The NFT boom had always intrigued me, and when I found out about a new, exclusive NFT collection called CyberCats 3000, I was immediately drawn in. The project was marketed as “the next Bored Ape Yacht Club”, featuring 10,000 unique digital cats with futuristic designs. The roadmap promised real-world benefits, exclusive events, and partnerships with metaverse projects.

What made it seem legit was that the project was heavily promoted by big names in the crypto space. Famous YouTubers and NFT collectors praised it, and the Discord server was packed with thousands of people excited about the launch.

The minting price was 0.3 ETH per NFT, which was about $1,200 at the time. Wanting to secure my place in what I thought was a major future blue-chip project, I minted three NFTs, spending nearly $4,000 in Ethereum.

After the minting event, the price of the NFTs started rising, and I felt great about my investment. But within a few days, things started falling apart. The developers, who were once very active in the community, suddenly became silent. The weekly updates they had promised never came, and questions in the Discord group were ignored or deleted by moderators.

Then, out of nowhere, the entire website went offline, and all social media accounts were deleted. The developers had rug-pulled—meaning they took the money from the mint and disappeared without delivering on their promises. The NFTs I had purchased were now worthless, and there was no way to get my money back.

Later, I found out that the influencers who had promoted the project were paid in advance to hype it up, and the entire team behind CyberCats 3000 had used fake identities to make it seem like a real project. I had just lost thousands of dollars to one of the biggest scams in the NFT space.