2023-09-25 03:00:11
The very first SMS in the world in the form of an NFT, one day before its auction, at the Aguttes auction house, in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine), December 20, 2021. ALAIN JOCARD / AFP
NFT ? « The word is already old-fashioned », laughs Pierre Pauze, a young visual artist who studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and Fresnoy. And he knows what he’s talking about: his own work has been acquired in the form of NFT (non-fungible token, a digital certificate of ownership backed by blockchain) by the Granet museum in Aix-en-Provence, in January 2023. At the time, this was a first. A few months later, the digital artist seems disillusioned.
Read the survey: Article reserved for our subscribers The NFT, copyright in the digital age
“The technological barrier is too high”, estimates the one who has tried his hand at several projects, accompanied by experienced developers. NFTs were never really adopted by the general public and were, according to him, “ vastly overvalued » as the new standard in the art world, supposed to ensure traceability for digital works and to remunerate artists by collecting royalties. Promises of financial emancipation for artists have for the moment been held in check.
If some companies, like Sorare, persist in building their economic model on NFTs, a quick look at the numbers and to curves tends rather to show that the bubble has already burst and reveals the asphyxiation of the market. A study of the DappGambl platformpublished in September 2023 and carried out on more than 73,000 NFT collections, shows that 95% of them have zero value, and that four out of five collections issued have never been sold.
Even iconic projects, like the Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) collections and CryptoPunks, are trading at historically low prices. So much so that celebrities seem to be shunning their NFTs: footballer Neymar, who paid more than 1 million euros in January 2022 for two Bored Apes (#5269 et #6633), keeps them in your wallet but no longer displays them in your profile photo.
“As Seen on TV” Effect
Because these “Digital Rolexes”, in the words of Jean-Marie Pailhon, entrepreneur in the technology sector, have since lost half their value. A ” just a return of things », Estimates this French collector. The one who carried out a great financial transaction by reselling two copies during the peak of 2022 concedes that the price of these star collections was completely « uncorrelated with their cultural and aesthetic value ».
Added to the sluggishness of the market is the multiplication of scandals. In the United States, the parent company behind the famous collection of colorful monkeys, the company Yuga Labs, is facing two collective complaints from investors whose value of the collection has suddenly fallen. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the policeman of the American markets, has just severely condemn actress Mila Kunis and her NFT project called Stoner Cat, which was to be used to finance a series with her husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, considering that she violated the regulation on financial assets. And in France, a recent investigation highlighted the murky role of actor Kev Adams in a similar project. The losses recorded by people who purchased the NFTs linked to the latter exceed one million euros.
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