Turkish electric vehicle company Togg announces presale via NFT, then scraps the plan after customers have already bought in

Rendering of a red SUV-style car, with text below it reading, "NFT'nizi seçmeye hazır mısınız?"Promotional image for Togg's NFT collection, captioned "Ready to choose your NFT?" (attribution)
Turkish electric vehicle startup Togg announced that interested customers would be able to buy obtain pre-order rights for the limited run of their "100 Year Special Series" cars if they purchased one of the 2023 NFTs they planned to mint on the Avalanche blockchain. Based on rarity, NFTs began minting at between 10 and 30 AVAX ($200-$600) depending on rarity, which prospective customers purchased at its ~$20 price in anticipation of the early February sale. Many customers purchased considerably more AVAX, anticipating fierce bidding wars.

However, shortly after the NFT sales began, the platform crashed. Then, very soon after the sale began and Togg began addressing the issues with the platform, a series of earthquakes devastated portions of Turkey. As a result, Togg announced they would be postponing the sale until a later announcement.

On March 8, Togg announced that they had canceled their plans to conduct the pre-order process by NFT drawing, and that any NFT holders would not be prioritized in the pre-order.

This infuriated some customers who had purchased AVAX solely intending to use it to obtain a pre-order slot — particularly because AVAX is now priced below $15, meaning those who've been holding AVAX since purchasing it have lost 25%.