Sportswear giant Nike is reportedly facing a lawsuit following the closure of its non-fungible token (NFT) business.

In 2021, Nike purchased RTFKT Studios, a collectibles firm known for creating viral sneaker designs, memes and other fashionable digital collectibles as it ventured into the metaverse, but the company shut down the project in December.

Reuters reports that investors of Nike-themed NFTs and other crypto assets led by Australian resident Jagdeep Cheema filed a suit on Friday, claiming that they suffered significant losses as demand for their digital collectibles dropped following the announcement that RTFKT was winding down its operations.

The investors say that they would not have bought the NFTs had they known that the tokens were unregistered securities. To date, the legal status of NFTs is not yet settled, and several lawsuits involve questions on whether or not these assets should be considered as securities. 

The suit also accuses Nike of orchestrating a “rug pull”, or the sudden abandonment of a project that leaves investors with worthless assets.

The plaintiffs are seeking more than $5 million in damages for the alleged violation of consumer laws in New York, California, Florida and Oregon.

Nike has not yet issued a statement regarding the lawsuit.

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Bitcoin traded flat near $84,500 on Friday, holding its range as U.S. markets observed Good Friday.

With equities, bonds, and commodities largely offline, the crypto market offered a rare window into investor sentiment absent broader liquidity and institutional flow.

The muted price action followed a session on Thursday that saw sharp moves across traditional assets before the holiday shutdown.

Gold climbs, oil surges as macro signals diverge

Gold rose 1.74% on Thursday, bolstered by a convergence of dollar weakness and renewed physical demand.

As Reuters reported, Citi raised its three-month gold target to $3,500, citing supply deficits and increased purchases by newly authorized Chinese insurers. Physical tightness continues to shape the bullion market, with strategic allocations growing more common among state-linked institutions.

Oil registered a 5.04 percent gain after the U.S. announced fresh sanctions on Iran’s state-linked shipping firm, Sahara Thunder.

The Treasury Department’s move curtailed expectations of supply normalization, fueling concern over the availability of key Persian Gulf crude. The announcement came in thin liquidity, exaggerating price movements into the Thursday close.

U.S. dollar weakness further amplified both commodity moves. The dollar index fell 0.46% as the European Central Bank cut rates again and U.S. political uncertainty intensified.

President Trump revived speculation over Fed leadership by floating the potential removal of Chair Jerome Powell. That commentary, alongside renewed dovish pressure from Europe, weighed on the dollar and bolstered dollar-denominated alternatives.

Risk assets retreat on policy and legal uncertainty

S&P 500 futures dropped 1.1% before the close as traders de-risked into the long weekend. While cash equities were shut on Friday, Thursday’s sell-off was attributed to judicial and executive tensions over central bank independence.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling potentially easing the path for removing the heads of independent federal agencies. Combined with White House commentary about replacing Powell, futures trading responded with reduced risk appetite.

Bond prices were also adjusted. U.S. 10-year Treasury prices declined marginally by 0.03%, with a slight yield uptick. New York Fed President John Williams pushed back on expectations for near-term easing, noting that inflation data, particularly from tariffs, did not warrant immediate action.

The next scheduled release of the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the PCE index, on April 30 adds pressure to reposition ahead of the data, even as fixed income desks prepared to close for the long weekend.

Chinese 10-year government bond prices remained stable, reflecting Beijing’s plan to hold Loan Prime Rates steady. Officials opted to maintain current levels to preserve financial stability, especially as the yuan showed resilience amid shifting global trade conditions.

Bitcoin rangebound as volatility concentrates elsewhere

Despite the activity in traditional markets, Bitcoin’s response was subdued. The digital asset held its level even as gold, oil, and equities reacted to macroeconomic and geopolitical developments.

That divergence, while not unusual during U.S. holidays, reflects both reduced institutional volume and the absence of a dominant crypto-specific catalyst.

In recent sessions, Bitcoin has mostly outperformed macro flows, diverging from its recent correlation with equity futures and inflation-sensitive assets.

Traders are watching for holiday developments in the ongoing global trade war, which has seen Trump escalate via Truth Social over the past weekends. Repositioning may begin when CME futures and bond markets resume trading.

Until then, Bitcoin is one of the few live indicators of sentiment in a macro environment increasingly shaped by policy signaling and cross-asset volatility.

Mentioned in this article

Bitcoin has reached a crucial moment in its price action following heightened volatility that has overshadowed the entire crypto market, with major digital assets dropping to key support levels. Despite the sharp bearish performance, BTC’s fundamentals remain strong, igniting hope for bullish prospects.

Biggest Price Gap In Bitcoin’s History

As Bitcoin undergoes a lengthy bearish price performance, uncertainty grows around the flagship asset’s next price action in the short term. Alphractal, an advanced investment and on-chain data platform, has identified a huge price gap amid market fluctuations and massive liquidations in recent research on the X platform.

According to the platform, Bitcoin is witnessing the filing of its largest price gap in history, signaling heightened volatility in the crypto market. This gap, which is seen in the CME Bitcoin futures market, indicates an abrupt change in price movement. Such disparity frequently results in a spike in trading activity, with investors and traders responding to the imbalance. 

Over the course of Bitcoin’s existence, Alphractal highlighted that the asset’s price has a tendency to return to areas that have gaps or where there is not much resistance or support.

In the thorough analysis of the Bitcoin Support and Resistance Detection metric, a measure that utilizes advanced algorithms to identify high and low pivots accurately, the platform has underlined key reversal points in the market as the measure.

It is worth noting that lines are drawn from these points in order to highlight high-trading zones that have served as resistance and support areas in the past. Specifically, these gaps are developed because pivots are not present.

However, BTC’s price in the past has returned to these areas, resulting in fresh cycles of consolidation. Compared to past scenarios, Alphractal claims that Bitcoin is currently experiencing the filling of its biggest ever price gap recorded between the $74,000 and $90,000 level. Alphractal considers the massive gap within this price range a “natural market phenomenon.”

A Rebound Imminent Amid BTC’s Price Gap

While BTC’s price gap may indicate heightened volatility, Negentropic, a market expert and co-founder of Glassnode, has addressed the aftermath of the development. The seasoned expert points to an encouraging period after the whirlwind.

Negentropic noted that many traders have exited the market due to the bearish storm, and BTC is threatening to narrow the CME gap between $74,000 and $80,000. However, there is a sense of comfort as Bitcoin’s fundamentals improve, liquidity improves, and network growth rebounds.

Even though this is not enough, Negentropic believes that the market could be nearing a recovery. “Ready to sail with the wind at our back rather than sink into a bear market,” the expert added.

Featured image from Adobe Stock, chart from Tradingview.com

OpenSim active users are up by 1,039 this month, reaching a new all-time high of 48,234. The total land area also increased, by 489 standard region equivalents.

However, the total number of registered users on all the public OpenSim grids fell by more than 10,000 since May. The biggest reason for the drop? 3rd Rock Grid is now officially closed, with some of its communities moved to ZetaWorlds. Last month, 3rd Rock Grid reported 13,615 registered users, though it had only 250 actives. 3rd Rock was one of the oldest OpenSim grounds, founded back in 2008, and accumulated a lot of user registrations over the past decade and a half.

Several other grids did not report their stats this month, including CandM World, which was active this month but showed no stats on its stats page. The grid had over 500 actives in May.

We are now tracking a total of 2,663 public grids, of which 309 are active and 253 published their statistics this month. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.

This month, OSgrid was the largest grid by land area, with 32,547 standard region equivalents, while Wolf Territories Grid was the most active, with 6,232 unique logins over the past 30 days.

Our stats do not include most of the grids running on DreamGrid, a free easy-to-use version OpenSim, since these tend to be private grids.

OpenSim is a free, open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

1. Wolf Territories Grid: 6,232 active users
2. OSgrid: 5,186 active users
3. GBG World: 2,239 active users
4. DigiWorldz: 2,156 active users
5. Alternate Metaverse: 2,025 active users
6. Vida Dupla: 1,750 active users
7. Darkheart’s Playground: 1,694 active users
8. WaterSplash: 1,650 active users
9. Neverworld: 1,101 active users
10. AviWorlds: 1,068 active users
11. Trianon World: 1,023 active users
12. Moonrose: 936 active users
13. AvatarLife: 930 active users
14. Littlefield: 899 active users
15. Party Destination Grid: 839 active users
16. Astralia: 836 active users
17. Craft World: 791 active users
18. Virtualife: 666 active users
19. Virtualife: 664 active users
20. Kitely: 627 active users
21. ZetaWorlds: 596 active users
22. Eureka World: 583 active users
23. Groovy Verse: 514 active users
24. Herederos Grid: 511 active users
25. Virtual Vista Metaverse: 507 active users

The biggest change on this list was the addition of Virtual Vista Metaverse, a new grid in our database, which had a strong launch.

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 20,793 product listings in Kitely Market containing 40,862 product variations, 35,648 of which are exportable.

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 624 OpenSim grids to date.

As you can see in the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area on the graph. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past eight years.

The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

Kitely has recently doubled the performance of its regions while keeping prices the same.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Lady’s Dreamworld and Virtual Vista Metaverse.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Suspended grids

The following 18 grids were marked as suspended this month: Admeja, Bernicia, BigOne, Bubble Grid, EducaSim, Eleutherias, Golden Palace Gaming, KittyBlue, Mystic Bermuda, Pleasant Retreat, Resurgence, Royal Grid, Starfleet, The Crying Grid, Tropicana Grid, Twilight, Uzuri Virtual, and VR Playground.

If they don’t reappear online again soon, they will be marked as closed in future reports.

Sometimes, a grid changes its login URI or website address — if that’s the case, email me and let me know and I’ll update my database.

Top 40 grids by land area

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

• OSgrid: 32,547 regions
• Wolf Territories Grid: 29,248 regions
• Kitely: 18,077 regions
• ZetaWorlds: 12,910 regions
• Alternate Metaverse: 10,178 regions
• Groovy Verse: 7,837 regions
• DigiWorldz: 3,544 regions
• Virtual Vista Metaverse: 3,253 regions
• Tag Grid: 1,464 regions
• Shoalwater Bay: 1,072 regions
• GBG World: 956 regions
• Virtual Worlds Grid: 915 regions
• AviWorlds: 842 regions
• Friends Grid: 816 regions
• ArtDestiny: 784 regions
• Kinky Haven: 669 regions
• Craft World: 642 regions
• AvatarLife: 603 regions
• Littlefield: 514 regions
• GorGrid: 430 regions
• Furry World: 373 regions
• Neverworld: 343 regions
• DreamNation: 314 regions
• Nemesis 3D: 305 regions
• EdMondo: 300 regions
• Open Virtual Worlds: 229 regions
• Japan Open Grid: 186 regions
• Counter Earth: 186 regions
• MisFitz Grid: 182 regions
• Kater and Friends: 180 regions
• Adreans-World: 173 regions
• Darkheart’s Playground: 168 regions
• GerGrid: 141 regions
• OpenSim Fest: 140 regions
• WestWorld Grid: 135 regions
• Logicamp: 129 regions
• Galactic Virtual: 127 regions
• Outworldz: 126 regions
• XTalent: 124 regions
• Utopia Skye: 116 regions

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Hypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at maria@hypergridbusiness.com. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction.

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