Ex-adult film star turned social media influencer Lana Rhoades has abandoned her NFT project dubbed CryptoSis and made away with funds raised by the project’s community.
According to a recent report, Rhoades had decided to abandon ship barely a month after unveiling the CryptoSis NFT Collection, withdrawing investors’ funds worth an estimated $1.5 million.
Cryptosis NFT Project
The explosive growth of the NFT space has continued to attract several creators, collectors, and investors. Rhoades revealed her CryptoSis project last year, and is set to introduce several other adult film personalities to the NFT industry.
The CryptoSis NFT Collection would allegedly feature various tokenized cartoon images of the actress, which would become very “valuable,” according to Rhoades. The project automatically made Rhoades the first film star in her industry to join the NFT bandwagon.
Leveraging her fame, she reportedly grew the project’s investor pool to over 100,000 members in just a few days without running any paid ads. In less than 48 hours, the platform’s TikTok account (now deleted), @CryptoSisNFT got over 50,000 followers with one of the videos getting over 3 million views.
According to Rhoades, investors were drawn by the massive “potential” they saw in the CryptoSis project and wanted to be a part of its journey.
Rhoades Disappears with Investors’ Funds
When marketing the CryptoSis NFT Collection to her fans, Rhoades did not present the NFTs as purely digital artworks. On multiple occasions, she claimed that they were valuable investments that would increase in value as more investors come in.
She alleged that she was working to “increase the value of CryptoSis and make it a lucrative investment for holders that they can sell for more than they paid to mint.” She also noted that the project would start a sort of “NFT franchise” and that other actresses have agreed to create their own collections.
Although some found these claims unconvincing, others invested, seeing as the project’s roadmap promised to reward investors with several incentives once the NFT sales hit a certain percentage.
However, in a tragic turn of events for CryptoSis NFT investors, Rhoades cashed out the $1.5 million raised by the community and disappeared from the space, claiming that users had become negative and rude toward her.
Not New
Rug pulls are not uncommon within the digital asset industry. In fact, in 2021 alone, investors had lost more than $2.8 billion in crypto rug pulls. Earlier in November, developers of the crypto project, named after the popular Netflix show Squid Games, pulled the rug on investors, leading to over $2.1 million in losses.
Just recently leading a cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase removed links to promotions on how to buy three crypto tokens that have been marked as rug pulls from its website.
