- Multiple people on Twitter reported thefts of digital artwork on Nifty Gateway.
- One Twitter user said over $150,000 in digital assets had been reported stolen on the marketplace.
- A Nifty Gateway representative said there was no indication that the platform had been compromised.
Multiple people on Twitter reported that their accounts on Nifty Gateway had been compromised, leading to the loss of their crypto art and to unauthorized purchases using their credit cards.
A Nifty Gateway representative declined to say how much art had been reported stolen but told Insider that a “small group of users” had been affected.
One Twitter user who has been keeping a tally of the reports of stolen artwork claimed that over $150,000 worth of NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, on Nifty Gateway had been stolen.
Several of the pieces the user listed were from artists who have generated significant momentum in crypto-art sales, including Trevor Jones.
Michael J. Miraflor, one of the first people to report an issue with his Nifty Gateway account, said someone had purchased over $10,000 worth of digital art on Nifty Gateway using his credit card, then transferred his digital art pieces to a new account and sold them via Discord.
Miraflor said that he had been in contact with the Nifty Gateway cofounder Griffin Cock Foster but that he had been told that Nifty Gateway could not transfer the digital tokens back to him after they were resold.
Miraflor said he was filing a police report.
-Michael J. Miraflor (@michaelmiraflor) March 15, 2021
Any thefts could have been the result of reusing passwords or not enabling two-factor authentication, an optional security measure on the site.
“We have seen some reports that NFTs involved in these account takeovers were sold in transactions negotiated over Discord or Twitter,” the representative told Insider. “We strongly encourage all Nifty Gateway customers to purchase their NFTs on the official Nifty Gateway marketplace.”
The crypto world has always posed a risk of theft and fraud. Since blockchain transactions are anonymous and irreversible, a compromised password is a significant risk for people who have invested thousands in digital assets.
NFTs have taken the spotlight as a hot new type of crypto asset, but they bring the same risks. On Thursday, a piece by the digital artist Beeple sold for nearly $70 million at a Christie’s auction.
Nifty Gateway has become a popular site for buying and selling NFTs. The site recently hosted an auction for Grimes that brought in over $5.8 million in under 20 minutes.
Nifty Gateway is one of the few platforms that allow users to buy directly from the site using their credit card; other sites like SuperRare and Foundations require users to have a digital wallet to purchase pieces using ether.
