The digital age has given us few genuinely pure pleasures, but one of the indisputable ones has been watching that train wreck in slow motion (well, not very slow) that was the fall from grace of NFTs. First, international cryptobrokers They tried to convince us that paying millions for a certified jpg was a safe investment. Just a few months later, those images were worth just a few dollars. The fall has been so precipitous that now, many of those same investors laugh at their own financial misfortune. It is the definitive death certificate of NFTs.
What happened then? The NFT phenomenon began with early experiments as early as 2012 with the so-called Colored Coinsbut the real boom started in 2017 with CryptoKitties on Ethereumwhich showed the potential of NFTs: basically, they are unique digital assets that “represent” the ownership of a digital or physical object, certified using blockchain technology to guarantee its authenticity and uniqueness. Unlike cryptocurrencies, which are interchangeable with each other, each NFT is unrepeatable and cannot be replaced by another identical one, functioning as a digital certificate of ownership and authenticity.
In 2021, NFTs reached their peak of popularity with multi-million dollar sales such as Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” at Christie’s for 69 million dollarsand iconic collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club They generated great attention and million-dollar valuations. However, after a spectacular boom, the market began to decline in 2022 due to oversupply, extreme speculation and concerns about scams, resulting in an abrupt drop in sales.
Eat the rich. After the collapse of 2022a certain tendency was generated on the internet to mock the speculative bubble that enveloped NFTs in 2021 and the enormous losses suffered by many investors: around 95% of NFTs had lost all value. Already then the practice of sharing screenshots of NFTs at a loss became fashionable. In part it was a recurring joke from the very origin of the phenomenon, in which people shared the capture of an NFT, showing that there was no essential difference between an NFT and the copy of an NFT, beyond a document that certified which was the “original” and which was the copy.
Famous people in disgrace. The internet likes nothing more than laughing at a celebrity or a millionaire, and even more so when they fall into the clutches of a pyramid scheme with planetary reach. For example, much was said about Justin Bieber, who bought a Bored Ape NFT for $1.3 million in 2022 and fell 95% in value in 2023. Another classic example: the NFT that was a screenshot of the first tweet of Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter. It was sold in 2021 for $2.9 million and less than a year later its owner tried to resell it, reaching an offer of a few thousand dollars, that is, a loss of value of more than 99%. In July 2023, it was worth $3.77.
In general, NFTs and their physical volatility gave rise to a good amount of scandals and scams in which celebrities such as Seth Green, Jay Choy and Melania Trump were involved.
From lost to the river. Curiously, many of those who lost millionaire amounts with NFTs are showing their shame on social networks, and describing how much they spent and how much their investment is now worth: a mix of collective warning and taking misfortunes with humor (because they can) which, of course, is spread to the derision of the influencers who tried to sell the motorcycle to their followers. A tweeter He bought this monster for 17,000 and now it’s worth ten dollars. The user @NFTsAreNice (lol) bought this for 31,000 and now it’s worthless. Another investor spent three fucking million in thiswhich is now worth 25,000. It has gone even worse for this other one, who invested 1.8 million and now it’s worth 450.
They all use the formula “I bought this NFT in 2022 for…”, and the curious thing is that many of them are still in the cryptocurrency or NFT business, and have profiles as supposedly reliable investors. Significantly, some of them have received in response to their laments messages of “You don’t cry in the casino”, a typical phrase that cryptobrokers utter when they fall into heavy losses after heavy investments. Come on, the “who wants a bag” of a lifetime.
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