In the art world the phase ‘priceless’ is a common superlative. It sounds a bit like ‘worthless’, but that means something very different. Meanwhile, in the world of digital art and NFTs …
Crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi, a crytpo entrepreneur, who in 2021 spent US$2.9mln on the NFT of the ‘first ever Tweet’ – showing founder Jack Dorsey saying “just set up my twttr” - recently put the “piece of digital history” up for auction with an asking price of US$48mln, only to receive offers between US$6 and US$277.
It’s a potential alarm bell that the bubble may be bursting in the market for digital collectables and digital art, in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
A report by Fortune last month claimed that the average NFT sale price had fallen below US$2,000, from US$6,800 in January, and, that cumulative daily NFT sales had dropped to US$26mln from US$160mln.
Primary sales (the initial transaction as new NFTs are ‘minted’) meanwhile dropped to 3,200 per day compared to 26,000 in January and secondary transactions (deals between investors and collectors) had fallen from a peak of 38,000 down below 8,000 per day.
Elsewhere, however, more recent reports describe leading NFT marketplace OpenSea as experiencing a spike in activity through early April amidst a “resurgence of blue-chip projects”, with US$1bn of transactions in the month’s first week, which would be much closer to the levels seen in January.
Perhaps, the drop off in recent weeks represents a blip or anomaly. Or its just a temporary knock-on impact of macroeconomics and geopolitics as soaring inflation hits, weaker growth projections emerge, Russian capital was frozen, and broad ‘risk-off’ sentiments set root across the investment community.
Maybe, Jack Dorsey’s status among the Twitterati has lost some shine since he has now left the social media company for the second time (one might wonder what price could be fetched today for the first tweet of new major shareholder Elon Musk?).
Iranian entrepreneur Sina Estavi is, according to a Coindesk report, seeking to regain trust with investors following two failed crypto ventures and a stint in Iranian prison (he was arrested in May 2021 accused of “disrupting the economic system” before being released without charges nine months later). The launch of the NFT auction coincided with Estavi offering a ‘token swap’ to investors in a prior crypto venture that ‘tanked’, CoinDesk also noted.
Whatever the background to the auction and the value rationale, Estavi has a new price for his Jack Dorsey NFT and the price was a lot less than he expected.