NFTs have been steadily declining for months, and new data highlights how bad things have gotten: trade volume has fallen by 97% since the start of 2022, and digital collectibles have essentially lost all of their appeals.
According to a Bloomberg study, trade volume for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has fallen dramatically over the past nine months, from $17 billion in January to a meagre 466 million this month.
NFTs are now below the level they were at shortly before the summer of 2021 NFT boom, which caused the construction of NFTs to soar in popularity. According to Gizmodo, sales at OpenSea, the largest NFT trading platform by volume, fell by 75% in September compared to the same period last year. This is true even when there are fewer traders overall despite a decline in the volume of deals. In September of this year, there were more than 42,000 traders overall, down from a peak of slightly over 45,000 in March.
Nearly $2 trillion has been lost in the cryptocurrency market since May. The true value of these digital items has therefore almost all been lost, despite the fact that the core of the NFT trading industry is still active and obviously expecting a recovery.
NFTs have always generated controversy. Numerous well-known companies sought to capitalize on the NFT buzz for almost a year, including top-tier auction houses, Twitter, Meta, Canon, and even the Associated Press. In an effort to attempt to sell NFT artwork to be displayed on their televisions, even Samsung and LG developed NFT-specific markets.
One auction firm auctioned historical glass plate images together with an NFT and told the top buyer to destroy the originals, which is possibly the best illustration of the folly of the trend. This shows how intense the need for and hype around digital treasures was. Over 80% of the NFTs that were generated for free on OpenSea were found to be false or stolen in January, it was discovered. The same NFT marketplace that gained notoriety for selling Jack Dorsey’s initial tweet for $2.9 million suspended trading the following month due to widespread fraud. Stories like this undoubtedly did not contribute to maintaining cryptocurrency enthusiasm among the general public.
These digital collectibles are definitely not moving in the right direction in terms of value, even though Meta is still pushing for NFT support on its platforms, probably as a way to cash in on Mark Zuckerberg’s fever dream of a metaverse (the push into which has caused the company to lose billions).
