Shaked NFTS could still survive - and develop their own star quality

Where is Paris Hilton when you need you? After boosting investments in non-fungible tokens in nightly US chat shows, the reality star has become quiet. NFTS, the most speculative of all speculative assets, overthrow. The value of an index developed by cryptocurrency researchers has dropped by 78 percent compared to its maximum. This is a steeper decline than with technology shares and Bitcoin.

This is uncomfortable for prominent dealers and the companies that have spoken for months about NFT projects. Many only reveal these plans now. At the beginning of this month, Instagram announced that it would allow collectors to share their NFTs on its platform. A week later, Spotify said that it would be a try to enable artists to advertise their NFTs. A few days later, the Robinhood Robinhood plans revealed plans to enable users to keep NFTs in an independent wallet. Meanwhile, the sale stalled.

The speed of the market turn is breathtaking. At the beginning of this year I felt that most of the meetings I had with US technology companies had to do with cryptocurrencies and NFTs. A relocation to the mainstream took place at lightning speed. Martha Stewart had listed pictures of her farm as NFTS. Dolly Parton sold NFTS of her new album. The Miami start-up behind Bored Ape Yacht Club-probably the best known NFT collection-was estimated at $ 4 billion. NFT sales, which reached almost $ 41 billion last year, were viewed as the starting point for even larger profits in 2022.

Now? Be silent. Was that just a bladder at the end of the tech rally? Was it fraud all the time? Or could institutional interests be proof that the digital wild west lives on?

There is a lot of noise on both sides. The true believers of Crypto do not seem to be able to accept reality. But critics can also be unreasonable. There will always be cheers when something breaks together in which most people were not involved - but some made some very rich.

cynic will say that the interest of technology companies in NFTS was opportunistic and embarrassing. Projects can be stopped tacit if the market does not recover in the coming months.

But companies that cling to new ideas always tend to move slowly. In a large organization, deregistration takes time - a problem in volatile digital markets. Facebook asked former PayPal President David Marcus to develop his digital currency plans during the 2018 crypto boom. He left the company in the middle of a full-blown crypto crash in December 2021. The Financial Service Giant Fidelity recently announced that it would help customers invest old -age provision in cryptos, especially when prices were in free fall.

But it is also possible that companies help NFTS to go on something more sustainable from expensive cartoon-offs-JPEGs and other digital collector's pieces. The analogy that I heard twice last month is Pets.com, the notorious online pet requirement company that collapsed at the Dotcom-Crash. The company failed, but e-commerce lives on.

Could something similar happen to NFTS? Maybe, but not necessarily in the current form.

Despite billion dollar investments and celebrities, there are still ambiguities about NFTs. Why pay for digital works of art or video clips that everyone can watch online? The answer is that NFTS make it easier for the official version. It is unique - not fungible - digital data. The scarcity value should translate into the price. But only if other buyers agree. Many have evaporated in the downturn. Phishing fraud is widespread.

At the moment there is not much to do with NFTs, unless you show them as a profile picture. Therefore, NFTs are popular with a kind of real advantage (or a connection to a well -known artist). For example, the new film by director Kevin Smith will only be available to viewers who buy a Killroy NFT.

The dream is that NFTS prove that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are useful-something that has always been a miracle for crypto supporters. NFTs are really digital contracts, a way to check the property of something through permanent records without a middleman. They could theoretically be used for everything.

believers see the current sale as temporarily. You have experienced a recovery before. Andreessen Horowitz, a risk capital company from the Silicon Valley, which is known for its use for digital assets, referred to the downturn as a "price innovations" cycle. Last week it was announced that it was invested in Tally Labs , a media company that intends to transform one of the bored apes into mental property for books, films and other formats. Think of Harry Potter, but of a cartoon monkey that is disguised as a valet. He already has a Hollywood agent. Bestselling author Neil Strauss writes his memoirs. NFTS do not need celebrities if they become one.

elaine.more@ft.com