Nike faces a group of a group of NFTS buyers who said they had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars when the sportswear giant closed his digital arm, RTFKT. The trial was filed on Friday in Brooklyn, New York.
The principal applicant, the Australian investor Jagdeep Cheema, complaints Nike's decision to close RTFKT in December 2024 suddenly destroyed the value of the NFTS. Digital assets were carried out and sold under Nike and RTFKT brands.
Buyers complained that Nike disconnected the project without warning. NFTs have since cooled. Some of the NFTs have stopped properly showing images, which has aggravated the worries that the assets were no longer supported.
The complainants say that in their legal file that they would not have bought any of the NFT if they were aware that they were unregistered titles. They also say that they would not have invested if they knew that Nike could cancel the project so quickly.
The group requests damages of at least $ 5 million. The trial says that Nike has violated consumer protection laws in several American states, including New York, California, Florida and Oregon.
Based in Beaverton, Oregon, Nike has not yet commented on the trial.
The trial is that the courts define the NFT as titles
Are an even more fundamental legal survey for disputes: are NFTS titles? This is a problem that US regulators and courts struggle with. This is something that concerns many investors: what rights and protections are in place when they buy this active.
The group claims in the pursuit that Nike sold the NFTS without registering them with financial agencies. That, they say, flies in front of the laws to protect investors.
The case is part of an increasing wave of disputes involving NFT and cryptographic assets. While digital collectibles are accompanied, companies rushing to sometimes collect without clearly established rules or responsibility. This case could define a precedent to treat losses related to NFT.
Phillip Kim, the lawyer representing the complainants, did not immediately return a request for additional comments to the case.
Users report problems in RTFKT NFT after stopping
RTFKT, pronounced “Artefact”, was once praised as the big game of Nike in the future of fashion and game. The athletic giant bought the startup in December 2021, describing it as a daring movement in the next generation of collectibles.
However, after closing the service in December 2024, many users said they had experienced technical problems with their NFT. For example, the photos of the popular elements in the clone nodes of the Clone X series have not been displayed. Instead, potential buyers have received a “maintenance page” from Cloudflare – a web service provider – indicating that the content had been deleted.
This led to speculation that Nike had stopped paying for servers or server platforms that hosted NFT visuals. Certain digital arts have resurfaced online since then, but the episode has aroused serious questions about a digital art work linked to a centralized service and its long -term value.
In December, Nike said that the innovation that RTFKT will experience through the many creators and projects it has inspired. But this promise sounds hollow for many buyers.
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