Brandon Riley, an NFT collector and investor, recently acquired CryptoPunk #685 for 77 ETH (approximately $135,000 USD) with the intention of holding onto it for the long term. However, as an experienced investor, Riley also recognized the importance of procuring new NFTs before the crypto market takes off into a new bull market. He wanted to use his CryptoPunk as collateral to borrow money and invest in new NFTs.

To do this, Riley attempted to wrap his CryptoPunk using a technique known as tokenization. Tokenization involves locking an NFT in a smart contract and creating a new token that represents the value of the NFT. This token can then be used as collateral for loans or other financial transactions.

However, in the process of tokenizing his CryptoPunk, Riley made a fatal mistake. Instead of sending the NFT to the smart contract, he accidentally sent it to a burn address, which is a wallet that permanently deletes any assets sent to it. The CryptoPunk was gone, forever erased from circulation.