👀 How to lose all your NFTs

GM everyone. This is 2036, the newsletter that pays you.

If you’re into bitcoin, you’ve likely heard of Satoshi Nakamoto.

It’s also possible you’ve heard of some of the other OGs in the bitcoin space: Adam Back. Nick Szabo. Gavin Andresen.

NFTs have their own OGs.

People who’ve been in the space for a while and have had a significant cultural impact.

One of those is Kevin Rose.

Kevin Rose is famous in Silicon Valley for creating digg.com. But he is also the founder of the NFT community PROOF, which created Moonbirds, one of the biggest NFT collections in the space (it’s done $300 million in volume at today’s prices).

He’s helped a ton of important people get into Web3. He’s the reason Tim Ferriss launched an NFT collection called Cockpunch. I know.

Kevin Rose kinda reminds me of a quieter version of Gary Vee when he called up all his richest friends and told them to buy Cryptopunks.

Unfortunately, last week, Kevin Rose lost $2M worth of NFTs.

A hacker tricked him into signing a malicious signature on Opensea with his wallet. As a result, the hacker was able to transfer a lot of expensive NFTs over to their own wallet.

He lost some iconic ones, like 25 Chromie Squiggles. These bad boys sell for up to $3M a piece:

Alright, so why am I telling you this?

Because if an OG in NFTs can lose $2M, so can you.

But here are two simple things you can do today to lower the chance of that happening by 99%:

1. Keep your expensive and cheap NFTs in separate wallets. Put the expensive ones in cold storage (I’ll show you how in a future newsletter) and only move them when you plan to sell.

2. Get a browser extension that shows you exactly what you’re signing on Metamask.

Most of the time, we have no idea what we’re actually doing when we sign transactions on Metamask.

So a bunch of smart people built chrome extensions that show you exactly what it is you’re signing in a way that’s easy to understand.

Ultimately, Kevin Rose ended up going with Stelo - and so are we (we have no affiliation with them, by the way).

But you can go with others like Fire or Blowfish if you’re more comfortable with that. Whatever floats your boat.

And that’s the task for today.

Task: earn $15 for pimping your wallet with an anti-phishing chrome extension

Today’s task is simple: just install a Chrome extension on your browser to protect yourself.

Here are the ones we’ve heard good things about:

• Stelo

• Fire

• Blowfish

When you’re done, just take a screenshot of your computer with the extension open and send it to us.

This is more of a public service announcement than a task - but to stay in the spirit of 2036, we’ll pay you to do it.

Step #1: install one of the three extensions above

Step #2: take a screenshot of the extension installed and send it to us by replying to this email. Make sure to include your public bitcoin address in the email too - so we can pay you.

We’ll pick two submissions at random and give them each $15.

That’s it for today boys and girls -

Stay safe out there. Even your overpriced JPEGs can be at risk.

I will speak to you tomorrow. Have a great start to the week.

Alex.

P.S.: you can read more about the theft over on Kevin Rose’s Twitter.