Adult film star Lana Rhoades raises $1.5M from NFTs, then rug pulls

• Lana Rhoades has been pushing her NFT project known as CryptoSis and managed to bring in $1.5 million for the NFT collection from her fans.
• However, she appears to have rug pulled her fans and vanished with the money, went on a Twitter rant calling out her critics, and then deleted the Twitter account.

Cryptocurrencies have been entangled with the adult film industry for years now, with some like Pornhub only accepting crypto for premium services and others like OnlyFans turned to crypto after being booted out by banking partners. The latest is Lana Rhoades, a leading adult film star, but her entry into the world of crypto seems to have ended on a sour note with reports of a $1.5 million rug pull through an NFTs collection.

Rhoades has been pushing her CryptoSis NFT collection for a couple of months now through her Twitter account, which had 1.5 million followers and her Instagram account, which has over 16 million followers. She described the NFTs as a “lucrative investment for holders” and promised to work tirelessly to increase their value. At launch, they were going for $261 on OpenSea.

Rhoades said on several occasions that she expected the NFTs to fly off the shelves at launch. But they didn’t and to push them out quicker, she reduced the number to 6,969, and then to 6,069. They still didn’t attract as much interest as she had initially thought.

However, Rhoades managed to raise $1.5 million from the sale of the NFTs. Shortly after the sale, the NFTs’ value went on a freefall and at press time, they retain the current minimum price for an NFT on OpenSea at $26, 90 percent below their original value.

Rhoades took off with $1.5 million, justifying it via Discord as she claimed there were developers who needed to be paid.

Her fans and the wider crypto community haven’t taken kindly to it. One of the purchasers said that he invested $4,000 out of the $6,000 he had saved up and lost almost all of it. The investor claimed to be jobless and with a two-year-old son. “If only someone bought my Christmas Lana,” he posted, referring to the NFTs.

Coffeezilla, a popular YouTuber who busts online scammers, tore into Rhoades in a video this week, calling her out for making promises to investors and falling through.

Rhoades took to Twitter and Discord to defend herself. She claimed to be “upset by the amount of negative and rude comments” being directed at her.

“I have never and will never scam anyone. I don’t need to nor do things like that even cross my fucking mind,” she said on Twitter.

In response to the YouTube video calling her a scammer, Rhoades called the YouTuber a “sicko who will do anything for views.” She added that she wants nothing to do with NFTs anymore (after cashing out $1.5 million from investors).