Facepalm: If ever there was an illustration of just how far the NFT market has fallen, it's this: the famous non-fungible token showing the first-ever tweet, from then-CEO Jack Dorsey, that cost $2.9 million in 2021 is being auctioned. The current highest bid is $1,895.
Iranian-born Sina Estavi, CEO of Malaysia-based crypto firm Bridge Oracle, bought the NFT of the first tweet from Dorsey in 2021, paying $2,915,835.47 in an auction.
But Estavi hasn't been seeing much of a return on his investment. He tried to sell it in 2022 for an incredibly optimistic sum of $48 million. Unfortunately, the highest bid was $6,231, or 99.98% less than what he wanted.
Undeterred, Estavi tried to sell the NFT again, on OpenSea, for $48 million in April of this year. On that occasion, he was offered a whopping $280.
Possibly wanting to put the nightmare of his $2.9 million loss behind him, Estavi has returned the NFT to the OpenSea marketplace. The first bid was 0.002 ETH, or just under $4. It's now climbed to 1 ETH, or $1,871, so it looks as if Estavi is going to lose a lot of money on this venture.
Another high-profile NFT to have cost its owner a lot of money is the Bored Ape belonging to Justin Bieber. The singer paid $1.2 million for ape #3001 in January 2022. It's now valued at around $59,000.
Justin Bieber purchased this Bored Ape NFT in January 2022 for $1.31 million.
– Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) July 3, 2023
Today, it's worth $59,090. pic.twitter.com/nKKDzH3UvP
Non-fungible tokens were having a moment in 2021. A set of 10,000 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs went for $24.4 million, while someone paid $69 million for a collage of digital art created by Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple. We also saw celebrities such as Jimmy Fallon promoting them, some of whom later faced lawsuits over their actions.
But the industry fell apart in 2022 when TerraUSD and support coin Luna crashed in May, wiping almost $1 trillion off the crypto markets. Prices never recovered to their former lofty heights, and investors were dealt another blow when crypto exchange FTX imploded, leading to more lawsuits. We've since seen many companies abandon their NFT plans, including Ubisoft and Sega, though most of them don't like to talk about it.
https://www.techspot.com/news/99510-auction-29-million-jack-dorsey-tweet-nft-has.html
