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Non-fungible tokens were always about as valuable as a casino chip. Up one moment; lost completely the next. The lucky ones may have hit the double 00s on the roulette wheel, like those who bought Pudgy Penguin coins when it hit all time lows in 2024 and then rose from the ashes. For the rest of the NFT holders, asset values are not coming back in 2026.
Many serious Bitcoin investors always wondered why NFTs were a thing in the first place. It made digital asset investing look more like a man-child, science fiction gambling den, muddying the waters for real money to ever take blockchain and cryptocurrencies seriously.
“I hate to say it, but most NFTs today are simply worthless, they don’t have any real or redeemable value,” said Steven Willinger, General Partner at Blockchain Builders Fund. Willinger once led investments at Coinbase Ventures. “That said, I still NFTs play a meaningful role as a technology layer, quietly powering real-world assets, gaming ecosystems, and on-chain identity,” Willinger said.
During the hype years in the mid 2000s, when Bored Ape Yacht Club had thematic burger joints in California, attention from the crypto media and Bitcoin event organizers drove prices. “That whole market became a zero-sum game of speculation,” Willinger said. “That money’s long gone, and there’s little reason to think it’s coming back.”
Some recent crash and burns include the 2022 Australian Open “Artball” NFT program — nearly 10,000 images once sold at around 0.7 ETH but has since bottomed out to maybe 0.01 ETH after the program was killed.
The global NFT market cap as of Nov. 18 was $221.53 billion, a 66.3% decline in 24 hours. For example, no one has bought top 15 NFT Bitcoin Puppets since April 29.
NFT user engagement has collapsed alongside a decline in sales, even as some speculators manage big gains. For example, top NFT CryptoPunks hit an all time low of $19.70 on Aug. 5, 2024 and is now trading at $31.10 with single digit sales volume.
Dapp Radar reported back in January that 2024 was the worst year for NFTs. This year will not prove to be any better.
But for Pudgy Penguins NFT owner and Web3 entrepreneur, Luca Netz, hope springs eternal.
By many measures, NFT participation is down roughly 90-96% from peak levels. In 2022, during the hype, the number of active NFT traders peaked at around 529,000, but by early 2025 that had plunged to only about 19,600 active traders – a 96% drop in participation, according to some industry articles sourcing market participants.
NFTs: The Relics of Crypto
Galaxy Research analysts led by Thaddeus Pinakiewicz said in an October newsletter that NFTs are a relic of the 2020-2021 boom.
“Volumes are down more than 90% from their peak, floor prices for all but the most iconic collections have drifted toward zero, and many survivors have pivoted to fungible tokens. But as the Game of Thrones line goes, ‘What is dead may never die.’ NFTs haven’t disappeared; they’ve simply evolved,” Galaxy Research’s team wrote.
Their most popular original use cases, gamer community-building and pure investor speculation, have been absorbed by memecoins.
“A few collections like Fidenza, CryptoPunks, and Pudgy Penguins have held some value because of their art, legacy, or community, but they’re rare exceptions trading far below their highs,” Willinger said. “There were also some interesting attempts to improve price discovery, things like floor pricing, rarity-based analytics, and auction-based lending, but none of that could save NFTs without real demand.”
In October, global NFT trading volume across chains had its version of the old ‘dead cat bounce’, up 30% over September sales to $546 million. It was reportedly the highest monthly total of the year.
NFTs still have a place as a technology layer, quietly powering real-world assets, gaming, and on-chain identity. But most standalone NFT projects that never found real product-market fit have been abandoned. “Those are the forgotten ERC-721s buried under newer on-chain activity,” Willinger said.
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Benzinga Disclaimer: This article is from an unpaid external contributor. It does not represent Benzinga’s reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.
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