Featured Image Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images. NFT
Topics: News, Technology, Cryptocurrency
Charisa Bossinakis
Topics: News, Technology, Cryptocurrency
When NFTs were at their peak, one cryptocurrency entrepreneur by the name of Sina Estavi decided to purchase one of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.9 million.
It was an astounding amount of money to spend to own a digital copy of a tweet.
But Estavi is probably kicking himself right about now.
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He's tried to flog the NFT on multiple occasions and not received any offers remotely near the amount he paid for it.
The opening bid on his latest attempt to rid himself of the NFT was just 0.0006 ETH ($1.13)
That won’t even buy you a coffee. Forget the soy latte.
A few more bids have come in since then, with the highest currently being 2 ETH ($3,761.80).
That's significantly better than $1, but still a fair way short of the $2.9 million Sina paid for it.
Estavi had hoped to sell his NFT for $48 million and send 50 percent of the proceeds to charity.
But things didn’t go as he planned, as the NFT market collapsed and it saw a significant drop in the value of non-fungible token platforms.
A non-fungible token is a digital identifier recorded on a blockchain, and is used to certify ownership and authenticity.
According to Chainalysis, the average price of non-fungible token sales plummeted by 92 percent since the beginning of May 2022 (the price fell from $3,894 to $293).
One of the most valuable NFT collections, Bored Ape Yacht Club, recently hit an all-time low.
Earlier this month, the popular NFT collection experienced a nearly 88 percent decline in floor price since its April 2022 peak, according to Decrypt.
But why do NFTs keep tanking?
Well, Stephen Diehl, co-founder of the Center for Emerging Technology Policy and co-author of the new book Popping the Crypto Bubble, attributes the crashing market to the digital currency being rife with scams.
The saturated market of NFTs has minimal regulatory framework protecting investors and their coin.
He told MSNBC in November 2022: “Crypto exchanges don’t trade regulated financial products like stocks or bonds; they trade unregulated financial assets, which are crypto tokens.
“And these tokens are not subject to the same level of regulation as most other products in the market.
“A lot of the problems that arose out of the recent catastrophe are due to the lack of regulation of these products.”
He said of the FTX collapse: “This was one of the most credible entities in the entire crypto space. It exploded in 48 hours. I’ve never seen a week like this in markets and I look at this stuff all the time.”