A look at Zed Run, a digital horse racing platform where users breed, race, and trade NFT horses, with some digital steeds and stables selling for six figures
Horse racing meet NFT mania on Zed Run, a digital platform where some top steeds are fetching six-figure sums. Tweets: @joefav , @darrenrovell , @sunny_hundal , @adamlevitan , @tomgara , and @jerryferrara Tweets: Joe Favorito / @joefav : The digital #KentuckyDerby may soon join the real one.. Digital Horses Are the Talk of the Crypto World #SportsTech https://www.nytimes.com/... Darren Rovell / @darrenrovell : Great story in the @nytimes on the “Breathing NFT” and the rise of @JayZedRun Disclosure: I own 12 digital horses on the platform. https://www.google.com/... Sunny Hundal / @sunny_hundal : You might think NFTs for works of art is a waste of money. Now people are spending thousands of dollars using the same platform to buy, breed and compete in (virtual) horse-racing. https://www.nytimes.com/... Adam Levitan / @adamlevitan : Not sure exactly when. But one day, the biggest horses races will be in the Metaverse, not in Kentucky. ZED going mainstream today with articles in The Athletic (https://theathletic.com/...) AND NY Times. https://www.nytimes.com/... Tom Gara / @tomgara : “Yair Altmark, a venture capitalist in New York who has spent over $300,000 on digital horses” is one of the better sentences I'll read today https://twitter.com/... Jerry Ferrara / @jerryferrara : This was cool to read. I'm thoroughly enjoying my experience thus far and have learned a lot. But have like a million things more to learn. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Zed Run arrived at the front edge of the 2021 NFT mania, weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported players sinking millions into NFT "land" inside games — the same pattern of synthetic assets priced like property, here applied to thoroughbreds. The Times profile landed with mainstream sports-media voices attached: Darren Rovell disclosed owning 12 digital horses on the platform, and Joe Favorito floated the idea of a digital Kentucky Derby alongside the real one.
The stakes were real for early buyers — Yair Altmark has spent over $300,000 on Zed Run horses — and the attention converted into venture money within months: Virtually Human Studio raised a $20M Series A led by TCG that July.
First-order effects
- Virtually Human Studio gets the scarce asset it needs for a platform business — user capital locked into breeding, racing, and trading its horses — while six-figure sales give media figures like Rovell both a stake and a promotion channel.
Second-order effects
- Copycats follow the template fast: by October, Visionrare was selling fake startup shares as NFTs, extending the same buy-speculate-trade structure from horses to equity fantasies, and crypto's record funding year — startups raised $28B+, up 4x YoY per PitchBook — gave founders capital to keep cloning the model.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, gambling regulators face a new category straddling gaming and wagering — the tension already visible when UK racing venues cracked down on drone-and-in-play betting advantages — while NFT platforms consolidate around whoever controls the scarcity mechanics rather than the asset itself.
The trend: 2021's NFT wave is turning synthetic collectibles into platform businesses where the operator, not the asset holder, captures the value.