I was a huge fan of NFTs.
Digital ownership on the blockchain? I was in.
I traded hundreds of Bored Apes. A few dozen CryptoPunks. I received NFT airdrops like ApeCoin, PENGU, LooksRare, and Blur. Good times.
I gave loans to NFT holders. Farmed yield. Also, farmed points. And mostly farmed vibes.
I made real friends in those communities. Travelled to NFT NYC. I got drunk and high with my animal PFP friends. I was deep in the space.
And then… it ended.
And that part is sad.
I genuinely wish it made a full comeback. I would be there again in a heartbeat.
But if we’re honest, most NFT traders didn’t just leave loudly.
They quietly disappeared.
Not because they were dumb.
Not because they were bad traders.
But because the game changed.
And it changed fast.
Let’s be honest.
If you’re down bad on your bags, you don’t care about “community.”
When price is up only, everything feels magical.
You wake up. The floor is higher. You check Discord. Everyone is hyped. Twitter engagement is flying. Dopamine everywhere.
Back then, if you held a Bored Ape and tweeted something, you’d get insane engagement. Being an NFT trader meant instant social status inside crypto.
Now?
Discords are graveyards.
People with Bored Apes barely get five likes on a tweet.
When the number goes down for years, vibes disappear. Without that community energy, it becomes much harder to justify holding through massive losses.
Maybe the BAYC clubhouse in Miami can revive something.
But right now, the magic is gone.
The Flex of a PFP Disappeared
There was a time when owning a CryptoPunk, BAYC, or Pudgy Penguin was a flex.
It meant you were early.
You showed you had capital.
It probably meant you were smart.
When a CryptoPunk was worth $500,000, your PFP carried weight. People listened.
Today?
Floor prices are crushed.
Instead of looking like alpha, holding one now often looks like you round-tripped generational wealth.
The social signal flipped.
What used to be status became a reminder of a brutal cycle.
And for NFT traders, losing that identity hit harder than losing money.
No More Airdrops
Airdrops were fuel.
Big collections used to receive huge token drops for simply existing.
Projects wanted access to NFT communities. NFT traders were seen as power users.
ApeCoin. LooksRare. Blur. PENGU.
The last meaningful NFT-native airdrop was PENGU, over a year ago.
Once that stopped, part of the incentive disappeared.
NFTs were no longer yield machines.
Without airdrops, trading volume dried up. Speculation slowed. The risk-reward equation changed.
With all the Binance FUD, we made a list of alternative options.
The Narrative Died
NFT traders weren’t just trading art.
They were trading a narrative.
Ownership.
Status.
Culture.
Belonging.
But narratives saturate.
Every animal imaginable got a collection. Rugs multiplied. Derivatives flooded the market.
When 99% of holders lose money, they don’t come back for season two.
“Diamond hands” got punished brutally.
The idea that holding would always pay eventually stopped working.
And once the narrative cracks, price follows.
Buy the Dip Was a Trap
This one hurt.
Many NFT traders kept buying the dip.
An asset that kept trending down for years.
Collectors sold smaller NFTs just to own one “grail” BAYC.
They consolidated into what they believed was the safest bet.
But even the holy grail kept falling.
From 80 ETH to 40 ETH.
From 40 ETH to 20.
Now around 4 ETH.
Buying the dip works in some markets.
But not when the entire meta shifts away.
Leverage Accelerated the Collapse
NFT lending platforms made it easy to borrow against your JPEGs.
In theory, that sounds sophisticated.
In practice, many NFT traders used leverage to buy more NFTs.
They believed they could time the bottom.
Blur made borrowing and trading frictionless.
Volume farming became the game.
But prices never returned to 2021 highs.
Imagine using your NFT as collateral to buy more NFTs.
Everything drops.
Then you get liquidated.
Leverage didn’t kill NFTs alone.
But it sped up the downfall.
They Weren’t Bad. They Weren’t Stupid.
Most NFT traders weren’t idiots.
For many of them, 2020–2021 was their first cycle.
Up only felt normal.
For me, it wasn’t my first cycle.
I expected a brutal downturn at some point.
Others didn’t.
The game evolved faster than they did.
That’s not stupidity.
That’s inexperience meeting a changing market.
The Survivors
Some didn’t disappear.
They pivoted.
Farmers
The 2022 bear taught NFT traders what farming was.
Blur rewarded volume farmers heavily.
Smart NFT traders shifted from holding to farming.
Then they went deeper.
Some of my old NFT buddies farmed Hyperliquid hard.
High six-figure airdrops.
GGWP.
They realized the real alpha wasn’t holding JPEGs.
It was understanding incentives.
BTC Holders
Others got tired of NFT volatility and ETH underperformance.
They stayed in crypto.
But they simplified.
They bought Bitcoin.
Became holders.
They outperformed most NFT holders by a wide margin.
I just hope they didn’t round-trip those gains.
Active Rotators
Some pivoted to memes during the Pepe hype.
I saw NFTs being dumped into PEPE.
I watched people sell an Ape at 40 ETH to go all in on memes.
At the time, they were mocked for “selling the bottom.”
Now?
Apes trade around 4 ETH.
PEPE ran to billions within months.
The lesson wasn’t about memes.
It was about rotation.
Markets reward adaptation.
If those traders kept rotating narratives instead of marrying them, they likely came out ahead.
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So Where Did NFT Traders Go?
Some quit crypto entirely.
Many went quiet.
While others pivoted.
Some learned.
Some never emotionally recovered.
The truth is simple.
NFT traders weren’t wiped out because they were bad.
They were wiped out because the meta shifted.
And they didn’t shift fast enough.
Final Words
I still believe digital ownership matters.
Whether that’s PFPs, gaming assets, identity layers, or something we haven’t imagined yet.
NFT traders were early to something important.
Maybe too early.
Maybe too speculative.
But not meaningless.
The space isn’t dead.
It’s evolving.
And if NFTs do make a comeback in a new form, I’ll be there again.
Just with better position sizing.
And no leverage on JPEGs this time.
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