How a collector accidentally destroyed an NFT worth Rs 1 crore: 'No one’s fault but my own'

An NFT collector recently destroyed his CryptoPunk #685 -- an NFT that he had bought weeks ago for 77 ether or about Rs 1 crore -- by accident while he was being too careful trying to wrap it.

Wrapping is a process that allows NFTs to be traded on Ethereum marketplaces such as OpenSea or Rarible, and while Brandon Riley was following a step-by-step guide on how to complete the transaction, he accidentally sent his NFT to a burn address. Narrating the story on Twitter, Riley said that the accident caused him to lose a third of his net worth in a single transaction.

A private key is a password used to access the funds held inside a digital wallet and a burn address is a virtual wallet that doesn’t have a private key, so no one can access it. Such wallets usually used to permanently destroy NFTs, often to create scarcity and to potentially cause the price of similar NFTs to rise.

"Today I accidentally burned a cryptopunks NFT trying to wrap punk 685. I was so focused on following the instructions exactly, that I slipped up, destroying a third of of my net worth in a single transaction," Riley tweeted. "Please keep in mind I’m not a dev (developer), not at all familiar with these contracts, and don’t really understand how wrapped punks work."