Note: I’ll be headed to NFT NYC next week, so I will be inconsistent with my posts. I’m looking forward to writing recaps and sharing my notes with y’all so stay tuned. If you’ll be there, give me a holler!

Scams

I feel like the modern day scam text or call is the new Nigerian Prince scam e-mail. However, it does seem like some scams are getting a little more complex, utilizing multi-step social engineering tactics.

And if you’re a fearful or curious person, you sometimes get caught in the crosshairs. As a member of the latter camp, my curiosity has led to some unique opportunities (like NFTs and Web3!) but also unnecessary situations as well.

Exhibit A

A couple weeks ago I received this Whatsapp message. Wow I’m an accidental millionaire, what did I do in my previous life to deserve this?!

❌ Scam Difficulty: Beginner

Exhibit B

Earlier this week, I received the above text message. I jokingly tweeted a screenshot of this text, asking the my followers how I should respond. I’m grateful that someone replied mentioned this was a scam and immediately deleted the tweet.

I’ve had situations in the past where someone accidentally texted my number and I responded. No harm, no foul.

These days it seems a little different so best to ignore these. I actually received a second text in a similar format, but with a different name and topic. I immediately blocked the phone number.

❌ Scam Difficulty: Intermediate

Exhibit C

A few weeks ago while my fiancé and I were heading up to wine country, I received the following push notification.

WHAT?! Yikes, someone is clearly trying to log into my Apple ID. Not good, time to reset my password. These push notifications popped up more than once.

What’s this? Who’s calling me? A “Joe from Apple” was calling me from “Sacramento” and noticed that I am trying to reset my password. He offered to help me reset my password. After some back and forth and due to my fear of potentially being hacked, I told him that I would head over to the nearest Apple Store to double check everything. Way to ruin my Memorial Day Weekend wine country daytrip Joe 😡

After hanging up and still being in a slightly panicked state, I Googled the situation and yup…it’s a scam.

❌ Scam Difficulty: Advanced

So why the hell am I talking about scams on a fine Friday afternoon?

TPan you ruined my Friday afternoon. *Unsubscribe* Dammit, back to 3 subscribers.

While at Consensus, I was chatting with Dean (he’s an IP lawyer that works in Web3. Two words: He’s dope.) and he shared a story about his friend getting a Moonbird (currently worth $20k) stolen via the same. exact. method. And that anecdote triggered my memory and this experience :(

Now I don’t know if I was targeted because of my NFTs (I guess jpegs are worth something after all!) or something, but scammers are getting pretty good.

We often think “I’d never be stupid enough to fall for ___________”, but eventually something will get to you.

Also, a couple things to note:

• Customer service never proactively calls you. That was a flag for me. Also the first missed call was formatted oddly. Not sure how the scammer spoofed the Apple Support number (yes, that’s actually their number and when I called back it actually went to their Support hotline), but that was another flag. Glad they screwed up a bit.

• All these recent scams have been through phone number as the vector of vulnerability. For the Apple scam, they used the phone number to initiate the password reset.

Please be careful, whether you’re in crypto/NFTs, or not.

Stans

PS: ‘Stan’ is a term for fans of something, coming from Eminem’s song “Stan”. And all the NFT Stans are headed to NYC. 😉

As mentioned at the top, I'm headed to NFT NYC! I'm looking forward to participating in holder events, conversing with new friends and old, observing themes around Web3 and NFTs, and have some fun!

By the way, check out this amazing piece by Ilya Kazakov, titled “NFT Party. NYC 2022”. The auction is ending in 17 hours with a current top bid of 0.5 ETH (~$500).

If you think this depiction of Times Square is an exaggeration I promise you it is not. Manhattan (especially Times Square) is gonna be NUTS.

If you live around NYC or happen to be visiting next week, I strongly encourage you to check Times Square out. If you think NFTs are a scam (many definitely are though!), I encourage you to enjoy the cognitive dissonance. We can chat afterwards, my DMs are open :)

Some themes I'll be thinking about considering I just got back from Consensus in Austin:

• How is the conference itself? I'll be spending my conference at the NFT project holder events, but anecdotally will inquire about the conference itself. Anecdotal feedback from NFT LA was that it was poor :(

• How do 'normies' or those that are less familiar with NFTs view all the craziness that will happen in NYC next week?

• What is the general sentiment around NFTs while the broader crypto market is down bad?

• How is diversity of attendees and participants across a variety of angles (gender, crypto knowledge, industry, time spent in the space, etc.)?

• Who executes a great event and who doesn't? The bar is constantly being raised higher, so who blows the audience away this time around? Also, what does a good 'small project' event look like vs. a good 'large project' event?

Any other questions/themes you want me to ponder on? Are you headed to NFT NYC as well? Gimme a holler and maybe we'll meet up!

I’m looking forward to my own conference recap posts 😂

Support

I was on a Cool Cats (the NFT project my mascot is from!) Town Hall earlier today, and they had a special guest, Ken Cron, advisor and investor for Cool Cats.

Who’s Ken Cron?

Oh…also he was also the CEO of Blizzard Games back in the day. You know…Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft? No biggie…

Combine gaming experience + his more recent finance experience?

Point here is not about Cool Cats, but rather more big name individuals continue to get involved with promising NFT brands.

Sounds sorta like what happened with Doodles, right?

Oh ya, speaking of hiring new CEOs, seems like Ken Cron’s been helping out a bit.

TPan searching for my mcdonalds uniform ._. @TPan_nft

Cool Cats CEO in the next ~30 days? 👀 coming from CC Town Hall

7:53 PM ∙ Jun 17, 2022

Alright, time to start packing for New York! Have a great weekend and see you next week. I’ll be reporting from the Big 🍎!