Unfortunately, The WSJ Is Wrong: The NFT Market Is Not Collapsing
Over the last few years, cryptocurrency and the blockchain stole the throne away from IPAs as far as the worst thing to get trapped talking to someone about at a party. Unfortunately, as the US dollar became victim to inflation and crypto prices continued to rise, many people begrudgingly had to take to google or to texts with their reddit-iest friend to try to figure out what the deal was. Just as everyone was coming to peace with that, emerged the NFT, or non-fungible token.
Still sore about having to learn about bitcoin, the NFT was where the majority of the population drew the line in the sand, and finally said, “shut the #&$* up.” Even as supporters touted NFTs as the next Gamestop or Bitcoin train to ride to sudden wealth, it seemed that normal people had simply had enough, and were comfortable finally calling “bull@#$%” on the blockchain’s latest development. It’s not surprising, as the technology, first described as a way to establish ownership of art in a world where physical originals are less and less common, seemed to drift into mostly people owning what looked more like screenshots from a Newgrounds flash dress-up game.
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So it’s understandable the explosion of schadenfreude that came with a Wall Street Journal report that the NFT market is collapsing, and The Independent claiming that sales have dropped 92%. Unfortunately, as Twitter user and investor at Dragonfly Capital Tom Schmidt pointed out, the numbers used are flawed, confirmed by some filtering of the data from the WSJ’s source of Nonfungible.com. It seems the cratering shown is less a result of the market at large and more and more from the inclusion of NFTs' massive failure at expanding into the gaming space causing an outlying spike.
I know. I’m sad too. I wanted to never see another piece of bad pixel art or accessorized ape that’s supposed to be worth more than a house. But there’s still hope for those of us that eagerly await the NFT’s demise. Though not the implosion suggested in these articles, the numbers also don’t show growth in the market, as premier NFT hawkers like Bored Ape Yacht Club experience worrying stumbles. There’s also tales like the investor who purchased an NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for almost 3 million dollars who is now trying and failing to resell it for even half of a single percent of that.
The ship isn’t sunk, but it’s still far from land. And in my opinion, it’s still a precarious journey to join, not to mention that everybody onboard is annoying as f**k.
