Why Nike Should Sell NFTs of Their Shoes

After months of obsessively checking the Nike SNKRS app, I finally scored my first pair of Air Jordan 1s. It took a lot of patience (and a lot of L’s), but I finally got them! As I held the shoe in my hands, admiring every detail, it hit me — there are hundreds of versions of this exact silhouette, all in different colorways, each with its own level of hype.

That made me think about something deeper. It reminded me of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych — how he took one image and turned it into countless unique versions. And more recently, it reminded me of NFT projects like CryptoPunks, CryptoKitties, and Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Then, like a lightning bolt, an idea struck: Nike should drop crypto-collectibles of their sneakers!

Picture it — an NFT collection of Air Jordan 1s, each with a one-of-a-kind, algorithmically generated colorway. I can already imagine them selling out in seconds and reselling for crazy amounts, just like the physical shoes do today. Only this time, it’s not leather and laces — it’s pixels.

And the reason it would work? The brand. That swoosh alone gives the product massive value. Humans are hardwired to want to signal status to each other — it’s part of our nature.

Thanks to blockchain technology, we can now verify ownership of digital assets — which is a game changer. We’re not talking about just buying a downloadable file. We’re talking about a whole new billion-dollar economy.

Brands like Nike (and honestly, every company with big intellectual property) would be crazy not to dive into the NFT space. Just last month, OpenSea — an NFT marketplace — pulled in more revenue than Etsy. If that’s not a wake-up call, I don’t know what is.

The NFT world feels a lot like the internet did back in the ’90s — brand new, full of possibility, and just getting started. We haven’t even seen the heavy hitters like Disney, the NFL, or Nike enter the space properly yet. But trust me... that day is coming.