Nike Faces a $5 Million Lawsuit Over Its Collapsed NFT Project RTFKT

Nike is under fire after a group of investors filed a class action lawsuit, accusing the sportswear giant of causing massive financial losses by shutting down RTFKT, its Web3-focused subsidiary acquired in 2021.

The investors claim Nike’s actions led to a sharp collapse in the value of Nike-branded NFTs, wiping out millions in investments.

Nike Accused of Promoting Unregistered Securities Through NFTs

According to court documents, Nike allegedly “rugpulled” the community by closing RTFKT and cutting off demand for the associated digital assets.

The plaintiffs argue that Nike used its brand power and marketing expertise to promote what they describe as unregistered securities before suddenly abandoning the project.

The lawsuit claims Nike capitalized on the crypto boom to drive NFT sales. Investors purchased the NFTs hoping they would increase in value, thanks to Nike’s promotional efforts.

However, once RTFKT was dissolved, these incentives vanished. Buyers who once anticipated exclusive rewards and profitable resales saw their investments lose value almost instantly.

“Because The Nike NFTs derived their value from the success of a given promoter and project – here, Nike and its marketing efforts – investors purchased this digital asset with the hope that its value would increase in the future as the project grows in popularity based on the Nike brand,” the lawsuit stated.

The complaint highlights that promises of completing quests, unlocking limited-edition products, and opportunities for secondary sales were key motivations for purchasing the NFTs.

With the collapse of RTFKT’s operations, these incentives evaporated, leaving investors with worthless digital assets.

Adding to their argument, the plaintiffs insist that Nike NFTs qualify as securities under federal law. They claim Nike failed to register the digital assets with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or disclose the associated risks.

The investors argued that they would not have purchased the digital assets at inflated prices if they had known the true risks.

“Plaintiff and others would never have purchased the Nike NFTs at the prices they did, or at all, had they known that the Nike NFTs were unregistered securities or that Nike would cause the rug to be pulled out from under them,” the investors argued.

The plaintiffs seek a jury trial and damages exceeding $5 million for the alleged violations of consumer protection laws in New York, California, Florida, and Oregon.

RTFKT Suffers Technical Glitches

Meanwhile, this lawsuit comes as investor frustrations were further amplified on April 24 when technical issues prevented the Nike-linked NFT images from displaying.  

RTFKT’s head of technology, Samuel Cardillo, explained that the outage resulted from a Cloudflare contract ending earlier than expected.

“Beginning of April, the decision to stay on Cloudflare Free was (finally) approved and I started the work to move the infrastructure. Somehow this morning Cloudflare decided to move to the Free plan few days before the end of the contract which also triggered that bug in which Cloudflare refuses to stream images and videos,” Cardillo explained.

While most images have since been restored, Cardillo is now moving RTFKT’s NFT files to Arweave’s decentralized storage platform using AR Drive. This step aims to protect NFT holders from similar outages in the future.