It’s worth noting that ENS domains are a popular topic even now, when the cryptocurrency market is going through a downturn. This week, for example, amazon.eth received a bid of one million USDC. At the same time, it was bought five months ago for 33 ETH.

Bid to buy the ENS domain Amazon.eth

However, as today’s story shows, such bids may not reflect real interest in the asset.

How to lose money on NFT tokens

Franklin is a highly successful NFT collector, as he has at least 57 expensive Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) tokens in his addresses. We have clarified the current information: today the minimum price of a representative of the BAYC collection is 93.39 ETH or $147,000. Accordingly, the investor’s fortune in these NFTs at least exceeds the equivalent of $8 million.

The minimum price of representatives of the most popular NFT-token collections

So, a few days earlier, he registered an ENS domain with the name stop-doing-fake-bids-its-honestly-lame-my-guy.eth for one of his Etherium wallets. The caption translates to “stop making fake bids [to buy the asset – editor’s note], it’s just ridiculous, buddy”.

Domain name registered by Franklin

So it was essentially a sort of attempt to mock investors who use their other wallets to publish high stakes bets on their own NFT or other crypto-assets. In this way they create fake activity for their own tokens and provide them with a reputation as a popular asset among investors. Some people buy into this and seek to beat the published bid. As a result, not only do they spend money, but they also buy a far from liquid asset that in normal, honest conditions might not have sold.

Then from his main wallet Franklin placed a bid to buy the domain for 100 WETH at a total cost of about $151,000. That is, the crypto-enthusiast wanted to “spotlight” the ENS Bids Twitter bot, which automatically displays large bids for domain name purchases. As a result of the publicity of the situation, a real buyer was found for his domain, who took the name for only 1.9 ETH, or almost $3,000 at the cryptocurrency exchange rate at the time of the transaction.

Franklin was happy at first: his fictitious domain name had acquired real value, and he even earned a few thousand dollars from it. However, only 15 minutes after the transaction, the new owner of the domain accepted the previous name purchase order from Franklin himself, i.e. he resold the domain to Franklin for the same 100 WETH that the investor had jokingly offered for his own asset for its popularisation.

History of Franklin’s domain transactions. Sale of the domain for 100 ETH in red

According to Decrypt’s sources, Franklin got the domain name back, but also lost 100 ETH in the process. He shared the results of his unsuccessful prank on Twitter. Here’s his line.

Oh no, I lost 100 ETH. I was celebrating and calculating the income from the sale of my prank domain, but in doing so I forgot to cancel my own 100 ETH purchase bid. This is going to be the joke and the tumult of the century. I deserve all the barbed comments and criticism.

In other words, the buyer most likely foresaw that the author might forget to cancel his own deal and decided to risk a few thousand dollars. As a result his investment "paid off" in full, though not in the most honest way.

Some commenters suggested that the purchase order was automatically accepted by a bot, so Franklin wouldn’t have been able to simply cancel it in time. However, the crypto-enthusiast dispelled all doubts – it turns out he was cheated himself because of his own inattention.

The bots had nothing to do with it. I had enough time to cancel the application. Instead, I ran to brag about the profits on Twitter. I also sent 1.9 WETH back to the buyer of the domain before doing so. I can’t even imagine how anyone else could have tried so hard to make such a mistake.

After the incident, a poll appeared on the bot’s page about whether “joke” bids should be filtered out for purchase at ENS

A little later Franklin explained what triggered the whole chain of events. The crypto-enthusiast didn’t even intend to sell the domain, it was just a joke. But as soon as he saw the notification of an opportunity to make a deal with someone else – i.e. a real buyer – in anticipation of a profit, he forgot about his original bid to buy from ENS.

According to another NFT collector under the pseudonym DCinventor, blockchain is better treated with “more respect”. Here’s his point of view.

You should all respect blockchain as a fiduciary level and not make joking bets on things by underwriting 100 ETH transactions from your wallet.

Buying NFT by an investor

There is one simple lesson to be learned from the situation: transactions in blockchain cannot be "rolled back" once they have been successfully validated. Therefore, signing any transaction should be taken as seriously as signing contracts on paper in the real world. Otherwise, you will end up losing money with no way of recovering it. All in all, we would like to believe that the loss of such a sum will not affect the financial condition of the NFT enthusiast and will not force him to quit the blockchain industry.