De'Aaron Fox pulled off an NFT rug pull in the scummiest way possible
(Swipathefox #5584 NFT, via opensea.io)
NFTs are taking over social media. It seems like every major company or influencer has some sort of collaboration to lure in their fans to mooch more money off of them for personal gain while implying these jpeg images actually hold utility. The latest installment of “what kind of idiot spends hundreds of dollars on a jpeg image you can just screenshot” comes from our beloved world of sports. Sacramento Kings guard De’Aaron Fox just yanked the rug from under his “Swipathefox” NFT project, raking in over $1.5 million in profits while leaving holders in the dust.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with what the hell an NFT or a rug pull is, you aren’t alone, but hopefully this article gives you at least some background knowledge of the buffoonery that Fox just pulled off.
De’Aaron Fox launched this “Swipathefox” Project in December, where there would be 6,000 unique fox-like characters minted on the Ethereum blockchain and supported by the Opensea secondary marketplace. The project originally offered giveaways, exclusive chats with De’Aaron, and more just for owning one of these digital collectibles (which cost $400 each). In other terms, pseudo-utility.
Fox followed through with quite literally NONE of his promises to this community of holders as just this past week the project's website was shut down, the discord and social media pages behind it vanished, and Fox turned off all replies on social media assumingly avoiding a wave of angry supporters. For those still curious as to what a rug pull is, there you have it. The creator of the NFT runs away with all the profits from primary sales, while the holders are then left with an absolutely useless NFT as there is no longer a project or team that exists to support it.
Rug pulls have been a major problem in the NFT community as people have run away with hundreds of millions of dollars by essentially lying to and scamming those who buy their projects. This one hits on a different level, though. What kind of multi-millionaire professional athlete needs to rob their fans of $1.5 million for a little extra pocket change? The answer is no one, but apparently, De’Aaron Fox left his morals in Kentucky once he got drafted.
The difference between this and a traditional rug pull is, most people that run away with money like this are hidden in the shadows of the internet, hiding their true identity from buyers. Meanwhile, De’Aaron Fox is an international star… there’s no hiding from this. Fox did his best by releasing one of the saddest attempts at an apology I’ve seen in a while with this message to his now non-existent Swipathefox Discord community:
(Screenshot courtesy of Swipathefox Discord server)
To summarize, Fox is basically saying: “Sorry I’m a dumbass that didn’t realize how busy of a schedule NBA players have so I don’t have time for this anymore lol good luck bozos.” Can he not just hire someone to run the project? He is making MILLIONS off the sales of these NFTs alone, there is simply no excuse for it.
The worst part of this “apology” might be the fact that Fox offered “All-Star” holders (people who own 5 or more of these pointless NFTs) a signed jersey to make up for their financial losses. So these people essentially paid a minimum of $2,000 for a signed Kings jersey. That’s comical.
Personally, I would love to see NFTs successfully bleed over into the sports world, but if greedy bastards like Fox are running the projects; we won’t be making any progress for a while.