De’Aaron Fox is currently the starting point guard for the Sacramento Kings, well-renowned for his ability to slash to the rim and score. Currently, De’Aaron Fox is averaging 21.8 PPG, 3.9 RPG, and 5.1 APG.
NFTs are currently a very popular trend, and it seems as though De’Aaron Fox had an NFT of his own. Other NBA stars such as Stephen Curry notably have NFT projects of their own.
However, De’Aaron Fox has recently shut his NFT project down, after getting $1.5 million in sales from investors. This decision was obviously unpopular with investors, as their only promised compensation for losing their money on Fox’s NFTs thus far is a signed De’Aaron Fox jersey. Alex Kolodziej of Action Network reported the news.
The 24-year-old fired up the project, titled “SwipaTheFox,” in mid-December, and launched it in January. Fans were able to bid on a collection of NFTs through his OpenSea page and NFT holders got direct access to Fox in his Discord channel, plus other perks. It was promised to be a high-utility project that would give his biggest fans benefits for holding these tokens.
But Fox announced on Feb. 23 that the project would end, with no plans to return any of the money.
Fox tweeted Thursday afternoon:
“I want to address an NFT project we launched recently. The project launch was ill timed. I delegated certain aspects to the launch of the NFT in an attempt to partner with professionals. We weren’t happy with the execution & demand on my time and attention during the NBA season.”
It’s unclear exactly how much money Fox’s and his team generated from the project, but there were 6,005 NFTs in the collection that minted for .085 ETH. When it launched in mid-January, one Ethereum was priced at around $3,100, meaning each one cost over $250 to mint.
With 6,005 selling out, the mint sales alone likely generated over $1.5 million. The team would also get 10% royalties on every secondary sale.
Fox’ swift timing to end the project — which included incentives such as scholarships and tickets — didn’t sit well with fans. After the project shut down, he promised consumers who purchased more than five NFT’s (roughly $1,300) a signed Fox jersey — priced around the online market at about $100.
It remains to be seen if De’Aaron Fox will end up addressing the backlash caused by his decision to end the project. While it is obviously a decent gesture of him to offer signed jerseys to people that purchased more than five of his NFTs, that clearly doesn’t cover the amount of money that people have spent on that amount of his NFTs.
Hopefully, we see a resolution to this situation sooner rather than later. It is definitely unfortunate that a lot of people ended up losing money on their investments. Perhaps we’ll see them get some sort of other reimbursements in the future.
