The evolution of the sports NFT boom, and the risks that still surround it all – The Athletic

It’s been a year since NBA Top Shot took the collectibles world by storm and helped usher concepts such as non-fungible tokens and blockchain into the wider public consciousness.

The chatter last winter was about the eye-popping resale prices for slick video clips of LeBron James dunks and Stephen Curry triples, which are packaged as a sort of NBA-licensed digital trading card that could be collected or resold on a peer-to-peer secondary market for hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Folks were quick to point out that the highlights are available for free on YouTube and elsewhere, but buyers enjoyed the unique and serialized digital ownership of a specially formatted and licensed clip — that’s where the blockchain tech comes in, acting as a public ledger for each NFT transaction — and the ability to flip them for profit.

Other NFT projects quickly emerged, including a digital painting that sold for $69 million — the sort of transactions that gets global attention and fuels fresh interest in a concept new to the general public.

NBA Top Shot’s sudden emergence also further energized pushback against NFTs, blockchain and cryptocurrency. Critics point out that the energy necessary for such technology is bad for the Earth’s environment, and that many crypto and NFT projects are risky speculation or even outright swindles that inflate a financial bubble.