Doop Snogg: how a fake Snoop Dogg fooled an NFT conference
Snoop Dogg has rapped that “It’s kind of hard being Snoop D-O-double-G”.
But apparently not that hard for a Snoop Dogg impersonator who was hired “last minute” by a crypto startup to grab attention at an NFT conference in New York – and ended up fooling just about everyone there.
Thousands of investors and enthusiasts attended NFT.NYC this week to talk about buying and selling non-fungible tokens amid a market wipeout and urgent warnings for traders to stay vigilant against a proliferation of scams.
But that skepticism wasn’t on the mind of the crypto fans who rushed to take pictures with the impostor as he walked around near Times Square.
“I think I just caught @SnoopDogg. Thank you for the selfie,” tweeted one conference-goer.
“Catching up with our old fren @SnoopDogg at #NFTNYC2022. Great to meet ya, buddy!” tweeted another.
Apparently none of them noticed the glued-on moustache, or name-tag that read “Doop Snogg”.
Last year, endorsements from superstars including Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton and Floyd Mayweather helped fuel a frenzy in non-fungible tokens, which are receipts of ownership stored on the blockchain, an energy-intensive technology that aims to prevent digital duplication. At the peak of the fad, users paid eye-popping sums for avatars of “Bored Apes”, “flying war babies” and even “CryptoDickButts”.
Many pro-crypto celebs have quietly retreated from view as the NFT market has plummeted by 92% since its peak last September, while investors have suffered multimillion-dollar thefts and constant scams. The largest NFT platform, OpenSea, estimated in January that 80% of the NFTs created through its tools were fraudulent.
But Snoop Dogg has doubled down. This week, the rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, filed for
Read more on theguardian.com
