Photo: Bored Ape / Nike / Beeble / Cyber Cosmos
Four years ago, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were everywhere.
The tokens, which provide digital ownership of an asset, often art, were being traded and promoted by celebrities in New Zealand and around the world.
Former All Black Dan Carter co-founded Glorious, to help artists sell their digital art in the form of NFTs. Rich-lister Craig Heatley reportedly invested.
Brooke Howard-Smith co-founded NF Labs, with a series of Fluf World NFTs, and at one point partnered with rapper Snoop Dogg.
But while it was reported that more than US$2.7 billion in NFTs was being traded at the peak of the market, it now looks like quite a different picture.
In 2023, researchers said, across 73,000 NFT collections, 95 percent were valued at zero ether – the ethereum cryptocurrency used to buy them.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, which Justin Bieber is reported to have spent more than US$1m for a slice of, is estimated to be down 97 percent from its all-time high.
CryptoPunks are down 89 percent. Mutant Ape Yacht Club is down 98 percent.
Forbes said this week Bored Ape Yacht Club had a floor price of US$12,000 – down from a peak of US$394,764.
University of Otago senior lecturer Olivier Jutel said the drop had been dramatic.
“There is myriad reasons for that but essentially if I had to put it in a nutshell, people have been grasping around for some essential use chain for the blockchain. And Web3 and NFTs were the most frothy sort of future vision here.”
He said it was unlikely there would be a resurgence.
“I really don’t think so … Facebook spent $40 billion on the metaverse … but nobody wanted this.
“Essentially our economies are so bedazzled and captured by number go up, valuation, financialisation, that it’s so unmoored from the real economy.
“I know the real economy could be a problematic concept, but crypto, blockchain and Web3 are the height of this kind of complete detachment.”
But University of Auckland commercial law professor Alex Sims said the underlying technology of NFTs could still be useful, even if NFTs had been overhyped.
“[You] can make a loose analogy with NFTs and the dotcom bubble.
“Lots of enthusiasm, massive bubble but the underlying tech and infrastructure was built, as well as the beginning of a culture shift … Although, unlike the dotcom bubble it’s unlikely that many NFT projects will grow to large ones, unlike say Amazon, Google, Netflix, eBay …”
She said some NFTs still had value but many did not.
“They aren’t worth the stupid money that people were paying for them … a lot of the big name NFTs are worth a fraction of what they were bought for if people bought them at the top of the market.
“But many are still worth money, just a lot less than some people paid for them.”
She said Damien Hirst’s The Currency project and its Tender NFTs could have more lasting value than some other NFT projects because they had a famous artist behind them.
“While the Tender NFTs have fallen from around US$29,000 in February 2022 to about US$1880 each, if people bought the NFTs directly when they released for US$2000 – then they haven’t lost that much money, just over 10 percent.
“As I said quite a few times at the time of the NFT bubble. Only buy an artwork NFT if you like the artwork or you want to support the artist. Don’t buy them for speculation as you are likely to lose your money. And I’ve predictably been proven right.”
Swyftx NZ country manager Paul Quickenden said there were a few things people could think about if they were weighing up similar new investments that might pop up in future.
“I think that the key tenets are always the same … is there a good sound business case or use case for the project or whatever they’re trying to do?
“Can you identify the team and are they reputable? Does what they’re trying to do make sense?
“It’s also a question of time. In any transaction, there’s a buyer and a seller. And the seller is thinking that the time is right to get out.
“And the buyer is thinking there’s more opportunity for it to go up. And only one of those two people are going to be right.”
He said just because people were “piling in”, it did not mean it was a good time to buy.
“You have to evaluate the project, but also just what’s going on in that market? Because if it feels very frothy, then there’s a really good chance that, you know, you might be caught up in a wave that’s going to crash.”
Glorious and NF Labs have not yet responded to requests for comment.
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