15/06/2021 NFT sales are dropping but believers still see a future for digital collectibles
KEY POINTS
Sales of digital collectibles known as non-fungible tokens have fallen dramatically in recent weeks.
It marks a big reversal from the first quarter of 2021, which saw $2 billion in total sales of NFTs.
Proponents of NFTs don’t see the recent slowdown as the end of the road for the market.
Has the NFT bubble already burst?
Non-fungible tokens took the art world by storm earlier this year. NFTs are a type of digital asset designed to show someone has ownership of a unique virtual item, such as online pictures and videos or even sports trading cards.
In March, South Carolina-based graphic designer Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, sold an NFT for a record $69 million at a Christie’s auction. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, sold his first tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million later that month.
More recently, a rare digital avatar known as a CryptoPunk sold at Sotheby’s for over $11.7 million on Thursday. Total NFT sales reached an eye-watering $2 billion in the first quarter, according to data from Nonfungible, a website which tracks the market.
But new data shows the NFT hype is fading. Overall sales plunged from a seven-day peak of $176 million on May 9, to just $8.6 million on June 15, according to numbers from Nonfungible. That means volumes are now roughly back where they were at the start of 2021.
Meanwhile, prices of major NFTs appear to be sliding. CryptoPunks, one of the most popular NFT projects, fell from a weekly average of $99,720 in early May to $50,840 at the start of June. SuperRare digital art prices have fallen on average from a record of $31,778 to $5,342 in a similar timespan.
One of the main reasons for the sharp drop in the NFT market was a sudden rise and fall in sales of new crypto collectible items called MeeBits — made by the creators of CryptoPunks — according to Gauthier Zuppinger, chief operating officer of Nonfungible.
“The thing is that, each time you’ll notice such a quick increase on any trend, you’ll see a relative decrease, which basically stands for a market stabilization,” he told CNBC.
Geoff Osler, CEO and co-founder of NFT app S!NG, said the digital collectibles craze was likely driven by “pent-up demand” from wealth accumulated from rising cryptocurrency prices, and that the market now seems to be calming in tandem with a drop in crypto markets.
Bitcoin, for example, has fallen from a record high of nearly $65,000 in April to just over $39,000 as of Monday.
What’s next for NFTs?
Proponents of NFTs don’t see the recent slowdown as the end of the road for the market.
“High-profile NFTs selling for millions of dollars was a sure sign that the market was treating them as speculative assets,” Nadya Ivanova, chief operating officer of L’Atelier, a research firm affiliated with BNP Paribas, told CNBC.
“And by definition, markets for speculative assets are unstable and liable to dry up.”
“The bigger question for NFTs is their long-term value, which we believe is likely significant,” Ivanova added. “As augmented and virtual reality technology matures, normal people are going to spend more and more of their time — and therefore money — in virtual environments.”
It’s worth noting there’s been talk of augmented and virtual reality taking off in the tech industry for years, with companies from Facebook to Microsoft making big bets in the space. But the tech is yet to see mainstream adoption.
Still, some in the crypto space are betting NFTs could play a role in the development of immersive virtual worlds.
Another potential use of NFTs we may hear more about in the months ahead is music, according to S!NG’s Osler. Artists such as Kings of Leon and Steve Aoki, for example, have jumped into the NFT frenzy.
“We have only seen the tiniest part of where this is going,” Osler told CNBC. “Cryptocurrency is here to stay — and NFTs mean there is now something to buy. It’s the other side of the equation. And this is going to go a long way past digital art. We think music is next.”
The NFT phenomenon has some issues to resolve before it becomes a widespread method of proving ownership of art and other original content, though. Copyright is a big one. A number of artists and content creators have complained their work is being stolen and sold on as NFTs online.
Osler said it’s important that legal protections are added “directly into the NFTs themselves,” and that consumers “have legal recourse if something goes wrong.”
Zuppinger expects there will be “more and more promising projects in the next few months and years.”
“We are reached out every day by promising projects, large companies, banking groups all around the world that are gradually entering the NFT space, so we’re pretty confident that the NFT space is not ‘dead’,” he told CNBC.
Sales of digital collectibles known as non-fungible tokens have fallen dramatically in recent weeks.
It marks a big reversal from the first quarter of 2021, which saw $2 billion in total sales of NFTs.
Proponents of NFTs don’t see the recent slowdown as the end of the road for the market.
Has the NFT bubble already burst?
Non-fungible tokens took the art world by storm earlier this year. NFTs are a type of digital asset designed to show someone has ownership of a unique virtual item, such as online pictures and videos or even sports trading cards.
In March, South Carolina-based graphic designer Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, sold an NFT for a record $69 million at a Christie’s auction. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, sold his first tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million later that month.
More recently, a rare digital avatar known as a CryptoPunk sold at Sotheby’s for over $11.7 million on Thursday. Total NFT sales reached an eye-watering $2 billion in the first quarter, according to data from Nonfungible, a website which tracks the market.
But new data shows the NFT hype is fading. Overall sales plunged from a seven-day peak of $176 million on May 9, to just $8.6 million on June 15, according to numbers from Nonfungible. That means volumes are now roughly back where they were at the start of 2021.
Meanwhile, prices of major NFTs appear to be sliding. CryptoPunks, one of the most popular NFT projects, fell from a weekly average of $99,720 in early May to $50,840 at the start of June. SuperRare digital art prices have fallen on average from a record of $31,778 to $5,342 in a similar timespan.
One of the main reasons for the sharp drop in the NFT market was a sudden rise and fall in sales of new crypto collectible items called MeeBits — made by the creators of CryptoPunks — according to Gauthier Zuppinger, chief operating officer of Nonfungible.
“The thing is that, each time you’ll notice such a quick increase on any trend, you’ll see a relative decrease, which basically stands for a market stabilization,” he told CNBC.
Geoff Osler, CEO and co-founder of NFT app S!NG, said the digital collectibles craze was likely driven by “pent-up demand” from wealth accumulated from rising cryptocurrency prices, and that the market now seems to be calming in tandem with a drop in crypto markets.
Bitcoin, for example, has fallen from a record high of nearly $65,000 in April to just over $39,000 as of Monday.
What’s next for NFTs?
Proponents of NFTs don’t see the recent slowdown as the end of the road for the market.
“High-profile NFTs selling for millions of dollars was a sure sign that the market was treating them as speculative assets,” Nadya Ivanova, chief operating officer of L’Atelier, a research firm affiliated with BNP Paribas, told CNBC.
“And by definition, markets for speculative assets are unstable and liable to dry up.”
“The bigger question for NFTs is their long-term value, which we believe is likely significant,” Ivanova added. “As augmented and virtual reality technology matures, normal people are going to spend more and more of their time — and therefore money — in virtual environments.”
It’s worth noting there’s been talk of augmented and virtual reality taking off in the tech industry for years, with companies from Facebook to Microsoft making big bets in the space. But the tech is yet to see mainstream adoption.
Still, some in the crypto space are betting NFTs could play a role in the development of immersive virtual worlds.
Another potential use of NFTs we may hear more about in the months ahead is music, according to S!NG’s Osler. Artists such as Kings of Leon and Steve Aoki, for example, have jumped into the NFT frenzy.
“We have only seen the tiniest part of where this is going,” Osler told CNBC. “Cryptocurrency is here to stay — and NFTs mean there is now something to buy. It’s the other side of the equation. And this is going to go a long way past digital art. We think music is next.”
The NFT phenomenon has some issues to resolve before it becomes a widespread method of proving ownership of art and other original content, though. Copyright is a big one. A number of artists and content creators have complained their work is being stolen and sold on as NFTs online.
Osler said it’s important that legal protections are added “directly into the NFTs themselves,” and that consumers “have legal recourse if something goes wrong.”
Zuppinger expects there will be “more and more promising projects in the next few months and years.”
“We are reached out every day by promising projects, large companies, banking groups all around the world that are gradually entering the NFT space, so we’re pretty confident that the NFT space is not ‘dead’,” he told CNBC.
Arts
(1)
(2)
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/15/nft-price-crash-what-next-for-digital-collectibles.html
Interesting NFTs
Block Chain Dungeon
Once upon a time...
a little boy named Leo loved to paint, draw and experiment. He also loved to play with blocks and chains, which drew him again and again into the rooms of his friends Michel and Angelo. Often they also met in virtual rooms of Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, Somnium Space or Sandbox to create new inventions, read books about new technologies, or just swing the brushes. But on this day something gigantic happened. A good friend of Leo came to visit and brought his girlfriend Mona, who wanted a piece of Leo's art on her skin. This was the birth of the NFT's, as Leo developed Non Fungible Tattoos in the Block Chain Dungeon of Michel and Angelo. From that day on people from all over the world came to get NFT's from Leo or one of his students, like "Skeenee the rat", who controls the NFT machine with his laptop. A new age began.
SolPunk_#2244
Beyonce
The Moth Catcher
In this psychologically bed-headed portrait, a creature sets in a trance; his eyes devolved and vestigal, his third eye open but hardened and in a form resembling a Sharingan.
The imagery therefore expresses an awareness existing in corporeal introspection. The creature’s mind sprouts, on the left side, an emerging face, grinning. To the right side of the head, red tentacles and fingers intertwine–a collaboration of invertebrate and vertebrate consciousness cooperatively handling paint brushes of the sort used to build an oil painting. The neck and throat bristle with random thorns, as from a rose or the upper portions of a beak sprouting from its flesh. The neck itself disassociates into layers of membranous material, terminating upon an abstracted base of convoluted forms composing its body.
The nose is virtually non existent, more a sinus reiterative of the shape of the third eye. Set against the exposed teeth peering out of thick, meaty cheeks, a skeleton-like impression results.
That impression sets behind a visceral set of lips and tongue, which is the creature’s prime seat of awareness. Sensual, organic, the tongue organ hangs, meaty, and with consciousness of a sea cucumber. It illuminates at the tip, drawing the attraction of a nearby moth–with mystery of purpose.
Genesis
José Delbo sent me his striking pencil sketch and powerful inked work, which I then interpreted in oil on canvas. I wanted to create a very painterly piece with obvious brush marks etc, but I was also aiming for a nostalgic feel, a kind of 1980’s superhero comic book look, the kind I grew up with. My goal with this animation was to try to recreate, in part, the creative process that both artists went through with the visual information I had. I was able to showcase my painting process more accurately as I could take photographs of my progress throughout. Consecutive images could then be layered like brush strokes over José’s drawing to create the impression that this was one continuous artwork from pencil, to ink, to completed painting. The representation of the line sketch at the beginning, then pencil/ink and lastly the paint layers being applied demonstrate both artists’ struggle for the right lines, tone, form, and colour until the work is finally completed. As the oil was still wet with each photograph the glare of my studio lights can be seen in the brush strokes. Eventually, the figure emerges and as it does, our hero comes to life, looking directly at the viewer -- but is he grimacing in approval or disgust? We will never know for sure as just before he can say anything, white paint is brushed across the canvas entirely and the process begins again. Only the bat is quick enough to escape.
Yoshida on the Tokaido Highway, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)
Yoshida on the Tokaido Highway, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji
1831 - Japan