What Has Become of NFTs and the Million-Dollar Monkey Pictures?

Remember 2021? It was a time of strange, feverish euphoria. It seemed like the world had gone mad. People were selling pixelated images for the price of a villa in Miami, schoolkids were becoming millionaires by drawing whales on tablets, and A-list stars were changing their social media avatars to bored apes.

We all felt that suffocating scent of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). It seemed like if we waited just a bit longer, we’d miss our ticket to the new digital elite. But today, silence has fallen. The party is over, the lights have been turned on, and we are standing in the middle of a room strewn with confetti, trying to understand: was this a revolution or the century’s greatest scam?

Chronicle of a Disappearance: What Does Google Tell Us?

The best indicator of public interest is the search bar. If you look at the statistics for the query “NFT” (Non-Fungible Token), you see the cardiogram of a patient whose heart first stopped from adrenaline, and then… just stopped.

Popularity Index of the “NFT” Search Query (Scale of 0 to 100)

• 2020 (Index: 5-10): Niche interest from crypto-geeks and early experiments.
• 2021 (Index: 100 - Absolute Peak): Total psychosis: Beeple sells for $69M, BAYC, every second post is about NFTs.
• 2022 (Index: 60 → 40): First cracks, crypto winter, the collapse of FTX.
• 2023 (Index: 15-20): Mass disappointment, the “NFT is dead” meme.
• 2024 (Index: 8-12): Stabilization at the bottom, attempts at utility.
• 2025 (Index: 5-8): Technology goes “under the hood,” the word NFT is almost toxic.
• 2026 (Index: 3-6 - Current Data): Almost clinical silence in the mass consciousness.

Interest has dropped 15-30 times from the peak. People simply stopped Googling it.

The Tragedy of the “Bored Apes” (Bored Ape Yacht Club)

Nothing illustrates the crash as vividly as the story of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection. These weren’t just pictures; they were an entrance ticket to a private club for the wealthy. Eminem, Neymar, and Paris Hilton bought them.

Let’s look at the numbers, which are enough to make you cry (especially if you bought an ape at the peak):

• May 2022 (Peak): The cheapest ape cost about 153 ETH. At that time, this was roughly $430,000.
• Mid-2024: The floor price dropped to 10-13 ETH. Given the exchange rate, this was about $30,000 — $40,000.
• February 2026: Currently, the floor price is 6.15-6.20 ETH ≈ $12,000 (at the current ETH rate).

Justin Bieber, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and thousands of anonymous holders lost millions. This isn’t just an investment error anymore—it’s a cultural trauma for an entire generation. The drop in value exceeded 90%.

The most painful example is Justin Bieber. He bought an ape for $1.3 million at the height of the hype. Today, its market value is around $60,000. Imagine buying a Ferrari, and two years later it’s worth as much as a used Hyundai. That is what investors in “pictures” are feeling.

Dead Silence on the Exchanges

How are things now on OpenSea (the largest NFT marketplace)? While deals worth billions of dollars were made monthly in 2021, trading volumes have now fallen by 97-99% from historical highs.

Exchanges have turned into “ghost towns.” Most collections released in 2021-2022 are worth $0 today. Studies show that out of 73,000 analyzed NFT collections, 69,795 have a market capitalization of zero.

95% of people holding NFTs own “dead” assets. They cannot be sold because there is no one to buy them.

But Wait… Is the Technology Alive?

Here, it is important to separate the wheat from the chaff. NFTs as “expensive JPEG pictures” are dead. But NFT as a technology (a non-fungible token confirming ownership rights) isn’t going anywhere. The hype is gone, but the tool remains.

Where is the technology being applied right now?

1. Gaming (GameFi): This is the most active sector. Players buy swords, skins, or land plots in games. You actually own the item, can sell it to another player for real money, and the game developer cannot simply delete it from you.
2. Event Tickets: NFTs solve the problem of counterfeits and scalpers. An NFT ticket cannot be faked, and the organizer can code it so that they receive a percentage upon resale, making the scalper business unprofitable.
3. Loyalty Programs: Starbucks launched the Odyssey program, where users receive NFT stamps for purchases and quests, unlocking access to exclusive bonuses (trips to coffee farms and masterclasses).
4. Tokenization of Real World Assets (RWA): This is the future. Imagine buying not a whole apartment to rent out, but a 1/100th share in the form of an NFT, receiving 1/100th of the rent. This is already being tested in real estate markets.

What Do the Authorities Say? A Battle of Opinions

The world has split into two camps, and the arguments of both sound convincing.

The Skeptic Camp: The loudest voice here is Bill Gates. He openly called NFTs an asset based on the “Greater Fool Theory.” “Obviously, expensive digital images of monkeys are going to improve the world immensely,” he remarked sarcastically. His position is simple: an asset must generate profit (like a factory or a farm), not just rise in price because someone else wants to buy it for more.

The Visionary Camp: On the other side of the barricades is Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum). He admitted the market was overheated by speculation but believes in the technology of Soulbound Tokens (SBT)—non-transferable NFTs.

“Imagine an NFT not as a picture for sale, but as your university diploma, medical record, or driver’s license. Something that belongs only to you and confirms your qualification or history.”

Also, the famous entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk (GaryVee), who actively promoted NFTs, warned even at the peak: “98-99% of NFT projects will go to zero. It’s like the Dotcoms in the 90s. All the sites crashed, but the internet remained, and Amazon survived.”

Epilogue: A Million-Dollar Lesson

So, what happened to NFTs? The bubble burst. The foam, consisting of scammers, speculators, and naive dreamers, has washed away.

We are left with a technology that has lost its shine but may finally find meaning. We stopped buying “apes” in the hope of quick millions. And that is a good thing. Because now developers can stop chasing hype and start creating tools that the world actually needs.

So, if you have a forgotten JPEG file in your wallet, don’t be upset. Consider it a very expensive ticket to the front row of the craziest financial show of the decade. And such memories are priceless.