The digital certificates were issued by the Belvedere on Valentine’s Day 2022. The museum hoped to boost its coffers by selling 10,000 NFTs at an issue price of 1,850 euros each. Demand, however, was low: fewer than 3,000 tokens found buyers. The lowest price for the NFTs on the Opensea marketplace quickly fell to around 500 euros.
On May 29, hackers stole 7,200 NFTs from the museum. They were transferred from the digital wallet without authorization, the ‘Standard’ reported, citing the Belvedere. At a current base price of just under 90 euros per token, that would correspond to a theoretical loss of 13.2 million euros — based on the issue price.
The hackers apparently failed to steal the Klimt image files along with the NFTs. The Belvedere blocked the image files, and Opensea did the same with the empty NFTs. Police are investigating, and crypto forensics experts are working on a technical clarification. For owners of already purchased NFTs, the theft could even mean a slight increase in value for their nearly worthless tokens — but a run is not expected.
Source: www.faz.net
