De’Aaron Fox Abruptly Shuts Down NFT Project After $1.5 Million in Sales

Sacramento Kings guard De'Aaron Fox apparently botched an NFT project and fans appear to be left holding the bag.

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.

Action Network's attempt to reach Fox's agent, Chris Gaston, was unsuccessful.

The website used to launch and mint the NFTs is now offline. Most social media accounts made for the project are also gone, and the Discord is almost entirely empty.

Fox disabled some comments on social media but still has one of the NFTs as his profile picture on Twitter.