The first tweet in NFT form brought in $ 2.9 million to its creator, Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey. That was in March last year. The same NFT is for sale again, current highest bid: $133. There is no sign of a heat wave, the mood on the NFT market is at freezing point. And the cooling was bitterly needed.
NFT-Tuning hole
Bear market, crisis, crash: Whatever you call it, the crypto market has already experienced rosier times. Bitcoin continues to torment itself at the 20,000 mark, Ethereum is suspiciously slipping close to $ 1,000, of the three trillion US dollars record high of the total market capitalization, there is still a third left. Ukraine-war, inflation and energy shortages have left their mark on the financial markets, the risk playing field crypto had to let down especially.
What about the NFT market? A similar overall picture: in the record month of January, the trade volume was still at 17 billion US dollars. Last month: one billion US dollars. In July, the trading volume on all marketplaces could slip back below the one billion US dollar mark for the first time in a year.
“Definitely not dead”
Sobering numbers, cause for concern? By no means, Gopi Kannappan, chief product officer at NFT startup bitsCrunch, tells BTC-ECHO. “The volume of the NFT market definitely slowed down in June 2022, but this is largely due to the factors of the global economy, and not an isolated problem of the NFT market,” the expert said. “Other key figures such as developer activity and the number of new users in the NFT ecosystem have also grown steadily under the difficult global economic conditions”.
The NFT market is “dynamic”, but “definitely not dead”. All a matter of perspective: “If we zoom out and look at the quarterly trading volume, then we see that the trading volume of Q2-2022 exceeded that of Q4-2021 by four percent on Ethereum”. At the same time, “all other global financial markets recorded negative growth”.
Dead people live longer
What can be observed in the NFT market is less the creeping end of a technology. It is the bursting of a bubble inflated by speculators. As it turns out, not everyone seems convinced that the cultural–historical status of the first tweet is comparable to the Mona Lisa – as his buyer Sina Estavi raved about at the time.
This is not just a tweet! I think years later, people will realize the true value of this tweet, just like the painting of the Mona Lisa.
Sina Estavi, Bridge Oracle CEO, acquired the first tweet as an NFT in March 2021
Away from the bling-bling of hyped meme pictures and make room for down-to–earth projects – there could also be an opportunity in the NFT identity crisis. Art, Web3, Metaverse: the application possibilities for NFTs are not getting any less, on the contrary. The technology fulfills many bridging functions in digitization. Facebook Instagram, Twitter and Meta, formerly Facebook, have long since tried to integrate NFTs into the mainstream, even faster than cryptocurrencies.
However, the oversupply will also be a disaster for the market, at least if NFTs are sold as an investment. They are not, at least not in the mass. There is no shortage of growth potential and opportunities to use NFTs sensibly. Do tweets count? Questionable.
