Australian crypto influencer and Nuggets News founder Alex Saunders is facing backlash over his nonfungible token (NFT) auction from late concluding year.

Nuggets News is a paid group providing technical analysis and crypto tips to subscribers that was founded by Saunders in 2022. As of Tuesday, Nuggets News had roughly 146,000 subscribers on YouTube.

In November 2022, Saunders minted 100 NFTs comprising tokenized tickets he said would grant holders access to an sectional Nuggets News community headquarters beingness developed in the crypto-powered virtual metaverse Decentraland.

Saunders priced the NFTs at 1 Ether (ETH) each, worth around $570 at the fourth dimension. Saunders reportedly sold all NFTs within weeks of the drop, accumulating $57,000 from his supporters in total. At today's prices, 100 ETH is worth roughly $315,000.

In a mail service to Saunders' subscription-based Facebook group, the influencer touted the virtual headquarters equally "an educational, collaborative workspace in virtual reality" fitted with "professional offices" and even a function center.

According to a Monday report from the Australian Financial Review (AFR), Saunders has and so far failed to pay blockchain development studio Polygonal Mind for building the virtual headquarters.

Despite Saunders taking in $57,000 from his supporters, Polygonal Heed reportedly quoted the influencer less than 10,000 Australian dollars ($7,300) to complete the projection.

Polygonal Mind CEO Daniel Garcia claims that Saunders pushed back the projection's launch engagement multiple times despite the virtual headquarters having been fully built. Later learning about Saunders' alleged fiscal mishaps, Garcia told AFR he decided to write the project off:

"When we learned of all these other problems Alex has been having, we take drawn a line under this one and permit it go. Nosotros don't want to be associated with this kind of activeness."

"I believe he could accept made a lot of coin running this legitimate business, so why all this shady stuff?" Garcia added.

An anonymous investor told AFR they are considering taking legal activity confronting Saunders over the metaverse project. They also emphasized their dismay with the NFT'due south blueprint, which ensures that 50% of secondary sales will be pocketed by Saunders.

"So non merely did Alex Saunders get my money when I bought this NFT, he gets l percent of the toll if I on-sell it," they said.

Related: Alex Saunders sued for $350K by Nuggets News follower

On July 28, Cointelegraph reported that Saunders had get embroiled in controversy after his friends, followers and assembly went public about large sums of money owed to them by Saunders.

Saunders reportedly borrowed 5 Bitcoin (BTC) from popular YouTuber Bitboy Crypto and 30 ETH from supporter Ziv Himmelfarb. He reportedly requested to borrow fifty BTC from controversial HEX founder Richard Heart who went public with screenshots of private messages purporting to show Saunders requesting the loan.

Saunders also promoted his "Decentral Depository financial institution" stablecoin project to his followers, reportedly raising $11 million from his supporters since April. Even so, investors claim that transaction data for Saunders' wallets show that the influencer diverted roughly $1.2 meg of the funds raised for Decentral Banking concern to his personal wallets, with some of the funds then existence sent to crypto derivatives exchange FTX.