Hyundai Finally Made An NFT Worth Having

Hold up, everyone. We've just found the one NFT that actually has some tangible value. Hyundai has just taken one of the 10 non-fungible tokens it created when it launched the Santa Cruz pickup and made it fungible. Sort of. What we're trying to say is that Hyundai turned an NFT into a real truck. Way back in 2021, Hyundai revealed the Santa Cruz compact pickup truck. It was right about the peak of the NFT digital token's hype era, and automakers were scrambling to get on board. Fortunately for most automakers, the fad was already over by the time they got around to it. Not for Hyundai, though. It hit the mark in April 2021 and gave out 10 Santa Cruz NFTs through a sweepstake on its Twitter account. Those NFTs have turned out to be quite valuable, or at least one of them has.

Possibly as a way to hype the refreshed version of the truck, Hyundai is trying to make NFTs happen again. This time, though, it's willing to take one off of your hands instead of minting one for you. The call went out on Instagram to everyone, but it was looking for just 10 people - the 10 who currently hold one of the original Santa Cruz NFTs.

Whichever of those 10 owners replied with a comment and responded to the link in the bio first would get their NFT exchanged for an actual 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz pickup - a real truck, one they could drive around.

Token Holder Could Take Real Truck Or Real Cash

Unsurprisingly, the NFT exchange offer has already been claimed. We're not sure who still had one of the tokens or how quickly they leaped out of their seat to claim it, but we're guessing it was fast. The lucky NFT owner could have taken the car, a Santa Cruz Limited, or they could have taken cash - $20,000, to be precise. We'd probably have taken the car since its MSRP is around double that cash prize.

Strangely enough, this isn't Hyundai's only recent NFT-related event. Hyundai Global is still all in on the technology as well as the Metaverse. The Hyundai Metaverse page is still online and advertising a partnership with Roblox. There was a Hyundai NFT anniversary event held in June of 2023, and a new Hyundai NFT Metamobility website went up in January.