THIEF STEALS CHARITY DAFT PUNK ARTWORK AND SELLS IT IN CRYPTO FOR $12,000

In the midst of the NFT gold rush, a Daft Punk fanatic has become a victim of the bad side of the industry.

The artist, who goes by the nickname sodasprouts, had developed bespoke digital artwork resembling Daft Punk in order to promote “One More Time,” a philanthropic fanzine dedicated to the iconic electronic music duo, which was being distributed at the time. But she claims her work was stolen and then sold as an NFT for $12,000 in cryptocurrency, resulting in a loss of her livelihood.

The Trevor Project, the world’s leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for the LGBTQ+ community, receives 100% of the proceeds from the zine’s distribution.

As sodasprouts pointed out on Twitter, that’s $12,000 that might have been donated to a good cause or used to cover the cost of my spring semester of college or to pay rent. “I’m certain that more has been taken.”

When it comes to the intricate and often odd crypto-epoch, digital art theft has become a source of concern. As a result of the introduction of non-fungible tokens, a slew of hackers have jumped aboard the gravy train, as was discovered in March when it was found that hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of tokenized art had been stolen from the popular non-fungible token marketplace Nifty Gateway.

And because there are no formal regulations in place, there is little that victims can do to stop it. sodasprouts claims she was able to track down the supposed buyer of her stolen Daft Punk artwork, but that the individual immediately banned her. Additionally, the owners of the “One More Time” zine attempted to get in touch with us but were unsuccessful.

sodasprouts has hinted at the possibility of taking legal action against the digital bandit, but has not publicly stated that it intends to do so. Following the crime, she wrote and released a short tutorial for artists on how to defend themselves from digital art larceny, which you can read in full below.