Bored Bunny NFT Project Exposed as a Slow Rug, $21M Stolen from Investors.
The celebrity-promoted non-fungible token (NFT) collection turned out to be yet another rug pull.
While NFTs have been booming over the past several months, NFT the market’s success turned out to be a double-edged sword as it was also plagued by well-constructed projects that would later get rug-pulled.
Just yesterday, on March 31st, a well-known crypto detective @zachxbt posted a wall of messages on his Twitter feed. According to him, the Bored Bunny NFT collection, which was largely promoted by NFT and crypto-friendly celebrities like Floyd Mayweather, DJ Khaled, Jake Paul, etc., pointed to a ” slow rug “, costing investors over $21.1 million .
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Slow rug pulls are usually thought out digital asset schemes where the creators try to keep the project alive, while they periodically cash in on inflated NFT prices to reduce suspicion.
The Bored Bunny NFT collection, according to zachxbt, promised collectors metaverse initiatives, events, and “instant” profits from their investments, while putting up celebrities like famous boxer Floyd Mayweather and interest NFT projects Youtuber Jake Paul to promote the project.
After the collections sold out, interest NFT projects all the funds were apparently transferred to centralized exchanges on several different wallets.
However, things started to take a turn for the worse when the community noticed that floor prices of their NFTs slumped, and the Bored Bunny NFT creators went missing from social media for weeks.
When the project got called out, the owner of the Bored Bunny NFT Twitter account suddenly responded, claiming that there were a lot of ” messages and emails ” to go through, which supposedly was the reason for crypto wallet may make money their absence.
This led to zachxbt looking further into the matter and finding out who was actually behind the project since the creators did not disclose their identities. It turns out that the Bored Bunny NFT team was also behind other multi-million dollar rug pulls like Crazy Camels & Ancient Cats Club .
Likewise, he identified Slavi Kutchoukov as one of the people behind the rug pull due to his ties to Floyd Mayweather who promoted the NFT project. Likewise, he tracked down several other names through their digital footprint, that were also part of Bored Bunny NFTs.
The final nail in the coffin was the Discord announcement on the Bored Bunny channel, in which the creators asked the community if they would like a moderator to take over the NFT project.
While the complete details of the project rug are yet to be confirmed, the investigation led by zachxbt seems very plausible, with the overwhelming proof pointing towards a slow rug pull by the creators.
Due to NFTs becoming a lot more mainstream, law enforcement agencies have started getting involved in the recently emerged market. Just a week ago, cryptocurrency the people behind the Frosties NFT rug pull were charged with financial fraud by the US Court for the Southern District of New York.
by Dom Z. – Crypto Analyst, BitDegree.