A Mark Cuban Owned Instagram is Shilling Low Quality NFTs to Beginners

Twitter influencer and avid NFT Collector @topshotfund exposed that a Mark Cuban-owned Instagram account is shilling low-quality NFTs to beginners! This is alarming because, as of press time, @nft has over 1.7 Million followers!

Twelve hours since he posted the extensive Twitter thread, the @NFT account on IG has deleted 436 posts from their newsfeed, presumably all paid promos. So clearly, they are now covering their tracks.

Exposing the Shady Mark Cuban-backed  @NFT Instagram Account

@topshotfund shared what triggered him to look into the shady Instagram account. He said, “Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had an increasing number of normie friends reach out about new NFT projects I had surprisingly never heard of.” Surprisingly, the common denominator between all the projects is that @nft is promoting them.

The Mark-Cuban-backed IG account is clearly adept at social media marketing. They’ve amassed 1.7m followers, most of whom this is their first introduction to NFTs.

The first thing that caught @topshotfund attention is how the account “monetizes on a daily basis by promoting eerily similar projects that practice scammy tactics without disclosing that they are ads.” He specifically pointed out how the page promoted three separate “Kong” projects within the past two weeks, none with #ad as required by the FTC. 

To reiterate his point, @topshotfund zoomed in on one of the projects featured on the page: @primeapeplanet. He said that the project uses “scammy” tactics by buying fake followers. The attempt to show legitimacy seems to be working because the page now proudly boasts 85,00 followers. If you’re a newbie, you’d surely be impressed by this misguided number. He also accused the project of paying influencers and passing it off as organic interest.

Let’s Talk About the Numbers

What made this expose more compelling is that @topshotfund backed up his accusations with quantitative data. @nft claims that the projects on the page must pass their internal review as they take “the financial safety of our community very seriously.” In addition, they pride themselves on their stamp of approval being as “sure-a-bet-as-any.”

Unfortunately, the numbers contradict this.

He analyzed 36 of the promotions running on the page. -25 (70%) projects are currently at or below the mint price, -4 are blatant rugs and -0.16 avg / 0.06 are at the median floor price. He concluded that it is “safe to say your ETH is not a sure bet with @NFT.” Check out the table below to see the undebatable numbers: 

Despite all the red flags, the page earns a minimum of $100k per campaign!

What’s Next?

One thing’s for sure, @NFT is aware of the viral thread because despite not releasing a statement, they have been on defensive mode. Aside from sweeping their page, they’ve also changed their profile pic away from the 800 ETH bored ape their founder @jf_nft bought.

The evidence is damning and puts Mark Cuban in a bad light. Crypto Twitter is eagerly waiting for his response because over the past months, he has been very active in the space. Together with Coinbase, GaryVee and Dapper Labs, he invested in Eternal NFT Marketplace. The platform will focus on minting NFTs from Twitch stream clips.