NFTs Were Huge, Until They Weren’t Anymore — What Happened?

We could say the hype around NFTs (non-fungible tokens) really took off in 2021, when auction house Christie’s sold its first NFT for a whopping $69 million. You might remember it — an image, or piece of art if you will, made up of thousands of tiny photos compiled onto one canvas, created by Beeple (real name Michael Winkelmann) and titled "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days."

To be fair, Beeple’s artwork was one of a kind and something many people could genuinely see hanging on their walls.

But $69 million for a purely digital piece of art, not even something you could physically touch? From there, NFTs continued to soar in both popularity and price, with everyone from big celebrities to major stars buying and promoting them. And then, one day, it seemed like NFTs were wiped from the earth, or at least that’s how it felt. So what actually happened to NFTs, and why did their value plummet so low?

The NFT market crashed in 2022, causing the value of digital artwork, whose ownership and transaction history lived on the blockchain, to plummet. While the concept of NFTs was a good one, and still is, scams, cyber-theft, and fraud began impacting the market. As pointed out by The Independent, this interfered with NFTs being able to hold their value and status.

While the blockchain was able to track all purchases and values of NFTs over the course of their lifespan, even linking back to the original owner, like anything made with technology, there are always scammers targeting vulnerable people. Many sold fake projects or inflated the prices to make the buy look more enticing than it really was.

What else caused the NFT market to crash is the fact that many NFTs “never contained a copy of the artwork they were meant to be tied to,” according to The Independent. Instead, they were merely tied to hyperlinks, which the outlet noted became inaccessible “within a year or two.”

Another factor that affected NFT success is that many people began viewing them the same way they view AI-generated images and art, which sometimes infringe on artists’ copyrights or are created with minimal thought and effort. In other words, they aren’t really worth much when someone can easily replicate them.

All of these factors combined caused NFT values to drop significantly. In April 2022, crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi watched the value of his NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet drop from the $2.9 million he paid for it to about $6,800, per The Guardian. And as of December 2025, The Independent noted that the highest offers for either Justin Bieber’s Bored Ape NFT, which he paid over $1 million for, or Eminem’s roughly $460,000 NFT were only getting bids of just under $3,000.

In short, no. NFTs are still around, just valued at a much lower price than when they skyrocketed in popularity in 2021. Brands like Disney and the NBA continue to utilize NFTs to their advantage, but overall, the hype has died down.

So could NFTs make a comeback? Some seem to think so, but that time doesn’t appear to be in the near future.