Meet Geoffrey Huntley: The Man Who Pirated All NFTs in Existence

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are a type of unique technology that is used for tokenizing real-world assets such as art and real estate while cutting the need for an intermediary between the artist and the buyer. With the recent craze on the “Bored Ape Yacht Club”, a famous NFT collection, celebrities, and famous artists have begun to enter the scene. The most recent event might be the famous rapper, Eminem, buying his NFT version (EminApe, Bored Ape #9055) for 123,45 ETH, which makes up to 464349 USD at the time of writing this article.

With this much attention, the NFT scene has been taking its piece of the internet with most of the people questioning what is the aim of the NFTs if you can just screenshot and save them? And that’s what Geoffrey Huntley answered, creating “The NFT Bay”, a website that contains the pirated copies of all NFTs in existence. In his recent interview with famous YouTube personality Coffeezilla, he mentions that “People should really know what they are buying in the tech business.”

Here is what NFTs are essentially

Having 17.76TB of NFTs pirated, Huntley says that it is very common in tech businesses to try and sell things to people that have little to no idea of what they are buying. He mentions that “instead of buying the treasure, the art, people are buying the treasure map, the NFTs, which are basically a hyperlink to the image on the blockchain.” “NFTs are basically this: You went to the store, bought groceries, got the receipt and the store kept the groceries,” in his terms. He also mentions recent scams such as selling someone an image and changing it afterward to “a picture of a rug” (hence the term, rugpull) since the user only has the link and not the image itself.

Bored Ape #9055 (L)

The complexity of software and blockchain according to Geoffrey Huntley

As it goes to show how dangerous it is to shop in the tech industry, especially a newly emerging crypto world, “the message is people should know what they are purchasing,” Huntley tells. While this piracy goes to the history books, it will surely remind people of the significance of learning about the technology they are investing in. Software and blockchain technology are complex, and understanding it requires a good amount of brainpower.

Therefore, do not forget to always do your own research before going into a field in tech, it might save you from scams, or it might give you a new field that you are interested in and want to learn more about.