YouTube star Logan Paul has set a brand new Guinness World File, promoting his uncommon Pokémon card for practically $16.5 million on Monday — the most costly card sale in historical past — although the brand new document sale didn’t come with out controversy.
The public sale for the Pikachu Illustrator Pokémon card — one in every of 39 created in a contest within the Nineteen Nineties — was received by AJ Scaramucci, the son of American financier Anthony Scaramucci, outbidding a number of others who made provides within the seven- and eight-figure vary.
Paul is believed to have made an $8 million revenue after public sale charges on Monday. He purchased the cardboard for $5.3 million in July 2021.
.@LoganPaul‘s uncommon @Pokemon card turns into costliest ever bought in record-setting public sale.
The PSA-10 Pikachu Illustrator went on sale by way of @GoldinCo and ultimately bought for $16,492,000.https://t.co/B1YBUIqhbx
— Guinness World Information (@GWR) February 16, 2026
Nonetheless, the document sale reignited criticism over Paul’s transfer to fractionalize possession of the cardboard on Liquid Market in 2022 earlier than the platform went offline, leaving traders scrambling for returns and prompting a lawsuit in Canada.
In a publish to X on Monday, Delphi Labs normal counsel Gabriel Shapiro mentioned Paul’s “Pikachu NFT fractionalization fiasco” is a “basic case of ‘slop tokenization.’”
“The token is principally simply ‘juxtaposed’ with property however has no rights to it,” Shapiro mentioned, urging traders to learn the phrases of service and to cease dashing into “authorized scams.”
Paul addressed the criticism, stating that Liquid Market went offline for causes past his management and that, as soon as conscious of the problem, he paid to revive the positioning so customers might withdraw their funds.
Solely 5.4% of the cardboard was fractionalized to house owners who paid about $270,000, Paul famous.
Paul isn’t named within the Liquid Market lawsuit introduced by the Ontario Securities Fee, Canada’s high securities regulator, in June 2024. A listening to is scheduled for June.
Logan Paul’s previous NFT drama
It isn’t the primary time Paul has needed to defend himself over his involvement in NFTs. His CryptoZoo NFT undertaking didn’t ship its promised play-to-earn recreation, drawing investor backlash and a class-action go well with in 2023.
Associated: US prosecutors drop OpenSea NFT fraud case after appeals court docket reversal
He arrange a buyback program and ultimately paid traders again after they agreed to waive authorized claims, and the class-action fraud lawsuit was in the end dismissed in 2025.
Different NFT investments by Paul have additionally flopped, together with an anime-style digital avatar from the 0N1 Pressure assortment he purchased for round $635,000 in 2021 that’s now valued at underneath $2,000.
NFT market continues to slip
The document Pokémon card sale additionally stands in distinction to the struggling NFT market, which offers in digital collectibles.
Whereas the NFT market began sturdy within the first two weeks of 2026, the full NFT market cap has since fallen by greater than 50%, from $3.2 billion to $1.55 billion amid a broader market pullback.
Final month, NFT market Rodeo and Nifty Gateway introduced within the final week of January that they’d wind down operations, including to the sector’s string of high-profile closures.
Journal: Chinese language New 12 months boosts curiosity, TradFi shopping for crypto exchanges: Asia Categorical