NFTs worth over $1 million sold for thousands on OpenSea due to a loophole in its listing

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Opportunists exploited a loophole on OpenSea to buy more than $1 million worth of NFTs for just thousands of dollars, Bloomberg reported.

Buyers on the marketplace were able to purchase popular NFTs at older prices, from listings made a while ago, that were much lower than market price. That meant sellers found their items went for significantly less than they expected.

One person missed out on a $90,000 profit when he discovered that his Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT priced at 128 ether, almost $286,000 at the time, was bought for 87 ether, about $194,000, according to Bloomberg.

«Listings made a long time ago are resurfacing when items transfer back into lister's wallets,» OpenSea, the largest marketplace for NFTs, said in a tweet Monday.

The loophole came when sellers transferred older-listed NFTs to other wallets and made new listings without cancelling the original listings. The earlier prices were still available to those who did some digging, alongside the newer price.

Buyers bought the NFTs for the older, cheaper prices. They then sold them at higher market prices.

Listed items from other popular NFT collections in several wallets were affected, including Cool Cats, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and CyberKongz, according to media reports. An NFT — short for «non-fungible token» — is a crypto asset, representing an intangible digital item such as an image, video, or in-game item. They rocketed into prominence in March last year when the artist Beeple sold a collage at Christie's for $69 million as an NFT.

Sellers wishing to cancel original listings on NFT platforms have to send messages over the blockchain, which require transaction fees, Bloomberg reported. To avoid these fees, sellers may have transferred their NFTs to a