NFT Artist Beeple’s Twitter Account Hacked in Phishing Scam

Digital artist Beeple’s Twitter account was hacked today as part of a phishing scam that appears to have stolen more than $70,000 in Ethereum.

According to the NFT artist and others on Twitter—including Harry Denley, a security expert at cryptocurrency wallet MetaMask—Beeple’s account temporarily shared a phishing link that, if clicked on, would steal users’ crypto.

The tweet shared a link to a dodgy website pretending to be a “raffle” of Beeple’s Louis Vuitton collaboration (Beeple first collaborated with the fashion brand back in 2019). But when people clicked on the link, one Ethereum was automatically drained from their wallets, according to Denley.

Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap and the blockchain upon which most NFTs are built. At time of writing, one Ethereum was worth a little over $2,000.

Denley added that over $50,000 in Ethereum had been stolen and that bad actors continued to use Beeple’s Twitter account for another, more “sophisticated” scam—$72,165.60 total had been stolen by the address when Decrypt last checked.

Beeple later tweeted that his account was back to normal and “we have control now,” adding: “Stay safe out there, anything too good to be true IS A FUCKING SCAM.”

Such scams are common in the crypto world, especially via Twitter. Just in March, a phishing scam hacked verified accounts to steal over $1 million in a fake ApeCoin airdrop. 

Beeple, real name Mike Winkelmann, is a popular digital artist who helped propel NFTs (non-fungible tokens) into the mainstream. Last year, he sold an NFT artwork for $69.3 million at Christie’s auction house, smashing records in the digital art world.