Crypto coma: NFT creator coma guy is a dud. UPDATE 13/2 – This article relates to a story which, since publication, has been revealed to be a hoax. To read more about the revelation click here.
On December 29 of last year, the pseudonymous creator of the Little Shapes NFT collection awoke from a five-month-long coma to find the crypto industry in a catatonic state of disarray.
“What the FUCK” wrote a tweet, expressing his sheer disbelief at the fact that once world-leading crypto exchange FTX had vanished into the void, taking the majority of his personal finances down with it.
Crypto coma: Little Shapes NFT Creator shares his story
The story of the owner behind the Little Shapes reads more like the script of a Hollywood thriller than a real life story shared on Twitter, so I reached out the accounts’ owner for some much-needed context into his insane experience. Here’s everything he told me:
“On the last day of July, I got T-boned by a Ford F-150 at an intersection while coming back from getting groceries.
I don’t remember that part but that’s what they told me when I came to.
I was rushed to the hospital suffering a TBI, brain bleeding, with the side of my head taking a huge hit in the accident.
Apparently I was apparently semi-conscious during this state but went comatose shortly after. I still don’t have any recollection of it.
I obviously wasn’t conscious throughout the coma, but I do remember having some wild coma dreams as well as kind of hearing people at my bedside.”
When asked about how much he’d lost in the smouldering ruins of the exchange, he informed me that the his total losses added up to somewhere in the range of a few hundred thousand dollars …
“I had a mid-six-figure amount in FTX right before the accident, so I’m down a few $100k now,” he said. “Which is for sure more than half my net worth.”
While all of us in the land of the conscious enjoy the “benefit” of having lived through the collapse in real time, it was practically impossible to imagine any of these events occurring from the perspective of someone walking around midway through last year.
SBF
In late July, Sam Bankman-Fried was still very much everyone’s favourite “altruistic” billionaire. FTX was valued at roughly US$30 billion and had just finalised a deal to buy troubled crypto lender BlockFi for US$240 million and had already begun the bidding to buy up Voyager Digital.
If you were to go back in time and tell people that Sam Bankman-Fried would be staring down the barrel of life in prison because he was running an elaborate fraud scheme that funnelled billions of clients funds from FTX to make hyper-risky crypto plays at his hedge fund Alameda Research, you’d be treated like a paranoid maniac.
“For me, all of that info came in 24 hours. With all of it hitting at once it’s just like ‘what the fuck is going on’, reality has to be a simulation at this point”
Little Shapes NFT Creator
Crypto coma: Awakening
A series of rapid-fire, consecutive tweets from the recently-awoken NFT creator illustrate the level of sheer disbelief he experienced upon scrolling through his phone for the very first time:
“The wildest thing to get used to first was the FTX thing. The next was Twitter getting bought out by Elon,” he told me.
While we can share the great news of his miraculous recovery from an injury that very well could have claimed his life, there’s obviously some bad news for him that will continue to surface as he comes to grips with the new — undeniably bleak — reality of crypto markets today.
Here’s to hoping we’ll see some more positive news as the industry develops in what is already shaping up to be one of the most interesting years in crypto to date.
