NFTs Fall as Quickly as They Rise
Earlier this year, news started to emerge of something new in the crypto space aimed more specifically towards the art market with something called NFT's - non-fungible tokens represent something unique with a specific value, think a rare trading card or one of a kind painting. Based on the Ethereum blockchain, things started to move very quickly with some huge value assigned to sales - Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter for example, sold the first ever tweet on the platform for almost $3 million. Many invested into the space early on certainly felt a lot of promise for it, and believed it could be the next big push forward in the crypto market, but it seems just as quicky as the rise has come the inevitable fall, as things have started to level off or even fall backwards in some regards too.
There were plenty who saw it coming - many experts warned of a bubble or a market crash pretty early on, when a piece of artwork sells for $69 million in a newly emerging market it definitely seems to be something that can't be sustainable in the long term, with sales dropping almost in half in the span of just a month. With the high cost of minting the NFT and the markets that are largely represented by the market too, longer term stability was always going to be key for the investors looking for longevity.
With crypto being represented in the news a bit more often lately with bitcoin hitting a new highest price of $60,000, and news from Tesla with their own acceptance of crypto as a payment method for their cars, the mainstream is finally starting to catch up. There has already been some wider representation in different markets, online gaming for example has been a primary user for quite some time as no verification online casinos like these have relied on crypto as a deposit and withdrawal method for quite some time, but never quite in the same scale as has been seen recently.
The future remains quite uncertain for NFT's, for now it seems things are in a bit of a cooling off period following a lot of excitement, and as certain aspects start to be ironed out as there had been some difficulty particularly around where copyright and ownership rules actually come into play whilst these more niche aspects are being explored and figured out it will give the market time to settle down and fall into a bit of a better rhythm. For the early adopters, there are certainly hopes that the early gambles eventually pay off, and that the huge figures spent early on weren't a one off and become more par for the course in the future as things pick up once more.