Riley accidentally sent the asset to a burn address while going through the unfamiliar process of wrapping NFTs, removing the NFT from circulation.
A CryptoPunks NFT worth 77 Ether was sent to a burn address to be destroyed forever. But the collector only wanted to use it as collateral to borrow money to buy another NFT.
Brandon Riley paid 77 ETH on March 13 to add CryptoPunk #685 to his NFT collection. He plans to keep it for a long time.
Now feels like an appropriate time to introduce #BAYC 586 to #Punk 685 (acquired a week ago). Hope to hold both for a decade… LGF!
— Brandon Riley (@vitalitygrowth) March 19, 2023pic.twitter.com/SLb68rY6MR
Riley had been investing for a long time, so he knew how important it was to buy new NFTs right before the crypto markets started a new boom market. So, he chose to use a well-known technique called “wrapping” to borrow money against CryptoPunk #685.
Yup, prolly didn't to the first part to create a dedicated proxy address, but instead used the default proxy address which is burn. "9. proxyInfo to get your proxy wallet address"
— 0x-hodl.eth (@0x_hodl) March 24, 2023
During the strange process of “wrapping” NFTs, Riley sent the asset to a “burn” address, which took the NFT out of circulation.
A CoinGecko report revealed that NFT wash trades went up by 126% in February. Wash trading for X2Y2, Blur, and LooksRare increased for the fourth consecutive month, with a total volume of $580 million.