They were all the rage just a few years ago — digital collectibles known as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, that promised to revolutionize art, ownership, and investing. But today, most NFTs are virtually worthless, marking one of the sharpest collapses of a fad in recent financial history.
In 2021, artists, celebrities, and speculators rushed into the craze. The artist known as Beeple sold his digital collage Everydays for an astonishing $69.3 million. Rapper Snoop Dogg, tech mogul Jack Dorsey, and countless others followed, minting and buying NFTs for millions. But the hype proved unsustainable.
Among the most infamous examples is Dorsey’s first tweet, which sold for $2.9 million in 2021. When the buyer tried to resell it a year later, the highest bid was barely $280. Similarly, the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection — once flaunted by celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Jimmy Fallon — has seen prices crash more than 95%. Another collapse came from the CryptoPunks series, early pixel-art NFTs that sold for over $10 million apiece at their peak but now struggle to find buyers.
NFT trading volume has fallen more than 80% with an estimated 95% of collections now having no market value. Analysts cite a mix of speculative mania, lack of real utility, and confusion over what buyers actually owned — often just a token pointing to an image stored online.
Attorneys Alma Muharemovic and Michal Lipshitz of Burner Prudenti Law P.C. recommend that NFTs and other digital assets be protected as part of an overall estate plan.
“Many people keep records, photographs, and financial information online but do not consider what happens to these records and accounts after death,” they said.
While blockchain technology continues to evolve, the NFT frenzy stands as a cautionary tale of gold-rush greed — a multi-million dollar fad that ended in digital dust.