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Why NFTs Deserved to Die and Something New That Is Coming

By Isaiah Mccall

Last Updated: Aug 2, 2024

Fact checked

By Sam Cooling

NFTs have become a bit of a mess. NFT or non-fungible token trading volumes are tanking. July’s sales have crawled to $393 million so far.

NFTs have become a bit of a mess. NFT or non-fungible token trading volumes are tanking. July’s sales have crawled to $393 million so far.

NFTs have become a bit of a mess. NFT or non-fungible token trading volumes are tanking. July’s sales have crawled to $393 million so far, the lowest since November 2023. Cryptoslam data shows daily trades dipping below $14 million, suggesting rock-bottom numbers this month.

In June, the market hit a new low with $450 million in sales, and this month marks the downward spiral continuing, with a 45% drop from Q1’s $4.1 billion to Q2’s $2.24 billion.

Where do NFTs go from here?

“NFTs Are Dead”

Indicative of the mess was NFT.NYC. This year’s event Ordianls was the most popular NFT, a project built on Bitcoin where NFTs didn’t exist last year.

I attended several events at NFT.NYC and found nobody who wanted to address the scams, manipulation, grifters, lack of adoption, and how Web3 is the butt of everyone’s joke, which isn’t part of its inner circle.

Instead, I heard the same story: “NFTs will work because Pokémon worked.” Mind. Blown.

The NFT community has also ignored manipulation and scams like CryptoSlam, a leading platform for tracking NFT sales that purged $577 million of suspicious sale data from its analytics in response to “market manipulation” by Blur traders.

How did NFT.NYC react to this? They ignored it.

DISCOVER: Bitcoin is Dead? 99Bitcoins Obituaries

Now That Digital Art is Dying, What’s Next?

NFTs aren’t anything new. Everyone misses this. President of Valve and Steam Corporation Gabe Newell built a billion-dollar empire and fortune out of purchasable pixels locked to a fictional economy in crappy software.

Steam’s platform even allowed you to trade and gamble on virtual weapon skins in games like ‘Counter-Strike’ and ‘Dota 2’ for thousands.

(If not millions at one time) Steam is NFTs 1.0.

People do give a crap about digital items. Why? Hell, if we know. But they do.

(Okay, I did have a Farmville phase in high school, so you got me).

Non-fungible tokens could be instrumental for game ownership or digital ownership of any kind.

However, the problems they have to work through are the following:

  • You don’t have to pay extortionate gas fees to move or unstake them on Ethereum
  • You don’t have to deal with scams and rugs that cannot even be pursued by law because they’re not securities (regulation, pls)
  • You don’t have major players of the NFT community up their own ass

I would love to invest in NFTs because a digital economy is coming, but I just don’t know how. And I don’t think the NFT.NYC community knows, either. God love em’.

Disclaimer: Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. You could lose all of your capital.

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Disclaimer

Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. You could lose all of your capital.

Isaiah Mccall
Isaiah Mccall
Crypto Analyst

Isaiah McCall is an ultramarathon runner and journalist for 99Bitcoins. He started at USAToday in 2019 and now has a Medium blog following of 30k+ and millions of views. Follow him at @AfroReporter Read More

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