The "I Want to Buy Your Art as an NFT" Scam

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Ugh, I hate crypto. It’s a scammer’s dream, because it’s irreversible and untraceable (somewhat). And anyone with any kind of crypto holdings is under heavy targeting by scammers and phishing attacks.

The number of scammers using this tactic has dropped over the years, since most artists have been burned by the NFT market, or were scammed with NFTs as the medium.

If you post art online, you will eventually get a message from someone claiming they want to buy it as an NFT. They usually offer an amount of money that is well above what your work normally sells for, and they pay in cryptocurrency like ETH or Bitcoin. This is a scam. Not “probably a scam,” a scam. This post explains how it works so you can recognize it before you lose anything.

A Quick Word on NFTs

For context: NFTs peaked around 2021 and then dropped off sharply, largely because the space became saturated with scams and speculative hype that outpaced any real demand. A lot of artists paid gas fees to mint their work as NFTs and never found a buyer. Most of the pieces that did sell came from artists who were already established, or from limited-run collections that later turned out to be rug pulls, where the project creators abandon the token and it becomes worthless, the creator and their accomplices running off with the investors’ money. Given that history, an unsolicited NFT offer, especially one that arrives through an Instagram DM from an account you don’t recognize, should be treated as fraudulent by default until you have evidence otherwise. And even then, I would suggest you avoid anything crypto-related. Anything.

The Hook

The pattern usually starts with some light social engineering before the actual pitch. The account follows you, likes a few posts, maybe comments something specific enough to seem like they actually looked at your work. Then comes the direct message. They tell you they love your art and want to pay a number that is much higher than what you’d expect, sometimes in the thousands, for a single piece.

This works because most artists don’t get told their work is worth that much, so the flattery lowers your skepticism before the financial part of the pitch even hits. They’ll usually add that there’s no cost on your end, which is meant to preempt the obvious question of “why would this be free money.” In reality, no legitimate buyer needs to offer that reassurance, because in a normal transaction there’s no reason for the seller to be paying anything in the first place. The fact that they bring it up unprompted is itself a signal something is off.

The Build-Up

Once you respond, the scammer moves the conversation toward something that looks like a formal process. This might be a link to a website, a request to get on a call, or a handoff to a second account posing as a “technical team member.” They’ll introduce terms like gas fees, wallets, and minting, and walk you through it as though it’s a standard procedure that plenty of other artists have already gone through.

If you search the company name, you might find a working website, a few social media posts, or a listing on some marketplace-adjacent page. This isn’t proof of legitimacy. It’s the minimum effort required to survive a quick search, and scammers know most people won’t dig further than that. At some point during this stage, they’ll tell you that before the payment can be sent, you need to complete a setup step of some kind: create a wallet, register on a specific platform, or complete a small “verification” transaction. Each step is small enough to seem reasonable in isolation, and by the time you’re several steps in, you’ve already invested time in the process, which makes it harder to disengage even if something starts to feel wrong.

The Steal

This is the point where the arrangement flips from “they pay you” to “you pay them,” usually through one of the following methods:

Fake gas fee. You’re asked to cover the gas fee required to mint the NFT, with the promise that you’ll be reimbursed once the sale goes through, since it’s a small amount relative to the payout. You send the payment. The buyer stops responding. There was no sale on the other end of this, only a fee going into their wallet.

Fake marketplace email. In this version, you actually get set up on a legitimate, well-known marketplace, which makes the whole interaction feel more credible. Later, you receive an email formatted to look like it came from that marketplace, claiming there’s an issue with the transaction and asking you to log in to resolve it. The email is spoofed, and the login page it links to is a credential-harvesting page, not the real site. Enter your credentials there and the scammer now has access to your actual account and wallet.

Malicious smart contract signature. You’re asked to sign a smart contract to complete the sale. Signing isn’t like clicking “agree” on a terms of service page, it’s an on-chain transaction that can grant permissions to your wallet. A maliciously constructed contract can be written to transfer out everything in your wallet, not just the NFT that was supposedly being sold.

In every version of this, you’re the one moving money or granting access first, and the payout never arrives. The account disappears, the website stops resolving, and there’s no reversing a crypto transaction once it’s confirmed on the blockchain.

The Takeaway

The core rule here is straightforward: a legitimate buyer pays you, not the other way around, and they never need you to cover a fee, log in through a link they sent you, or sign a contract on their behalf.

Stay away from NFTs and crypto, I beg you.