Crypto whale accidentally loses $150,000 in failed prank

A crypto whale and well-known NFT collector known by the pseudonym Franklin has lost about $150,000 in an online prank gone wrong.

Franklin owns a lot of Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, and 58 NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, one of the most popular NFT projects in the world.

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The crypto fail all started with bid to buy an NFT address that was created on the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) system.

You may have spotted a growing number of people with Instagram and Twitter handles ending with .eth or .nft.

That’s because the user probably bought the NFT domain for the name they’re using.

And they want to show it off.

Crypto fail explained

Franklin asked his followers to suggest a domain that he place a bid on for 100 ETH and the ‘winner’ was the following ENS domain: stop-doing-fake-bids-its-honestly-lame-my-guy-eth.

He then accepted an offer to sell the domain for about 2 ETH, worth around $3,000.

The problem was that on the other end of the transaction, he had forgotten to cancel the bid to buy the domain for 100 ETH, or $150,000.

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And then it was too late. Ouch.

Franklin was gracious in defeat, as they say, and simply owned up to his mistake.

He even tweeted about it, making the whole ordeal public.

Oh no, I lost 100 ETH. I was celebrating my joke of a domain sale, sharing the spoils, but in a dream of greed, forgot to cancel my own bid of 100 ETH to buy it back. This will be the joke and bag fumble of the century. I deserve all of the jokes and criticism.

— Franklin (@franklinisbored) July 20, 2022

This is the latest of a long list of errors and bloopers that regularly cost crypto users and investors a lot of money.

It happens on a weekly basis.

This is partly because the crypto space is still (mostly) unregulated but also because transactions are irreversible.

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