Someone paid more than $300K for a fake Banksy NFT — and the scammer gave it all back

This image showed up on Banksy’s site, was sold as an NFT, then was taken down. The artist’s team says it’s fake. | Image: Internet Archive

The NFT space continues to be weird and occasionally wonderful, but today’s story is going for some sort of award: a collector paid over $300,000 in Ethereum for an NFT from someone claiming to be Banksy after the image appeared on the famed street artist’s website. Then, Banksy’s spokesperson said that the artist had no involvement with NFTs, and stories came out declaring it a fake. Finally, the NFT’s seller spontaneously refunded the collector, seemingly with no note. Oh, and to really muddy the waters, the collector who bought the NFT goes by the name of Pranksy.

Pranksy told the BBC that he heard about the auction, which was being held on the NFT marketplace OpenSea, from someone in his Discord. (The BBC doesn’t identify Pranksy by...

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