Doop Snogg: how a fake Snoop Dogg fooled an NFT conference

theguardian.com:

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.