No sport seems to have embraced NFTs — short for non-fungible tokens — quite like the NBA has over the past year.
NBA Top Shot was one of the technology’s first commercial hits and several players have become investors in and proponents of the blockchain technology that powers NFTs.
This week, however, the first NFT scandal also hit the league. De’Aaron Fox, the star point guard for the Sacramento Kings, saw his NFT project dissolve suddenly, leaving investors befuddled and again showing concerns about the tokens themselves.
Fox’s NFT project, called SwipaTheFox, mostly disappeared Wednesday after having pulled in roughly $1.5 million after it was announced in December. The project disappeared without any warning — it had more than 100,000 followers in its Discord channel — and scrubbed its social media.
It had promised to create a metaverse for fans of Fox, scholarships to the University of Kentucky, where he went to school for one year, and other goodies. Fox later tweeted that the project was “ill-timed” and that it took too large a burden on him during the course of the current NBA season. He also said that he plans to continue with his NFTs in the future.
It is the highest-profile NFT project to go bust in NBA circles.
Fox signed a max extension in Sacramento in 2020 and has become the face of that franchise. He averaged 25.2 points and 7.2 assists last season and is averaging 21.7 points and 5.1 assists this season. He has talked repeatedly about his love for video games and comics, and debuted plans for his own manga last season, also titled after his nickname, Swipa The Fox.