Reportedly, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT that is confirmed to have been stolen from Jay Chou, the Taiwanese artist was sold on LooksRare for a whooping 164 Ethereum (ETH), equivalent to $570,000.
The NFT, BAYC #3738, was snatched along with numerous other tokens in a phishing scam, Jay Chou confirmed. The hack happened at the same time as a hack on the official Discord Channel of Bored Ape Yacht Club – BAYC, though it is not known yet if the two are connected. A Mutant Ape NFT was stolen during the BAYC cyber-attack.
Following its seizure on Friday, April 1st, the token had exchanged the hands of many holders, according to on-chain statistics. Its most recent selling was for a profit of approximately 50% over the floor price of BAYC.
Beosin, the blockchain security company analysis revealed that the NFT, BAYC #3738, mere hours following it being stolen, went through two buyers, with the first sale amounting to 124 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) and the subsequent one for 155 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH).
Tornado cash, a prominent crypto mixer, was utilized by the hacker to make the laundered Ethereum (ETH) unidentifiable. The LooksRare account which holds the token at the time being seems to be a whale with a large collection of Bored Apes. It is not known whether the rest of the BAYC NFTs in the collection were stolen or legitimate.
Thefts of Bored Apes are not uncommon, as thefts have been documented ever since 2021 brought about the era of the NFTs. BAYC, as per CoinMarketCap, is to date the most valuable NFT collection, as the collective value nearly reaches 1.2 million Ethereum (ETH). The collection is the most popular among all the NFT collections with considerable notoriety.
A hacker drained the Axie Infinity (AXS) liquidity pool and deprived it of around $622 million worth of tokens the other week, making it the largest crypto heist in history. On Monday, the hacker was seen transferring the majority of the stolen tokens to Tornado Cash, where they are certain to vanish.
Yet, considering that the nature of the attack itself was severely publicized and the financing was secured through using centralized private exchanges, it is possible that they can be identified soon enough.