rekt.news Marks One Year With a 20-Piece NFT Auction on OpenSea

rekt.news marked its one-year anniversary by launching an auction of 20 original NFTs, intended both as a celebration of the site's first year and as a funding mechanism for future development.

Seventeen of the twenty pieces are drawn from the outlet's debut video, "Hopium Diaries - Dystopian Dreams." That video laid out rekt.news's broader outlook on the future of finance, and the associated NFTs are framed as a way for holders to own a piece of that narrative as it continues to develop.

The remaining three NFTs were created specifically for the anniversary, each representing a defining story from the site's first year:

• Poly Network — described as the largest exploit on record, exceeding Mt. Gox and every other hack combined.
• Pancake Bunny — the incident in which rekt.news itself became part of the story, receiving a share of the stolen funds.
• Meerkat Finance — noted as the first significant DeFi exploit to occur outside of Ethereum.

Together, the site describes these as foundational pieces reflecting a full year of work.

The auction ran for seven days, closing at 15:00 BST on October 4, 2021, with bidding hosted through the collection's OpenSea listing.

The full "Hacks & Hopium" collection is animated and viewable on OpenSea. It includes:

• PolyMarket - REKT — referencing the $611 million Poly Network theft, characterized as exceeding Mt. Gox, the GDP of several small nations, and the combined total of the entire rekt.news leaderboard.
• PancakeBunny - REKT — referencing the $45 million PancakeBunny exploit, of which $100,000 was donated to rekt.news.
• Meerkat Finance - REKT — framed as an inevitable outcome of Binance Smart Chain replicating Ethereum's DeFi summer before moving into a rug-pull phase.
• Ambitious Student — envisioning "learning in public" as a recognized career path for self-taught, numerically inclined individuals.
• A New Generation — on children born during the Coronavirus pandemic growing up in a world of pervasive monetization.
• Casino Reaper — anticipating mass litigation as private company stock prices get tokenized on-chain, enabling speculators to trade volatility without a middleman.
• Currency Competition — on governments being pushed to incentivize or legally mandate use of native currency against decentralized alternatives, even as a parallel global economy emerges regardless.
• DAO Activity — predicting that mature DAOs will reshape public perceptions of charity and become as recognizable as today's NGOs.
• DeFi Summer - The Rise — looking back on DeFi summer as a naive but formative period that produced gamified concepts later turned into practical applications.
• DeFi Summer - The Fall — on Bitcoin's temporary fade during DeFi's rise, and its inevitable, 2020-turmoil-fueled return to prominence.
• Game Theory — forecasting escalating governance wars where game theory becomes a weapon used against protocols and democracies alike, as banks, big tech, and governments vie for power.
• Global Tension — on rising friction between the US, China, and the EU as decentralized currencies destabilize state control over money printing, with China's on-chain CNY forcing a US response.
• Greedy Middleman — on new forms of monetization emerging as industries recognize the middleman's growing redundancy.
• High Street Banks — predicting that once a major traditional bank offers DeFi-level interest rates, the rest of the industry will follow, upending local governments and councils in the process.
• Radical Transition — on uneven outcomes during this shift, as different regions apply differing regulatory approaches and limits.
• Remote Work — on globalized finance pushing companies toward geographically distributed teams valued for skill over formal credentials.
• Slick Arbitrageur — on the risks that remain even amid total financial freedom, as newcomers encounter seasoned hackers and arbitrageurs operating in the decentralized underworld.
• The Lighthouse — questioning whether optimistic news can cut through the volatility of a still-turbulent market.
• Tokenised World — again referencing the litigation expected as tokenized private-company shares let speculators trade volatility without a middleman.
• Undisciplined Mind — depicting a mind endlessly scrolling through social media in the modern "technopoly."

The site frames the collection as a bet on the future of both DeFi and rekt.news itself, with the OpenSea listing hosting the full animated set.