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Feature Report: Is There a Future for NFTs After Market Meltdown?
One NFT collection that has held up relatively well is the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), which is considered more of a blue chip property in the NFT world.
However, even the BAYC values have suffered significant losses, although they remain more valuable today than they were at the same time last year.
In August last year, according to Coingecko, the value of a single BAYC NFT was worth 25 ETH in August last year, and soared to a high of 153 ETH in April this year. Since then the price has sagged, dropping to 67 ETH by Aug. 23.
The drastic declines have been seen by some as the bubble popping for the entire NFT space, and that it may even result in the disappearance of NFTs as an asset class. However, while NFTs may have lost their outrageous values created during the NFT craze in 2021 and early 2022, it’s worth noting that many reputable companies are working with NFTs as a licensed collectibles product. They may not be worth millions of dollars each, but NFTs do remain popular with some collectors.
Open Sea’s management says this type of drop, while difficult to navigate, was expected due to the extreme speculation in the NFT market in its early days. Open Sea predicts NFTs will remain an important asset class and collectible, but at more sustainable and predictable values.
“We’re playing the long game because we see what’s possible, so we’re not that concerned about short-term volatility,” an OpenSea spokesperson told Fortune. “We always expected frothiness, hype, and deflation as the community and use cases evolve, the tech gets more sophisticated, and creators figure out how to build more utility into their projects.”