How Kevin Rose Got Duped Into Giving Away Valuable NFTs – Axios

Kevin Rose, a serial entrepreneur going back to 2004’s web pioneer Digg, got tricked into giving away a bunch of very valuable NFTs on Wednesday night.

Why it matters: The multi-part scheme that began with a seemingly mundane airdrop, is a reminder of how easily even the founder of an NFT-focused company could be lured into a trap.

• In the ever evolving world of cyber crime, it helps to stay conscientious of how miscreants are manipulating others out of money and valuable goods.

Details: On a Twitter Spaces on Thursday, Rose explained that the malicious airdrop was crucial to tricking him into checking out a website, which in turn was designed to trick him into giving up his tokens.

• Arkham Intelligence estimated the lost NFTs at $1.09 million in value.

Of note: Rose keeps all his valuable NFTs on a hardware wallet which is normally offline. But he had taken it out to sell a couple of NFTs from his collection, visiting the OpenSea marketplace to authorize the items for sale.

• Once he had his wallet connected, he saw he had an airdrop that looked like it came from the The Memes by 6529 collection.

Be smart: An airdrop is when someone sends a token to a known address, often done to promote something. Yet they can end up being valuable.

How it happened: Rose was on a phone call that he was only half paying attention to while he set up his NFT sale. So, he went to the airdrop’s website while his hardware wallet was active.

• As he said on the Twitter Spaces, everything looked legitimate and well designed. Nothing was pushing him to urgently take any action.
• “This is also a tale of multitasking,