NBA Top Shot Sells $2.6 Million in NFTs in 30 Minutes

Dapper Labs' NBA Top Shot NFT collectibles were selling like hot cakes on Saturday, with 2,673 Series 2 Holo packs sold within some 30 minutes of their being made available for purchase.

NBA Top Shot NFT collectibles pairs the classic hobby of collecting cards with some modern technological twists. The digital cards are non-fungible tokens (NFTs), blockchain-powered digital assets with provable scarcity; they also pack in multimedia elements such as video-infused “moments”. All packs are sold on the NBA Top Shot website–the only place you can buy, sell or trade the virtual cards.

According to the official blog post, 25,000 people lined up for the drop, which points to a high demand for future Legendary drops, with a small number of collectors being able to access them.

How NFTs Blew Up in 2020

2020 brought with it many, many things, both bad and good. And while Bitcoin's bull run and the summer of DeFi grabbed the headlines, a quiet revolution was taking place in another corner of crypto: the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). NFTs have been around for a few years now, powering crypto collectibles like CryptoKitties—but they're little more than a proof of concept for the unique, non-replicable cryptocurrency tokens. This summer, NFTs came of age in the wake of the decentralized fin...

Michael Batnick of Ritholtz Wealth Management was among those who queued to get their hands on the in-demand NFT drop, but he faced some stiff competition.

“The demand for NBA Top Shot is insane. They sold 2,673 packs for $999 in under 30 minutes. I tried to grab a pack and there were 19,000 people ahead of me,” he wrote in a tweet.

Top Shot drop marred by glitches

The Saturday sale wasn’t plain sailing, though–a glitch in cookies for the test line on Friday enabled some users to buy packs without joining the real queue.

“Our drop had a flaw and our communications were unclear and inaccurate along the way. We respect you, your time, your feedback, and your collections and this was not the best way to show that,” admitted the team behind the drop.

The devs said that there’s no single solution to the issue, and “multiple tactics to keep scarcity modelled for the economy” will be needed.

Developed by Dapper Labs, the team behind the pioneering NFT game CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot launched in a public open beta last fall after a few months of closed testing. Several NBA players joined in on a $12 million investment round for Dapper Labs, which has launched its own blockchain for NFTs, Flow.