Source: Freepik
Is the NFT market plummeting to its doom? Have we just witnessed the extraordinary-almost-overnight rise, and equally as fast demise of a pyramid scheme?
The meteoric ascent of the market of Non-Fungible Tokens seemed never ending. It just, kept, going. In just a few months, this market positioned itself as the fastest growing market ever, artists, celebrities, collectors, everyone wanted a piece.
The proliferation of NFTs has had a particularly significant impact in the art world, with sales reaching exorbitant price ranges, we're talking millions. In fact, the highest sale recorded being Beeple's $69.3 million, on March 11th. Some say, that at that point that the fall from grace became inevitable.
Beeple's “The Next Chapter,” an “Everyday” from March 11, 2021. / Source: The New Yorker
The larger the success, the larger the issues arising. From theft via tokenisation, to mysterious digital disappearances, the guaranteed win didn't seem so foolproof anymore.
The average price for an NFT, which peaked at around $4k in mid-February, dropped by almost 70% to $1,4k early this month, and ever since, sales remain low. The thing is, everything about NFts had been so incredibly confusing and fast, that news don't really catch up to reality. There's a ton of disinformation out there, and it's overall, quite tricky to truly tell which narrative one should follow.
Source: district0x
Founder of NFT agency Lily & Piper, Melissa Gilmour, stated that a drop in the value was inevitable, since the hasty development of the market led to an over saturation of platforms, and increased difficulty to navigate them. Nevertheless, she assures her clients that although the road will be bumpy, NFTs are here to stay. Some art has actually been holding its own, the key residing in the alignment of physical and digital pricing and valuation.
There are those who worry, that NFTs will simply become an exclusive market for white, heteronormative men with an evangelic libertarian spirit, the corruption and manipulation of wall street, with the pretension found in some corners of the art world. Hence the meteoric rise. The game was rigged. It was a bubble like any other, and it was bound to burst.
Source: The Star
Others however, believe that if the NFT market can shift itself towards being systematically more sustainable, and inclusive, it will have a long prosperous life. But in order for this to happen, we need to steer clear from the notion that NFTs are here to be a quick, super lucrative, easy cash cow, and build a proper, safe, tenable structure.
NFTs didn't cause this drop. It's the way they have been (ab)used that did. Or so the story goes. The corruptive power of greed is nothing new. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
At the end of the day, NFTs aren't the problem. We are.
