Yesterday I received a direct email from a person I did not know requesting to purchase my art as an NFT. I don't usually do NFT's so I found the request to be an oddity. It really didn't surprise me though because the email came right after adding a new image to my Artspace account. Now I don't know how many people here use Artspace but from my experience it seems to be riddled with scam accounts. I'm sure there are a lot of legit accounts there but for someone like me who generally keeps a low profile I'm not going to get contacted by any big company or buyer interested in my artwork. No ill intent toward ArtSpace in general I just don't think they do a very good job of preventing bad actors from using their platform to scam and commit acts of fraud and I hope that one day they do a better job.
Now as you can imagine, I was already looking for the scam from the very first contact. But I have been told I am too pessimistic so in trying to give a positive outlook I asked a few questions. Just the basics really. What artwork are you interested in, and such. Now realizing this person is asking about NFT's naturally they want to pay with a crypto wallet somewhere. But I didn't go to them, they came to me, and made an offer that seemed far-fetched. But I played along and named the platform where I would be willing to mint an NFT for them.
Then came the proof. I was just waiting for it, knowing it was coming. Looking for the catch because when something sounds too good to be true it usually is. So, when I chose a platform, I know and trust they have the audacity to address me as "Sir" Clearly, they didn't do their research because several of my accounts have a picture of me, I am most certainly not a Sir, nor have I ever used male pronouns. Then they proceeded to tell me they preferred me to use Mint axis as the platform to create the NFT.
Apparently it's not easy to transfer an NFT to other platforms? I don't know but if your a "professional collector" you wouldn't be stuck on only one platform. Well and that is just one of the things that goes through my mind when I see this. I already knew without looking it up that this platform would have a scam rating and a low trust percentage. So of course, I tell this person I wasn't doing that and good luck with their collecting. dismissing any thought of them or future contact.
Later while drinking my morning coffee, I google mint axis. I was already pretty sure what I would find. Sure, enough the top link was a scam alert page and several others detailing the scam and fraud activities of the platform and giving it a trust percentage of 1%. Listing it as a place for phishing.
The world never fails to disappoint me. I say this laughingly because now days there is a scam or new fraud around every corner, and I have come to expect it. As much as I would love to paint rainbows and Smily faces on ever picture and not be as so many have told me "Pessimistic" I've been taught by this world we live in to be ever vigilant.
I decided to share this with the community not because I like to bad mouth others but more in hopes that seeing it will help prevent anyone else from falling for the lies that people tell in order to rob you of anything. weather that is money or personal data or your artwork or some other form of intellectual property.
As for those people telling me I am too pessimistic I have something to say about that too. I'm a realist. my life has been too much of a struggle to be anything else, so I'm not going to waste my time lying to myself about the realities of the world and worry about the labels you want to paste to me. Nor should anyone else be worried about what others think of them so long as they are being true to themselves. In this world you first have to look out for yourself. because you certainly can't look out for anyone else if you aren't doing at least that.
on this post I shared one of the images this person claimed to want to purchase as an NFT. It's the resulting image of a 3D outfit I made in Secondlife. This was Star Wars related. an outfit of the Jedi Librarian. Is it NFT worthy? I don't know. it was just something I enjoyed creating for the fun of it.
Thanks for reading :)