Remember the craze just a few years ago over Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)? People were paying millions of dollars to purchase various images, with one series known as the Bored Ape Yacht Club being particularly hyped.

The NFT hype benefited from the crypto craze because people seemed impressed with the blockchain process used to certify ‘ownership’ of this asset even if they did not understand it. It made absolutely no sense to me right from the get-go that cartoons and other images that can be copied freely could have any value but many people seemed to think that they did and rushed to ‘purchase’ them even though it was not clear what ‘ownership’ entitled them to.

The ownership of an NFT as defined by the blockchain has no inherent legal meaning and does not necessarily grant copyright, intellectual property rights, or other legal rights over its associated digital file. An NFT does not restrict the sharing or copying of its associated digital file and does not prevent the creation of NFTs that reference identical files.

This phenomenon had all the markings of a bubble and sure enough, the bubble popped.

According to a new report by dappGambl that reviewed data from NFT Scan and CoinMarketCap, 69,795 out of 73,257 NFT collections have a market cap of 0 Ether, leaving 95% of those holding NFT collections – or 23 million people – with worthless investments.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a form of crypto asset that is used to certify ownership and authenticity of a digital file including an image, video or text.
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The report revealed that 79% of all NFT collections have remained unsold, as there is not enough demand to keep up with the supply in what researchers have described as a “highly speculative and volatile market”.

To analyze the current state of top NFT assets, dappGambl researchers looked at the top 8,850 NFT collections according to CoinMarketCap.

They found that 18% of these top collections had a floor price of zero, essentially being worthless. Forty-one per cent of the top collections had been priced between $5 and $100, which may indicate a lack of perceived value attached to these assets, the report revealed. Moreover, less than 1% of the collections were worth more than $6,000, a stark shift from the million-dollar deals that dominated a $22bn market in 2021.
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In addition, the report revealed that the number of dead NFTs could even be higher.

“MacContract on Ethereum has a floor price of $13,234,204.2, but its all-time sales is only $18,” the report said, adding: “This stark discrepancy between listed floor prices and actual sales data exposes a significant issue in the NFT market – inflated valuations that don’t reflect genuine buyer interest or real-world transactions.

“It becomes clear that a significant portion of the NFT market is characterized by speculative and hopeful pricing strategies that are far removed from the actual trading history of these assets,” it said.

This article discusses some of the reasons for the sharp drop in value. But do we really need any deep analyses of this? What surprises me is that any NFT still has any value at all.

The problem is that this was not just a harmless fad that resulted in some people with too much money and not enough sense buying junk. There are real costs to society because of the energy used to power this process.

The study also analyzed the costly environmental impact surrounding the minting process of NFTs. Researchers identified 195,699 NFT collections with no apparent owners or market share and found that the energy required to mint the NFTs was comparable to 27,789,258 kWh, resulting in an emission of approximately 16,243 metric tons of CO2.

To put the staggering number into context, the report revealed that 16,243 metric tons of CO2 is equivalent to the yearly emissions of 2,048 homes. It is also equivalent to the yearly emissions of 3,531 cars or the carbon footprint of 4,061 passengers flying from London to Wellington, New Zealand.

This is the kind of thing that happens in a society where a few people have a lot of money to fritter away on fads.

Bored Apes reached a peak floor price of 128 Etherium in May 2022, equivalent to about $354,000 USD at the time. The most expensive Bored Ape ever sold was in an auction by Sotheby’s in September 2021 for over $24 million. By May 2024, their floor price had declined to 13.395 Etherium, or around $40,000 in 2024 USD, an approximately 90% loss in value. Two Bored Ape NFTs purchased by Justin Bieber in 2021 for the equivalent of $1.3 million and by Eminem in 2022 for the equivalent of $460,000, had their highest bids in early 2026 of around $2,800, representing an almost total wipeout of value.

Like all the bubbles of the past, there is a cycle. Things that were worthless at the start end up worthless at the end.

The problem is that other people who are not rich can get sucked into investing in these things because of the hype and the FOMO effect (Fear OF Missing Out), thinking that they can make a quick buck by jumping on the bandwagon and, unlike people like Bieber and Eminem, can end up losing money that they can ill afford.