CryptoPunks get punked

A new report shows most NFTs are worthless. This won’t change.

“Sad Ape Yacht Club” by DALL•E

During the peak of the 2021 crypto boom, Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur famous on social media, bought a non-fungible token (NFT) of an ape wearing an orange hat for $5.9m. Two years later, it was worthless. A report from dappGambl, a crypto-gambling platform, shows this is the norm. Their research demonstrates that 95% of NFTs created are worth nothing. Sure, punters will always get caught up in speculative manias. But the NFT craze will never return.

First, huge losses will keep people away. Of the more than 73,000 NFT collections dappGambl looked at, almost 70,000 had a market capitalisation of zero. That means more than 23m people have worthless NFTs. Speculative assets, like these blockchain offspring, depend on price momentum to produce a return. With so many punters nursing wipeout losses, the NFT-as-an-investment culture is dead.

Second, without rising prices, there isn’t enough demand. Of all the NFT collections produced, 79% remain unsold. That …