Recently, I was contacted by someone unexpectedly who claimed to have seen my work on ArtStation and wanted to purchase some as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). This is a deep topic, but through a process called minting, digital imagery can be converted on a blockchain into a unique file that somehow has value for trading, like stock. He was offering a good bit of money for each one and it seemed like a good idea. Anything like this is done with cryptocurrency, in this case, something called Ethereum, which I've been told is a kind that is not energy efficient and costs a lot to create. In case you didn't know, cryptocurrency requires a lot of computers and energy to create, so it's not so 'green.'
I say seemed like a good idea, because there is a scam that works very much like this. At any rate, I needed to jump into the cryptocurrency market, set up a wallet, and find out how to purchase Ethereum with my hard-earned cash. To mint NFTs from digital images, a marketplace must be used. In this case, the potential buyer would only use Mintplazza. I went along with this, although Mintplazza charges a hefty fee upfront to mint each one. I was hesitant, but looked at this as an opportunity to make a profit by investing my own money.
In the end, I minted the four requested images, the unknown buyer bought them, and it looked like I have a decent profit, but Mintplazza is making it impossible for me to withdraw it to my own online wallet. After I went through this process, shelling out a few thousand dollars, Mintplazza initially charged me a 16% 'marketing fee' to withdraw my profit That's steep, but what makes is worse is that they won't take it out of my profit, but are requiring me to pay them more Ethereum before I can withdraw. Some of the NFTs have supposedly been resold, so my profits are increasing. Cool, but as they go up, so does the fee to withdraw them and for some reason, the percentage is also increasing. I've tried to get some questions answered by Mintplazza's support, but they have so far been unhelpful and are suspiciously unavailable when I really need them. They have very strict and unrealistic policies to withdraw profit from their marketplace, but none of this is mentioned on their website. I had a short window when I had enough paid to them to withdraw my profit, but their withdrawal page did not work then and their support would not respond in a timely manner.
Am I the victim of a scam? It would seem so, although I'm not sure who the real culprit is. My warning to anyone else that receives an offer like this: Don't use Mintplazza. There are marketplaces that will mint NFTs for much less or even have what are called 'lazy' minting fees, in which the buyer pays them. Don't put out much (if any) of your own money to start the process. Find out beforehand what the fees are to withdraw your profit and how they can be paid. I didn't enjoy this process or the money I lost, but perhaps this can be a lesson to future me and other digital artists out there. Learn from my mistake. Money can be made by buying and selling NFTs, but maybe this was not quite the right way.
Read about an NFT buying scam that sounds eerily similar to the offer I got.
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