Less than three years after the Nike acquisition, the "Supreme of digital fashion" is set to close.

The digital streetwear brand RTFKT (pronounced artifact) announced on X—formally Twitter—that it was shutting down. This didn’t surprise observers from the sneaker and crypto communities, particularly Nick O’Neill, who speculated on the outcome on the same platform in March. “Two years ago, Nike acquired RTFKT for a reported one billion dollar sum. Choosing to make RTFKT founders [Benoit Pagotto, Steven ‘Zaptio’ Vasilev, and Chris Le] incredibly rich,” said O’Neill. “Now, according to our sources, Nike’s shutting down RTFKT this year. Will that be a poor choice? I’ll leave you to decide.” Zaptio's weak attempt to refute closure rumours while ignoring the supposed "undisclosed sum" is interesting. Strangely, O'Neill's tweet remained largely unnoticed until it was too late (this is kinda odd; the American University alum isn't some rando on the ‘net). With the sportswear brand’s dip in revenue, we’d imagine Nike’s board chatted it up with its former CEO, John Donahoe, well before his departure, which he announced mid-September.

In theory, RTFKT is doable. The founders aimed to establish RTFKT as the "Supreme of digital fashion.” (Eyeroll.) Sure, Supreme pioneered the concept of streetwear coolness that many emerging brands sought to emulate. But clearly, these puppies were so caught up in their own hype that they forgot the assignment.

RTFKT’s MO was providing sneakerheads with digital assets known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). For instance, a digital cloud known as blockchain houses ultra-exclusive Nike Dunks. The buyer who owns the Dunks gets a unique code stored on a ledger. Only certain blockchains, primarily Ethereum, can trade these NFTs at outrageous prices, hence the ephemeral hype. Fashion NFTs aim to encourage an innovative approach to self-expression in the digital realm. The thing is, if you can’t get a physical drop, or if you have to go through all these hoops to nab a pair, especially if you’re paying beyond top dollar, does anybody got time for that?

It’s difficult to know whether RTFKT—founded in 2020 and acquired by Nike shortly afterwards—was a ‘real’ streetwear brand or simply a cash grab. According to Vogue Business, it raked in $185.3 million in NFT revenue in less than three years. Contributing to the bag were collabs, first with then-teen digital artist FEWOCiOUS, followed by bigger names like Takashi Murakami, beauty brand Shu Uemura, luggage brand Rimowa, and crypto hardware wallet maker Ledger. Inevitably, as with most fads, the NFT hype went into overkill until the novelty wore off. Early on, The Information reported that sneakerheads weren’t that hyped on the streetwear/sneaker NFT trend, and even Nike decided to cool off on its .SWOOSH virtual platform.

Had RTFKT kept things underground, which is the point of streetwear, it probably would’ve survived. However, after securing their initial $8 million investment, they probably felt the pressure to scale up. By the looks of things, though, it appears RTFKT and Nike were out to make it rain… right into the gutter.