NFTs: No Future Tokens

This article was originally published on my Substack, Trend Mill.
At the height of the boom, NFTs were everywhere. They were splashed across socials. They were seeping on to talk shows. They were in music videos. They were launched by every and any brand and creator, regardless of what business sense it made. They made a few individuals filthy rich. One guy even burned a $10 million Frida Kahlo artwork because he was convinced that it would be worth more in the Metaverse.
But now… 95% of those NFT projects are worthless.
*pretends to be shocked*
Last week, dappGambl released a new report named “Dead NFTs: The Evolving Landscape of the NFT Market.” And it laid bare the sorry state of the NFT marketplace:

• Of the 73,257 NFT collections identified, 69,795 have a market cap of 0 ETH.
• Only 21% of the collection had 100%+ ownership, meaning 4 out of every 5 NFT projects have remained unsold.

Of course, it’s unfair to draw conclusions based on an entire industry — after all, every industry is full of bad actors and duds galore. The NFT marketplace has been filled with worthless projects, shameless cash grabs and scams galore. If you need proof of that, check out Web3 Is Going Great, a site that keeps a running tally of scams, most of which are NFT projects. The current total? $68 billion.
Those projects undoubtedly skew the findings. Instead, it’s best to study the Blue Chip NFTs, the few projects that held value and *shock* actually built some form of community as promised. Those Blue Chips are CryptoPunks, Bored Apes, Azuki, Mutant Apes, Clone X and Doodles.
And those chips are down badly.