The Cent company has suspended NFT activities due to counterfeiting and illicit activity, which created a major problem for the company with authorities and users.
Cent was created in 2017 and began as a social media network, as well as an informal platform for creative experimentation. In 2020, they launched an NFT platform called Valuables to mint and auction off iconic tweets. The NFT platform sold Jack Dorsey’s (American software developer and entrepreneur) : “just setting up my twttr,” for $2.9 million in March 2021. On February 6th, Cent suspended NFT activities due to “a spectrum of activity” that “shouldn’t be happening.”
Cameron Hejazi, co-founder of Cent, told Cointelegraph, “People in this space tend to cry caveat emptor or buyer beware, but protecting creators from those who might steal or abuse their work, and protecting buyers from potential fraud, is very important.” Hejazi stated that this situation was a result of an unauthorized sale of NFT copies, meaning stolen content converted into NFTs.
As Cent suspends NFTs activities due counterfeiting and illicit activity, the CEO of Kryptomon, Umberto Canessa, expresses his thought that while reputational concerns are growing, the concern around all the industry is getting bigger. He shared his concern that among first-time buyers “most of them will end up buying fakes, and then when they find out about it, will declare all NFTs scams, and that’s bad for the industry.” He also added that the laws for consumers could get a significant improvement over the situation, and a better education could prevent the industry from “becoming a victim of fraud”.
As the US treasury is targeting NFTs for potential art money laundering, there’s more scrutiny around the corner. Hejazi is hopping to open an industrywide conversation to talk about this situation and try to root out offenders.
Source: Cointelegraph.com
