It's not that they didn't know.... It's well...
There was a time when Russia had an Occultic Research Department, and America got one. Did anyone actually believe in Magick? Did anyone wanna take the chance to be the guy who laughed at magick only to see America brought to its knees by something "Close enough" to psychic spies? Well that situation, no matter how unlikely would be worth a demotion.
Eventually it became a contest to see which nation could get the other to overspend their budgets on healing crystals.
Allegedly the CIA got some real psychic shit involved with project Star Gate, but.... ehh.... can anyone other than the CIA get magick to work? No, so....
My point is, it's not that they thought NFTs were this goldmine. They were worried about being left outside the gate if the hype paid off.
Ya gotta remember, these people do not know market trends, they do not know computers. They know "My great grandkid talks about this Video Game thing, maybe we should do a Nintendo? get Atari on the phone!"