Adidas sold more than $22 million in NFTs, but it hit a few snags along the way

The whole 30,000 of Adidas’ “Into the Metaverse” NFTs were sold in a couple of hours after putting them on sale Friday.

Each NFT cost 0.2 ETH, which currently equates to about $765, and the company sold 29,620 NFTs (“Adidas and partners” held onto 380 for “future events”), meaning the company earned more than $22 million from the sales in the span of an afternoon.

The company offered 20,000 of the NFTs to people who own special Adidas Originals tokens, GMoney tokens, Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs, and Pixel Vault NFTs — making an already hard-to-get NFT available first to a very limited set of people.

Previously, Adidas created the NFTs in partnership with Bore Ape Yacht Club, Punks Comics and Jimoney. Meanwhile, buying an NFT gives owners access to exclusive physical items, such as hoodies and tracksuits worn by Adidas’ Bored app, and digital experiences to come. However, physical trading will not be available until 2022, according to adidas FAQ, so buyers essentially pre-order expensive only for clothing.

It is worth mentioning that early access minting began shortly before 1:30PM ET, however, Adidas quickly hit an issue with Mutant Ape Yacht Club owners, resulting in it not being able to mint the NFTs that forced it to pause.

The company promised to reimburse everyone who lost gas fees (which are fees taken in order to mint the NFT) while there were problems. It’s unclear if Adidas plans to offer more NFTs in the future, but it teases on its website that “this is just the beginning.”

Given how quickly the first batch sold out and how much money Adidas made in just a few hours, it seems unlikely this will be the only NFT offering from the apparel maker.