Will NFTs Come Back?
Despite relatively bullish crypto sentiments, 54.1% or more than half of crypto participants were not expecting NFTs to come back in the near term. Specifically, 29.5% of survey respondents strongly disagreed that NFTs will come back in the current cycle, slightly outweighing the 24.7% who were bearish NFTs to a lesser extent.
Another 26.4% of participants expressed a neutral stance on NFTs, likely comprising a mix of those taking a wait-and-see approach to NFTs and those not interested in the niche.
Finally, only a minority 19.4% of crypto participants still held out hope for NFTs to come back this cycle. As a whole, this seems to suggest a bleak outlook for NFTs in the immediate future, with the crypto market’s consensus expectation leaning towards a continued NFT winter for now.
It is worth noting that there were no significant differences in NFT sentiment when comparing 1st cyclers, 2nd cyclers and 3rd cyclers or beyond. In other words, both new and experienced crypto participants generally did not believe NFTs would come back in the current cycle.
On the other hand, builders and spectators were more optimistic about NFTs recovering, as compared to investors and traders. Specifically, 28.9% of builders and 29.1% of spectators believed NFTs would come back in the near future, while just 17.1% of investors and 20.9% of traders shared the same opinion.
| Participation | Bearish NFTs | Neutral | Bullish NFTs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Investor | 56.1% | 26.8% | 17.1% |
| Trader | 54.4% | 24.7% | 20.9% |
| Builder | 49.2% | 21.9% | 28.9% |
| Spectator | 38.2% | 32.7% | 29.1% |
What Is the Most Popular NFT Use Case?
The survey found that the crypto community seemed to have mixed opinions about the best use case for NFTs. That said, gaming and metaverse items turned out to be the most popular NFT use case, which 17.2% of crypto participants felt to be the most bullish.
Other more popular NFT use cases were memes (9.5%), profile pictures or avatars (8.3%) and art (7.6%).
Another 7 NFT use cases were less popular and only considered as the most bullish by 0.6% to 4.2% of the survey respondents. This includes common NFT collection types or features during the 2021 bull run – such as membership access, domain names and redeemables – suggesting that hype around such use cases has declined since.
The remaining 1.3% of participants brought up other use cases that were not in the options provided, such as Bitcoin Ordinals, AI, airdrops distribution, ownership fractionalization, intellectual property etc.
Notably, 36.9% of crypto participants identified as NFT bears or were apathetic towards it, indicating that they were not bullish on NFTs at all in the survey.
Excluding those who were not bullish on NFTs at all, the most to least popular NFT use cases investors are bullish on are ranked as follows:
| Rank | NFT Use Case | Share of Respondents |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Game & metaverse items | 17.2% |
| 2 | Meme | 9.5% |
| 3 | Profile pictures (PFPs) | 8.3% |
| 4 | Art | 7.6% |
| 5 | Membership access | 4.2% |
| 6 | Domain names | 3.5% |
| 7 | Event ticketing | 3.4% |
| 8 | Collectible memento | 3.2% |
| 9 | Music | 2.6% |
| 10 | Redeemables | 1.7% |
| 11 | Others | 1.3% |
| 12 | RWA | 0.6% |
Overall, the lack of consensus likely reflects how NFTs have a wide range of potential applications and is a technology that is still at an early, exploratory stage of adoption. At the same time, this perhaps points to the need for an overarching NFT narrative that might drive an NFT comeback.
Methodology
The study examined 2,558 crypto participants’ responses in the anonymous CoinGecko Post-Halving Sentiment Survey from June 25 to July 8, 2024. Survey results should be taken as indicative only.
Among the survey participants, 69% considered themselves as crypto investors with mainly long-term holdings, 18% identified as traders with mainly shorter-term holdings, 7% as builders and 6% as sidelined spectators. In terms of how long participants had been in crypto, 46% were in their first cycle (0 to 3 years in crypto), 41% in their second cycle (4 to 7 years) and the remaining participants were veterans with 8 or more years of experience. Geographically, 90% of participants stated that they were based in Europe, Asia, North America and Africa, while the rest were in Oceania or South America.
This study is for illustrative and informational purposes only, and is not financial advice. Always do your own research and be careful when putting your money into any crypto or financial asset.
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Curious to find out more about our findings from the CoinGecko Post-Halving Sentiment Survey 2024? Check out this one we did on investors’ crypto price predictions for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana.