Bunny was showing, saying that the price was too high and that it was being promoted by influencers and celebrities who have no idea what NFTs are.
19/ From the start their were many red flags.
— zachxbt (@zachxbt) March 31, 2022
>banning people randomly
>multiple mints within short period
>0.4 eth mint price
>anon team w/o track record
>too many promises
>celebs promoting that don’t know anything about NFTs
>low effort art
After that initial sale, the value of the NFT dropped from 0.4 to 0.059 ($192.28) ETH and the team got away with $6 million. Since then, Dobrik has been called out, most notably by online influencer Faze Banks, who was offered $500-$700K to promote the NFT project but declined.
They offered me “$500k-$750k” upfront for a story post/ follow. I think it’s worth noting that I didn’t make this mistake only because I’ve taken the time to educate myself. A lot of these influencers take deals brought to them by their management/ treated as a product campaign. pic.twitter.com/BEIezyblnF
— FaZe Banks (@Banks) March 27, 2022
This isn’t the first time that influencers were called out for promoting scam NFT projects. Fans should be cautious whenever someone they follow or look up to starts to promote or sell anything. Do your research and if they’re promoting NFTs, there is always a chance that it’s a scam and your token will drastically lose value.