Reality Hits for "Art" Collectors as Million-Dollar Nike NFTs Vanish From Internet

A masterclass in "play stupid games, win stupid prizes." Going Dork Remember when the guys who spent millions of dollars on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) would get mad at detractors for saying they shelled out for glorified JPGs? Turns out those critics may have been onto something. As 404 Media reports, tens of thousands of NFTs from a collection known as CloneX RTFKT — a collaboration between Nike's "digital sneakers" venture and Japanese visual artist Takashi Murakami — started to disappear because the team behind the effort didn't shell out to keep the expensive digital images hosted. According to the crypto site Blockworks, Nike's RTFKT — pronounced, goofily, as "artifact" — NFTs sold for $60,000 a pop minimum just a few years ago, and would sometimes climb into the millions for rarer versions from the CloneX collab. Earlier this month, more than 19,000 NFTs from that collaborative collection went up in smoke. In their stead, black boxes appeared with white text advising viewers ... Read full article.