Also worth noting. The Bored Ape Yaht Club NFTs (in the thumbnail) were released by 4chan trolls with Nazi symbolism hidden in some of the. This was the most successful NFT project of them all.
From millions of dollars to under a grand: The dramatic fall of the NFT
Submitted 1 day ago by NomNom@feddit.uk to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
bonenode@piefed.social 1 day ago
Isn’t it pretty obvious this was 99% a money laundering scheme?
timroerstroem@feddit.dk 1 day ago
That’s easy to say with the benefit of hindsight in 2026. However, back 2021, it was easy to say without the benefit of hindsight.
darkdemize@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
cecilkorik@piefed.ca 1 day ago
I think it was even easier to say in 2021, because more people knew about it and the scam was even more obvious. Now, in 2026, most people’s hindsight doesn’t go back that far, it was quickly forgotten as it should be, and people are like “huh? NFT?”
chaotic_ugly@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
If it wasn’t in the beginning, it was after Folding Ideas/Dan Olson but out “Line Goes Up”.
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
Only to people with brains.
a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Nah, A large portion of it was idiots attempting to lose money as quickly as possible.
Lemming6969@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Ya’ll are fucking stupid. There is no fall of nfts and they aren’t useless. If there is an authority who recognizes the nft, then it has the utility value of the authority. End of story. It doesn’t matter if some people traded them for outrageous amounts of money and it has nothing to do with the ability to copy a picture. All it does is tie a digital item to a hash to an owner on a ledger, for purposes of authentication. If a hash of a monkey picture gets you on a yacht, then if you don’t have one you aren’t getting on that yacht. In the future, if the nft of your house deed isn’t in your wallet, then if a judge looking at a specific ledger says you don’t own your house, you don’t own it.
Bakkoda@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
First time bagholding?
Lemming6969@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I don’t have any nfts as I don’t have a personal use-case. If an authority adopts nft for any of my assets however, yeah I’d get one. For instance transacting a deed can cost a lot, but an nft would be 10-100x less.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
Top shelf sarcasm if my pallet is correct
deathbird@mander.xyz 1 hour ago
Yeah as a record on a ledger it’s fine. I think a lot of people wanted them to be more than that though.
Lemming6969@lemmy.world 24 minutes ago
Fortunately our unfortunately that’s all a blockchain is lol. It’s not really different than an exchange pointing to a blockchain and people agreeing 1 bitcoin on that chain is worth X. You always need consensus from multiple entities, but the difference is these ledgers are public, and secured by math. That’s it.
AstralPath@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
A yacht full of NFT owners is just about the last place in this universe that I’d want to be.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
Speculating on the value of an investment based on an asset that doesn’t exist is similar to scammers offering to sell certificates of ownership of dogs’ souls.
Capitalism tends over time to create increasingly abstract forms of ownership. And what could be more abstract than ownership of something that isn’t there at all? They’re selling GUIDs that point to nothing.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
They can be used to launder money though.
That’s why art is so inflated. It’s used as a means to launder
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 1 day ago
Everyone comment how much did they lose on NFTs.
I will start: $0.
YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Also I made: 0$
BassTurd@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I found value in shitting on people buying them. $0 monetary gain, but at least $10 in schadenfreude.
Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 18 hours ago
Damn, I lost twice as much as you did.
The_Almighty_Walrus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I actually got a free NFT in some kind of sweepstakes. It’s probably worth negative money now.
It did get me 3 free drinks at a music festival so there’s like +50 bucks in value right there.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I actually made money from NOT putting any of my investment money in NFTs.
Then again, from the very start the NFT mania looked like a more obvious and dumb version of the Tulip Bulb mania, so I can hardly claim great wisdom from not having put a cent in it.
crystalmerchant@lemmy.world 1 day ago
$0
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 19 hours ago
If you weren’t using them to launder money for a criminal enterprise, then you were doing them wrong.
NotAnonymousAtAll@feddit.org 18 hours ago
…
doing them wrongfalling for a scam.
sveltecider@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
This is the least surprising thing ever
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
That’s why I divested to Labubu dolls and TSLA
billwashere@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
The whole NFT thing was one giant pump and dump.
ozoned@piefed.social 1 day ago
What? You mean digital art that infinitely reproducible, can’t actually be owned, WASN’T the next big thing? Oh jeez. I hope the metaverse succeeds and if not then AI surely will RIGHT?!?!
BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
Hey! You be fair to the NFT owners.
They never owned digital art, just a link to a specific instance of!
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Hey but this cryptographic key says that I own it because I paid made up currency units for it or something
ozoned@piefed.social 1 day ago
Hey but that made up currency I worked for by burning electricity, I mean MINING it.
criss_cross@lemmy.world 1 day ago
My favorite thing is there are certain NFTs that are viruses that as soon as you do ANYTHING with them, they go and transfer all of the contents of your wallet to another wallet. Even deleting them triggers this action. So if you have unknown NFTs in your wallet you can’t touch them lest they trigger this virus.
How could this not be the future of commerce?
ozoned@piefed.social 1 day ago
WHAT?!? I’ve never heard of that! That’s nefarious! WOW!
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
That was the most goddamn awful thing ever seen. Where are those shitheads who first sold the fucking idea?
fierysparrow89@lemmy.world 1 day ago
As with everything crypto this was a huge scam. Besides the obvious profiting from gullable idiots, the other use case is to illegally funnel money.
shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 21 hours ago
Not absolutely everything in crypto is a scam, though 99% of it is, and I will definitely agree with you there. But there is 1% that is actually trying to do something useful, and you’ve got to be able to find that 1% and not throw it out with the bath water.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
There are great uses for crypto, just like there were great uses for Ithica_hours. A place holder for goods and services without physical constraint is a useful idea.
But it wont work. Because people want to leverage that to make fiat. They don’t care about usefulness, actually earning it, or trading for it.
They want to get some, hold it, and sell it back for their fiat. Because of that exchanges came into being so they could capture some of the wealth in the process. And from then on it was never going to be useful. Just a way to hope the next sucker would buy what you had.
traxex@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
I’d wager even the 1% is the stereotypical “solution in search of a problem”. Seems to be a reoccurring theme as of late in the tech industry.
mattyroses@lemmy.today 8 hours ago
yeah, the cryptoleftists community has found some decent actual use
fierysparrow89@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
The silver lining is that after the obligatory exploitation by grifters, every new technology of this caliber finally gets a more positive use in our lifes. Maybe somewhat naive, but I think we (ie. our societies) have payed ~50% of the tuition fee as far as crypto is concerned. So hopefully we’ll be able to absorb the tech in our collective lives soon.
Ps: Different topic, but using the same metaphor for AI, I’m afraid we’re just at the begin of its initial fallout.
expatriado@lemmy.world 1 day ago
but for a brief period of time, some people made some money, while most participants lost
some_designer_dude@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This describes our species entire existence 👌
expatriado@lemmy.world 1 day ago
we were the bored ape all along
trslim@pawb.social 1 day ago
A grand is still 1000 dollars too high a price for these things.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I’ll see your grand and say 950 is still too high.
Jaysyn@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This was never anything aside from a scam designed to separate the tech illiterate from their money.
Siegfried@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Who could have thought it?
PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I think most people don’t understand cryptocurrencies. On one side it’s all hyperbolic about being your own bank and financial freedom and new tech, on the other side it’s hyperbolic about how there is no underlying value, it’s all going to 0, scams, drugs, terrorism, money laundering,…
But the fact is that crypto does have an underlying value. It’s gambling. Gambling is a huge industry.
leoj@piefed.zip 1 day ago
Also drugs.
I always said as long as crypto can be used to buy drugs, it will have value.
When everything we know in the world is gone and we’re using rocks to make spears again, people will still want drugs, the value is eternal.
underisk@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
I mean it’s also really really good at money laundering and other financial securities scams that are otherwise illegal in real currency. IDK why OP is being so dismissive of that.
As long as the gov refuses to regulate it, it’s going to be useful for crimes. On the off chance we ever get a government willing to actually do anything but war crimes and graft, regulating it would destroy a lot of its utility and value.
frongt@lemmy.zip 22 hours ago
Congrats, now you understand fiat currency. It only has value because we agree on it.
mattyroses@lemmy.today 8 hours ago
Fiat has value because the government demands taxes in it. If you don’t pay your taxes, they put you in jail.
PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
No. I mean you can get all philosophical and say that everything has value only because that’s a human concept, but thats not really something I would answer to.
Fiat has value because it’s enforced. Because we have institutions that enforce it and because all of our lives are intertwined with it. We buy food with it and we are paid with it. It’s everywhere. It doesn’t make it immune to manipulation and fraud and crime, but we can take legal action because law is also intertwined with the same system.
Crypto is , with a couple of exceptions, a really terrible casino.
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
As opposed to the USD, which is backed by nothing, and therefore has no underlying value, but is not gambling for some reason?
arandomthought@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
The USD is backed by a state who demands their taxes be paid in their currency, ensuring there will always be demand for said currency.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Its not worth a single cent in reality
shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 21 hours ago
I purchased a really cheap NFT domain that I can link my cryptocurrency wallet address to so that instead of having to type out the 90 character string and get it right, you can type out a human readable domain. Other than that small use case, I’ve never had any other reason for it. But hey, it’s kind of cool. And I don’t see why not keep it since I already have it. And as I said, it wasn’t that expensive anyway.
theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Who could have predicted this? Literally impossible without hindsight and that’s the revisionist history I’m sticking to.
Frozengyro@lemmy.world 1 day ago
How could it possibly be worth more than pennies?
supamanc@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is the question!
MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Anyone with the most basic common sense knew it was going to end up like this.
BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Dramatic? I found this an entertaining example of dumbness 🍿🍿🍿
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
For sure. This is comedy, not drama.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I remember playing with Stable Diffusion in 2022, and thinking “Oh. That’s the end of NFTs.”
NFT art was stupid to begin with, of course, but SD was such a blatent, extreme inverse of the “artifical digital scarcity” angle. If I wanted a shitty, albeit “unique” and deterministically reproducible digital image, I could just make it in 30 seconds on a desktop. If I wanted a certain look, I could use img2img or eventually controlnet and all sorts of augmentations.
Yes, junky AI was junky AI, but ironically it was the antithesis of everything NFTs stood for. Instead of “digital information is worth commodifying at great expense,” it was “digital information is basically free.” And I still find it amusing that Tech Bros jumped from one ship to the other so quickly, or somehow have feet in both.
Furbag@lemmy.world 1 day ago
AI wasn’t the NFT killer, right click > saveas killed it at the very moment of conception.
Digital scarcity is a complete joke.
frongt@lemmy.zip 22 hours ago
Sure you can copy the image, but you can’t have the same machine-readable hash indicating ownership in my private system!
ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 1 day ago
In hindsight, the monkey NFT thing was a “good” idea but poorly implemented. It was an attempt to create a digital version of beanie babies or baseball cards.
I mean “good” if you consider beanie babies and baseball card collecting and the value speculation a good thing. (I don’t.)
crystalmerchant@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Whoever could have seen this coming
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 day ago
But Gary Vee told me NFTs would make me rich!
linule@lemmy.world 1 day ago
These ape NFTs are also the ugliest and dumbest thing ever. Their faces look like hairy testicles. Whoever spent more than like $0.5 for this, fully deserves the outcome.
heiligerbimbam@lemmy.wtf 1 day ago
Haven’t heard anything in a while. So things aren’t going so well? 😂
ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com 8 hours ago
I need to come up with my own scam to rinse rich idiots.
Alpha71@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
The best scams are either holistic/psychic stuff or Hi-fi Audio.
BioDriver@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
High Fi audio is actually legit to a point. Over $300 (well, $400 now with tariffs) is when the scam begins
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
A good scam is all about finding a way to bypass bs detectors. Appealing to greed or fear while adding a sense of urgency are the classic ones for good reason. But you’ve got others like appealing to in group/out group dynamics, distrust of institutions, ego, desired self image, laziness, carelessness so much more. You’ve also got those selecting to trigger anyone with a bs detector to only spend time on those without one.
utopiah@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Unfortunately for you you don’t have what it takes. You need to be a proper psychopath to scam others.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
This. The worst thing for any salesman to have is scruples.
tio_bira@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Sometimes i observe so many ways to get easy money and don’t have to hard work, than i remember than my parents raised my scruples and moral… Would be so easy if i wasn’t
entropiclyclaude@lemmy.wtf 4 hours ago
Ok - hear me out.
We get idk 1000 of us poors to buy some cheap land in the Midwest. Up in Appalachia.
We sell “Rapture Survival Communities”
They’re $999/month and you’ll get a hidden bungalow community complete with bunker. We’ll fill it with doctors and pastors and birthing women.
BUT YOU CANT KNOW THE LOCATION UNTIL THE RAPTURE HAPPENS. You don’t want any pesky liberals finding it and gaying up the place with their liberal demonic child sacrifice transness.
We will deliver coordinates via analog radio and Morse code once the rapture has started.
By business plan makes Sam Altman hard in his butt:
When they come screaming for proof and receipts and refunds… Just gaslight them and buy a politician.
WildPalmTree@lemmy.world 49 minutes ago
If I were an “angel”, I’d go with you. I like the cut of your jib. You have what it takes. If only 1) me business angel 2) you pitch-deck. We would clean-up the business space.
Agent641@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I’m working on the grift of all gifts, if you want in, you can buy shares of my grift for $100 each.
Atropos@lemmy.world 19 minutes ago
And if you don’t trust this guy, I offer grift insurance for only 15% of expected value!
Canconda@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
Wanna help me convince maga that citrus makes people gay? I think we could solve a lot with that.