In March of 2000, after the NASDAQ had reached dizzying, stratospheric heights, the dot-com bubble burst. In less than a year, the index lost half its value and names that had become household in a matter of a few short years failed and closed their virtual storefronts. Pets.com, Worldcom, Napster and Netscape all fell victim, and even companies of that era that survived, such as Amazon, lost staggering amounts of market capitalisation.

And so goes the story of the death of the internet, right? Of course, it would be years before everyone knew for sure that it was really only the beginning, and that in fact these companies forged online were to continue not only to reshape the markets, but the world. It is my prediction that as with the dot-com bubble, the heavy losses in the NFT market should be considered no mark of impending death. It is the levelling out of an overexuberance that in its heady infancy is still getting to grips with itself. On the heels of the article we published last month about fraud and scepticism grounding much of the hype around NFTs, I will lay out the evidence as to why they (or at the very least, the fruit of them) won’t be going away any time soon, and what the word is on the street is about their future.

Let’s start with the standout success story, the dream case study of crypto assets married up with mainstream entertainment: NBA Top Shot. On this platform, buyers can collect ‘Moments’, NFTs of curated basketball clips, all officially licensed. For the uninitiated, this was the way it was always dreamed that it would be done – a marketplace of NFTs with an emphasis on collectables, a clean and easy to use interface, and all fuelled by a passion already shared by millions all around the globe. Everyone knows someone for whom ball is life, and if you don’t, odds are it’s probably you. Top Shot is perhaps most notable here because it is directly affiliated with both the NBA and the WNBA, lending it the kind of legitimacy most NFT project runners only dream about. As of just last month, Top Shots surpassed $1 billion in sales, and the company that manages this platform, Dapper Labs, has also secured deals with both the NFL and UFC, among others. There are of course, however, caveats. Despite the impressive sales milestone, both the number of active buyers and daily sales figures have been on a steady decline since this time last year. Dapper Labs aren’t perturbed though. They see Top Shot as a still maturing market, with opportunities for growth that outrun the 2021 boom and bust.

If you missed our recent staff article about the artists defending Ukrainian identity, then this is a sentence you probably never thought you’d read: Ukraine is planning to sell NFTs to raise funds in defence against Russia. Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, announced the initiative on Twitter in March, which shows that the government is embracing a strategy that would not only have been incompatible as little as five years ago, but likely entirely dismissed. This shows how the rhetoric around what NFTs are and what they can do is being adopted in broader spheres, humanitarian spheres, no less. The Ukrainian government saw in this technology, an opportunity, and that reflects the spirit of exactly what the proponents of NFTs are espousing in the wake of the crash. But what is the word on the street, exactly?

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