Official Formula 1 NFT (non-fungible token) game F1 Delta Time has closed after its publishers, Animoca Brands, said their licence had not been renewed.
Some players of the game spent sums of up to £200,000 acquiring one-off F1 car models in a variety of liveries as well as other digital assets. Animoca said in a statement they will “ensure that current owners of F1 Delta Time assets are rewarded for their loyalty and support.”F1 Delta Time was launched in March 2019. Two months later Animoca announced the first NFT sold for the game, known as 1-1-1, had been exchanged for 415.9 ETH, valued at £88,535 ($113,000). It was purchased by Vignesh Sundaresan, who uses the alias MetaKovan, and is reported to have spent tens of millions of dollars on digital artworks.
Later F1 Delta Time NFTs fetched higher prices, including one sold to raise funds for Australia’s recovery efforts from the 2020 bushfires, which was bought for £207,000 ($288,000).
However following the expiration of its F1 licence, Animoca announced the F1 Delta Time game had ceased operations. The F1 Delta Time website closed in mid-March.
“This is just the beginning of our plan to provide our F1 Delta Time players with expanded value for their ownership of F1 Delta Time NFTs and to thank them for their involvement in the REVV Motorsport ecosystem,” Animoca added.
NFTs grew in popularity during 2021, in what Animoca described as “the great NFT awakening”. However many have expressed scepticism over the long-term values of NFTs, as well as concerns over the cryptocurrency technology they depend on.
In June last year Formula 1 announced a sponsorship deal with cryptocurrency platform Crypto.com, which branded the series’ Sprint Qualifying races and an overtaking award.
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BasCB (@bascb)
1st April 2022, 7:41
Right. I guess I am not the only one who was not aware (or just had completely forgotten about) this being a thing at all then?
Glad they revoked the licence so this nonsense cash grab could be put down.
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
1st April 2022, 8:04
Is it really a joke when we live in the NFT pyramid scheme dystopian future already?
jff
1st April 2022, 11:59
NFT is a really good concept (including the blockchain technology behind it).
The problem is the same as with many crypto currencies, the dangerous mix of hype and ignorance surrounding these concepts makes them easy tools for pyramid cowboys and pump & dump charlatans.
James (@laughingorc)
1st April 2022, 18:01
No it isn’t. It’s an utterly pointless concept intended to make people rich of the back of idiots.
Miane
2nd April 2022, 21:33
You clearly doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Someone can use a knife to kill or to cut a potato, technology isn’t to blame for human faults. Glad that people like you was ignored through history, so we could move on from steam engines and valve computers.
Nord Yum
5th April 2022, 15:14
Digital media can be copied endlessly and anyone who is trying to prevent the technology for being itself by creating fake digital quotas to increase value is not on the right side of technological history.
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
1st April 2022, 8:13
So I thought this Delta Time thing was an April fools thing. I never knew it existed, never mind got shut down!
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
1st April 2022, 8:24
Be glad, because the suckers that did know and did buy into it are now out of a ton of cash while the owners are making off with the earnings.
Let this be a lesson for anyone thinking about getting into this nonsense. Don’t.
Tommy C (@tommy-c)
1st April 2022, 8:43
Surely I can’t be the only one who simply does not understand this concept. You can spend a couple of hundred dollars on a highly detailed replica which you can hold and observe and enjoy at any time. What is the appeal of a digital version of the same thing which sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars? I feel like I’m missing something. I don’t get it…
Martin (@f1hornet)
1st April 2022, 9:26
I also don’t understand how this is described as a game. What do you actually do in the game? Why do you need to buy an NFT to participate? It’s all so weird.
Jason (@jasonj)
2nd April 2022, 12:21
@tommy-c You are not the only one, it seems those of that grew up living in a real tangible world have trouble contemplating ownership of technology driven trinkets that are completely worthless unless a hype driven campaign is pushing it. For people that put faith or value in speculating that NFTs will increase in value and can be eventually sold, well, someone has already sold them ocean front property for the bridge the already bought.
A new religion pops up every day, but very few survive. These will eventually fall away like the e-gold they are bought with.
Miane
2nd April 2022, 21:39
When you buy Art NFTs you think it will raise in value for any reason (someone famous can use it, for example). Or you’re just rich and want to spend a lot of money. Most of the people that buy high price NFT are people that made a lot of money with crypto, they like to spend it in it’s own ecosystem.
You need to take note that NFT is a technology, people can think of many uses to it. Imagine if we turn all ours properties into NFTs. The person who owns the NFT actually owns the real property. So what’s the use for that? It’s the start of a world where you don’t need regulation and much of the burocracy from governments. (That’s why dictatorships don’t like NFT and blockchain concepts).
Guilherme
3rd April 2022, 1:37
That would be a true nightmarish dystopia. Thankfully this hasn’t and will never happen, no matter how much crypto enthusiasts would like the world to believe. Also I love how you talk about regulations as if they are a bad thing. Hundreds of years of development in law and economics helped us build systems protection and conflict resolution, but crypto people would have us exchange that for deflationary “currencies” and digital “ownership” receipts that confer the holder no practical ownership rights whatsoever, all with no systems to revert fraud or theft. I, for one, truly don’t want to live in this proposed techno-anarchocapitalist society.
As for F1 and this NFT project, good riddance. Can’t wait for all these token exchange sponsors that to vanish from our TV screens as well
graham228221 (@graham228221)
1st April 2022, 8:57
Haha – isn’t the whole point of the blockchain is that it is a permanent, uneditable ledger?
Does anyone know exactly what is actually happening here technically? I assume that the NFT itself still exists, it is registered on the blockchain afterall, but the actual digital asset it represents (say a jpeg held on an Animoca server) no longer exists?
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
1st April 2022, 9:19
The NFT still exists since it’s essentially just a receipt to that part of the blockchain, but without the game for the asset, it has now become virtually worthless.
In other words, whoever bought into it lost all their money, while Animoca is laughing its way to the bank.
Here’s the go-to NFT example to make it clear as day what happens when you buy one:
Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
1st April 2022, 9:47
The “better” NFT contains the image itself so I would imagine the assets should continue to exist but they can’t create or sell any new one. It might actually increase the value of the one already in circulation and Animoca will still earn some money based on future transaction.
I am still amazed by the gap between the useful potential of crypto and the derivative usage + the general misconception.
NFT should be, in my opinion, an ownership contract linked with a physical object/art piece. I like the idea that an artist might earn some money on future transaction of his art but I don’t get the digital art thing. On the other hand, people has been paying fortunes for some in game items before, is it much different?
The same way some crypto tokens are useful for transactions between connected items, or an easy bridge between game and real currencies, but do they need to be priced and sold? Cryptos are definitely there to stay but I expect them to evolve a lot once people understand better what they are and the different types, as well as their actual application (or lack of).
Aapje (@aapje)
2nd April 2022, 11:03
@jeanrien
No NFT has the image in there. That would be immensely costly. It’s always just a link. It can be true that this link goes to a specific marketplace, rather than a server of the seller, but then you still depend on the marketplace remaining up.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
1st April 2022, 11:15
Good. And no symphathy for people that spend money on NFTs either.
Fab
1st April 2022, 11:16
Can they do the same with EA Sports than dont know what solving bugs mean ? 😇
spoutnik (@spoutnik)
1st April 2022, 16:29
Overhyped emptiness paid with volatile empty crypto.
What is the average timespan between the announcement of such new service and its collapse ?
Time and again we get to hear this, I’m amazed people still buy this kind of stuff as most of those just look like money laundering.
ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
1st April 2022, 16:56
Great news
Lewisham Milton
1st April 2022, 23:50
Three years to the day, by any chance?
Why is this a headline, on a racing news site?!
Sergey Martyn
2nd April 2022, 5:59
Wasn’t it April Fool’s joke? Anyway, those fools got what they deserved by taking NFT bait.