“Keep calm, your NFTs are still in your wallet,” Rodrigo Blanco said, smiling and seemingly unperturbed in an Instagram video, set to the tune of a joyous beat in the background. Blanco, a self-proclaimed Christian businessman from Guatemala, was attempting damage control after his digital collection of 5,000 variations of a specific American house, selling for $500 each, was removed from the internet’s largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea.

A non-fungible token, or NFT, is a unique digital asset encoded on a blockchain, or more simply, a receipt of ownership of anything digital: music, art, or, in this case, a 3D model of a house in Detroit. , Michigan released last April. Called “Platzees”, these virtual houses are the centerpiece of Platzeeland, widely regarded as…