Crypto Bored Apes Warns Not to Mint NFTs After Chat Platform Hack

April Fools’ Day came early for fans of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club nonfungible token collection. The company behind the best-selling NFTs warned users around 2 a.m. New York time on Friday that hackers had “briefly compromised” chat severs hosted by messaging platform Discord. They told users not to mint -- the process of taking a digital asset and converting its to a digital file stored on a blockchain -- any Apes on the platform.   

Domain name provider Namecheap said on Twitter than it had suspended the phishing sites used by the hackers soon after users flagged them.

The Bored Apes, acquired by celebrities such as Madonna, Paris Hilton and Justin Bieber, have been at the forefront of the craze for NFTs, as digital collectibles increasingly move into the mainstream. The tokens, which combine the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain with the realm of creative pursuits, are fodder for both retail traders and professional investors.

The BAYC Discord channel remained closed. The Bored Ape Yacht Club allows users to mint Ape inspired NFTs built on the Ethereum blockchain featuring profiles of cartoon primates. Yuga Labs, the company that created the collection, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

ApeCoin, an Ethereum token linked to the collection, dropped after the warning before rebounding. The coin was up about 2.5% to $13.34 over the last 24 hours, according to data on CoinMarketCap.