NIKE’s Acquisition Of RTFKT

3 min readDec 15, 2021

Picture taken from RTFKT Studios Footwear

Introduction

When Someone says NIKE, what do you think of? Perhaps a prominent sports and apparel brand, the iconic tick, its catchy slogan “Just do it”, or that sick pair of Chicago Off White x Air Jordans Sneakers. Well, regardless, I am sure it wouldn’t have been crypto.

“So Marcus, what are you getting at? Don’t tell me there’s a NIKE coin out there now!” Well, close, but not quite. As of December 13, 2021, NIKE has successfully acquired NFT brand RTFKT, a company that leverages on blockchain technology to create digital sneakers and other virtual collectibles. RTFKT was founded in 2020 by Benoit Pagotto, Chris Le and Steven Vasilev, and has since grown to be a strong player in the NFT marketplace.

The Effects

Following the announcement of the successful acquisition, secondary sales for RTFKT’s CloneX doubled in price from 3 ETH (already at a premium from its 2 ETH retail price) to 6 ETH, doubling in price. To put this into perspective, 6 ETH is roughly translated to USD 24K, or 6000 plates of chicken rice.

The upward spike in price signals strong investor outlook on the merger, as well as greater liquidity for RTFKT’s tokens.

What This Means For The Industry

While definitely a juicy piece of news, the horizontal acquisition of RTFKT by players in the sneaker industry was bound to happen soon, and who better by than sneaker giant, creator of the iconic AJs and Air Force 1s, NIKE themselves. The underlying synergies of this acquisition seem valuable enough as well. While hard synergies may be less obvious, soft synergies such as cross market sales could lead to significantly greater revenue for both the sneaker giant and RTFKT, especially from the THICC wallets of crypto enthusiasts who have made straight bank from the crypto bull market.

In fact, NIKE isn’t the first to the punch. In November, NIKE’s close competitor and long term rival, Adidas, also decided to dive into the potent NFT market, announcing a partnership with exchange platform Coinbase, while also purchasing a virtual piece of land called the “adiVerse” in the blockchain world The Sandbox.

The movement of these sneaker giants into the NFT universe signals the readiness of such firms to take their already intense competition into the virtual realm, and might hint at the introduction of other forms of apparel into the digital arena as well — maybe even that of the entire hypebeast industry.

We once had the Supreme brick, which now has a resell value of $1000 per brick. For all you know, you may be the next owner of a $2000, 64-bit rock with a logo slapped on top.

So Why The Sudden Shift?

I believe the sudden surge of companies into the crypto space can be largely attributed to the bull-market in the past year. Coupled with the announcement of the Metaverse, the cryptocurrency market was very much booming. A good indicator would be the fact that crypto giant Bitcoin hit an all time high of more than 68k USD in November 2021, alas, before being hit by Omicron and the mass liquidation of virtual assets by crypto bears.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the greatest takeaway from this saga is that crypto is in and crypto is in now. Amidst a turbulent lifespan, the growth of Bitcoin and other alt-coins like Ethereum, as well as the gradual integration of businesses into the virtual realm testify the weight of this technology on the world today. The expansion of businesses that are “physical” in nature into digital markets was bound to happen sooner or later, and is likely to be here to stay. Perhaps one day, we will meet in the Metaverse, each rocking our fresh pair of digital Air Force 1s.