“Aware of the crypto thing,” he tweeted. “We were told there was no NFT/crypto component but looks like that may not be the case. Waiting for responses to our emails/phone calls like others.”
Which is a misunderstanding on the part of the author of that tweet: blockchain ≠ crypto. While it is the technology that crypto and NFTs are based on, blockchain can be used for a wide variety of different purposes.
So while the organizers probably should have been more clear about how they were going to implement the technology, it appears they didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.