The Animoca Brands co-founder, who is also an avid NFT collector, said there’s a community of owners who bought to own, not sell.
What to know:
- Sales of non-fungible tokens are down from the $1 billion a month at the 2021/22 peak, but still close to $300 million in the past 30 days.
- The cancelation of NFT Paris is down to France turning against crypto, plus a spate of kidnappings of crypto execs and investors.
The once hyper market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) looks to be in the doldrums, with token valuations a fraction of 2021/22 highs, not to mention that France’s flagship event for the sector, NFT Paris, was canceled just one month before it was due to open.
In the doldrums, but definitely not dead, said Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands, a Web3 development and venture capital company that has become involved in tokenization of real-world assets.
Wealthy collectors are driving a vibrant NFT marketplace, Siu said in an interview at the CfC St. Moritz crypto conference. Some investors will have a connection to a type of digital art, the same way a family office scion might be a collector of artwork by Picasso, for instance.
“Have NFTs remained popular among wealthy collectors? Yes, of course. I’m a big collector myself, and I share similar insights with my peers in this space. It’s a community,” Siu said.
“A Picasso collector, for instance, would have an affinity towards all the other people who collect Picassos; you’re kind of part of that club. It’s also true for Ferraris, Lamborghinis or Rolex watches. This is just a digital version.”
Siu says his own personal NFT portfolio is “down like 80% or something,” but adds that these were never purchases he was going to flip. “These are long assets that matter.”
NFTs are a class of one-of-a-kind tokens that first appeared on the Ethereum blockchain in late 2017 with collectible cats. Like other trends in crypto, NFTs have come in waves, becoming a thing with Cryptokitties, and then returning with more development and capital behind them, peaking in 2021/22, at which time monthly sales were over $1 billion.
Today, Siu points to monthly NFT sales of close to $300 million, driven in the main by wealthy digital art aficionados. For instance, billionaire Adam Weitsman has been buying NFTs like Otherdeed lands — NFTs representing land deeds in Otherside, a 3D blockchain-based virtual world created by Yuga Labs — and Bored Apes, very publicly, Siu said.
“Remember that five years ago this was a zero dollar market,” Siu said. “So it’s all relative and depends on the perspective you take. And of course the beauty of this is all the data is there to see on the blockchain.”
On the subject of the flagship NFT Paris event, Siu said the cancelation is not an indictment of NFTs, nor of the conference, which is well run.
“I think it’s an indictment of France, which at one point was very pro-crypto,” Siu said. “France has completely veered away from crypto. When it comes to NFTs, things like [fantasy soccer game] Sorare was under scrutiny by gambling regulators. And we see the same anti-crypto stance in Europe more broadly.”
Another key concern regarding Paris is security, Siu said. In the past year, France has seen a spate of kidnapping and abduction attempts of crypto executives and investors.
“NFT Paris wasn’t just a victim because they couldn’t get sponsors. A lot of people, including myself, you’ve been kind of trying to avoid Paris a little bit just because of security issues,” Siu said.
