An NFT trader was devastated Friday to discover that a CryptoPunk he purchased for 77 Ethereum went up in smoke after he accidentally sent the pricy piece of digital art to a burn address.

Burn addresses, which are digital wallets that don’t have a private key, are one-way gateways that can only receive assets like cryptocurrencies and NFTs. As a result, the NFT was permanently removed from circulation, preventing it from ever being traded or owned again. 

Brandon Riley, who purchased CryptoPunk #685 two weeks ago, said he made an error when attempting to wrap the NFT to take a loan against it on Twitter. He told Decrypt he planned on posting CryptoPunk #685 to NFTfi.com, where he could earn a yield of around 7% per year.

The trader requested to buy the v1 version of the lost CryptoPunk #685 as a consolation from Yuga Labs, which recently purchased the IP to CryptoPunks from Larva Labs, but has not received a response. The situation underscores the importance of understanding the token standards and platforms utilized for digital assets, particularly when dealing with self-custody. Furthermore, a Twitter user pointed out that the guide used by the trader has been updated since, specifically warning against sending CryptoPunks to wallets formatted as burn addresses.