NFT Sales Start The Week Down 10% After Hack On Vitalik Buterin X Account

Updated: 11 September 2023

Disclosure

Don’t invest unless prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment, you shouldn’t expect to be protected if something goes wrong.

Following the massive breach on crypto investor and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s X account over the weekend, there are red candles lighting across the global non-fungible token market. Ethereum-based NFTs have started the week down 7.49%.

Vitalik Buterin X Account Hacked

On September 10, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, fell victim to a hack on his x (formerly Twitter) account. The massive breach left over $691,000 in the form of crypto stolen after investors clicked on a malicious phishing link.

Disregard this post, apparently Vitalik has been hacked. He is working on restoring access. https://t.co/2fjM0GhvIa

— dima.eth (@dimabuterin) September 9, 2023

The breach came into the limelight after Dmitry Buterin, the father of Vitalik, whispered on his X account that his son’s account had been compromised. Hackers leveraged the Ethereum co-founder X account and claimed to celebrate the arrival of “Proto-Danksharding coming to Ethereum.”

Before that, hackers shared a malicious link to alleged free commemorative non-fungible tokens available, enticing victims to connect their wallets before ultimately stealing all their funds. The breach has left many crypto investors losing thousands of dollars. Ethereum developer Bok Khoo, better known as Bokky Poobah on X, claimed that he has already suffered losses in his CryptoPunk NFT collection.

The breach attracted the attention of ZachXBT, a renowned on-chain sleuth, which rapidly spread the alarm to his more than 438,200 X followers about the hacker’s activities. He shared that the most valuable NFT stolen was CryptoPunk #3983, worth 153.62 ETH, equivalent to approximately $250,543.

$147K drained so far pic.twitter.com/A4Xmr4MBmI

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) September 9, 2023

Vitalik Buterin X’s account hack also attracted the attention of Changpeng Zhao, the Chief Executive officer of the crypto exchange Binance. While commenting on the breach, the top executive noted, “X account security is not designed as financial platforms. It needs quite a bit more features: 2FA, login id should be different from handle or email.”Zhao has also previously suffered a victim of a hack.

Vitalik's Twitter account got hacked. Use common sense when reading content on social media, even from large KOLs.

Twitter's account security is not designed as financial platforms. It needs quite a bit more features: 2FA, login id should be different from handle or email, etc.… pic.twitter.com/oYQch8r2H0

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) September 10, 2023

NFT Sales Fall 10% In The Past 24 Hours

It’s worth noting that Ethereum is the largest blockchain for non-fungible tokens. In that context, most NFTs have been slightly impacted by the recent breach on Vitalik, the Ethereum co-founder X account. In the past 24 hours, NFTs hosted on Ethereum are down 7.59%, amassing just $4.4 million.

Source: CryptoSlam.io, Ethereum-based NFT Trading Activity

Moreover, the recent breach has impacted the sales volume of the global non-fungible token market. In the past 24 hours, the NFT market has recorded a trading sales volume of $8.4 million, representing a 10.54% decline from the previous day.