Has the NFT bubble burst and where will it go in the future?

Source: beincrypto; Compilation: Blockchain Knight

The speculative NFT market is arguably in its worst state ever, with few traders actively participating in the market. Is the profitable era of NFT over? Does the Web3 community and its companies need to rethink the way they think about digital collections?

Things have never been worse for NFTs from a buying and selling standpoint.

According to Dune, only 190 unique ETH wallets have bought or sold NFTs in the past seven days. In comparison, nearly a year ago, there were more than 181,000 unique ETH wallets doing the same.

Since the beginning of June 2022, the cumulative NFT trading volume has basically stagnated, which reflects the hollowing out of the market. Owners of blue-chip NFTs are now struggling to exit their positions as traders evaporate.

In general, the biggest headaches are those "collectable" profile pictures (PFPs) that have little practical value.

Paris Hilton (Paris Hilton) shared her "picking experience" about NFT on the Jimmy Fallon (Jimmy Fallon) show, and the market seemed to have reached its peak at that time.

Since then, the market has gone downhill.

**However, executives seem to see hope in moving from speculative, generative PFP to offering tokens that other technologies cannot.

This year, Ticketmaster ventured into the NFT space at its event, raising millions of dollars with its NFT ticketing tool product.

Applying NFTs to games or digital identities has long been considered a growth area for the technology. However, consensus is emerging, if not already, that the golden age of large-scale, speculative NFT trading is over.

It’s not just NFTs that appear to be in long-term decline (although industries other than speculative digital collectibles appear to be doing better).

According to a new report from Galaxy Digital, venture capital investment in the crypto space has declined for five consecutive quarters as money shifts from Web3 to artificial intelligence.

Modeo Cheng, chief game designer at Curio Research, believes that NFTs will find their place when they have utility in games.

Cheng also said, “At present, most NFTs are mainly used for speculation, and few people can hold them for a long time. However, in my vision, Crypto applications that encourage on-chain interaction in the future may significantly amplify their value.”

Brian D. Evans, CEO and founder of Web3 studio and advisory firm BDE Ventures, said he was surprised this crash came at a time when other currencies in the crypto space were relatively healthy.

"As alternative tokens such as BTC, ETH, and SOL soar, NFT is heading in the opposite direction," he observed.

Still, unlike other observers, Evans sees the PFP program in decline but not out. Evans made it clear that he doesn’t think PFP NFTs are a thing of the past.

“What may happen is that as fungible tokens continue to rise, people take profits and recycle fresh capital back up the risk curve. This could mean more money going into new, Reliable PFP program," Evans said.

But it won't happen overnight.