NFTs are 94% worthless and also up over 52,000%

Last week, the majority of the world learned that 95% of non-fungible tokens are worthless. Do you know who knew that? Everyone is still following NFTs.

Over time you get a feel for the market and develop a sixth sense of how it moves, what moves it and what has value. Years of experience have taught us that the NFT market runs in cycles, with the hot side of the market usually only lasting a few weeks, although the start of the calendar year usually lasts a few months.

Between these runs, most NFTs become completely illiquid and forgotten. When the next cycle comes, they will be replaced by an entirely new generation of NFTs. If I were a betting man, I would say that probably 95% of NFTs become worthless between these cycles. This number only grows as more and more supply is created.

There is a much more important story to tell about the NFT ecosystem than the “95% worthless” narrative that distracts everyone. It is the case that 94% of the market value has disappeared. Let me ask a few questions to illustrate why this is important.

Would you measure the stock market by the number of shares worth a penny or less, and would you use bankrupt and failed companies to represent the total market value? If I told you that the value of IBM, Microsoft, Apple and NVIDIA was down 95%, wouldn’t that be more remarkable?

That’s the real story with NFTs and it’s exactly the story that Forkast 500 NFT Index has been telling us all year long. The top 500 NFT collections on the blockchains represent a majority of the value of the NFT market. Therefore, it is best to measure them as an indicator of the market, just as the S&P 500 is an indicator of the stock market, to measure the health of the NFT economy. This index reflects that the NFT market has lost almost 94% of its value since its peak in 2022.

Most of us don’t think about this bad news, especially if you think NFTs are already overvalued. But when we measure the value of NFTs from their peak to today, we are also measuring from the beginning, when NFTs were also worth next to nothing. Comparing the 2020 data with the still incomplete 2023 data, we find some pretty telling facts.

Already in 2023, individual buyers have increased by 10,100%, sales by 31,837% and total transactions by 52,304%, while trading profits have decreased by 64,999%. Perhaps most importantly, most collectors and traders have not exited the NFT economy, even in the absence of trading profits. People believe in the technology and the future that NFTs will power.

The conversation has changed significantly now, so let’s restart the room.

Has the value of the NFT ecosystem declined since its peak? Yes.

Are NFTs still a world-changing technology? Yes.

Look at the charts

Last week was the fifth week of declining NFT sales, but like last week, there appears to be some stabilization overall. The week’s numbers still keep us largely in line with the action we saw in May and June 2021, and the next milestone would fall to the $30 million to $55 million range we saw in early 2021.

• reaper New Mint brings Solana its first top ten collection since Tensorians made the elite list exactly a month ago.

• Nakamigos delivered theirs coats Mint as a free claim for holders, and the remaining unclaimed NFTs were sold for 0.05 ETH. The secondary market went into turmoil, with NFTs selling for average $276 on September 24th.

• ether is the true king of NFTs (sorry DraftKings), almost surpassing the other top ten collections, which collectively grossed just over $38 million.

• Polygons DraftKings has kept blockchain at its core, with 73% of Polygon’s sales coming from sports collectibles.

• Solana had a few new collections last week, Reavers and Clear Collectibles, which have been generating some buzz and trade action.

• Myth’ DMarket still sees a majority of its volume from gaming skins. Check out S4mmy.eth’s X-thread explaining the revolutionary CS:GO NFTs.

CSGO skins are traded on-chain.

To date, $216 million has been achieved in secondary sales.🧵(1/8) pic.twitter.com/SzVJNCUCTp

— S4mmy.eth (@S4mmyEth) September 22, 2023

• Bitcoin The Creator of Ordinal Numbers proposes a change to the ordinal number system as well as a replacement for BRC20s called Runes. This is causing significant debate in the community as the impact may impact the value of existing collectibles.