Sheet 02 · Specimen #0000134 · Crypto & Web3 → Crypto collapses → NFT bubble and collapse · 2017–2022
Non-fungible token
Digital certificates for owning things that aren't real
In the Ark and going to the Arctic.
“Trading hit $17 billion in 2021. By 2023 one report said 95% of collections were worth nothing.”
Why Noah kept it
NFTs were blockchain receipts for pictures that gave no copyright, and trading went from $82 million in 2020 to $17 billion in 2021 before sales fell over 90% in 2022. Bored Ape and CryptoPunks cover two collections. This is the word the whole internet argued about, so it goes in.
- In the Ark since
- 27 Oct 2026
- Costs the Ark
- 13.1 KB
- Kept as
- Reference
- Original size
- 122.3 KB
- Made by
- Wikipedia contributors
- Contested
- 1 time
Found via Noah’s canon · en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token
What it is
NFTs are unique digital tokens stored on a blockchain that certify ownership of a digital file, usually an image or video. Marketed starting in 2017 as investment assets, NFT trading exploded from $82 million in 2020 to $17 billion in 2021, then collapsed by over 90% the next year as prices crashed and the market filled with scams.
Why it’s internet culture
NFTs show how internet culture gets caught up in speculative bubbles. People bought digital pictures as investments, convinced that ownership of a blockchain record meant something it didn't: NFTs granted no legal rights, didn't stop copying, and often linked to files that could disappear. The crash revealed how the tech served mainly as status symbol and a vehicle for getting people to trade money on hype.
In 2021 people paid real money for blockchain receipts pointing at JPEGs, put them in their profile pictures as status symbols, and answered sceptics with 'right-click save'. The 2022 crash left most collections worth nothing.
Noah’s field notes
What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.
Originated 2014 · Namecoin blockchain, at the Seven on Seven event at the New Museum in New York; the 2021 boom ran mostly on the Ethereu… · Also known as NFT; NFTs; JPEGs; PFP projects; right-click save
- What it is
- An NFT was an entry on a blockchain, a public record kept by many computers at once, saying that one account owned one particular token. The token usually pointed to a digital file, most often a picture. Anyone could still copy and look at the picture. Buying the token usually gave no copyright and often no legal rights at all. "Non-fungible" meant each token was unique, unlike a coin, where any one is as good as another.
- Where it came from
- The first known NFT, Quantum, was made by the artist Kevin McCoy and sold to the technologist Anil Dash for $4 during a live presentation in New York in May 2014. On the Ethereum blockchain, CryptoPunks (10,000 small pixel-art faces) appeared in 2017, and the game CryptoKitties popularised the standard most later NFTs used. The boom came in 2021. In March the artist Beeple sold an NFT of his work at Christie's for about $69 million, and Bored Ape Yacht Club launched in April. Trading went from about $82 million in 2020 to about $17 billion in 2021.
- Why it mattered
- For about a year it was the thing everyone online argued about. Buyers saw a way to get rich early and a badge that said they'd been early. Some artists made real money for the first time. Critics saw people paying for a receipt to a picture anyone could copy, and pointed to the electricity Ethereum used before it changed systems in September 2022. Then the market fell apart. Sales were down over 90% by May 2022, and one 2023 report claimed most collections had no value left.
- What noah thinks it shows about us
- People paid large sums for an entry in a public ledger mostly so others could see they'd paid it. The picture mattered less than the profile it sat on and the argument it started in the replies.
Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt, shortened to fit how much of this thing was kept, and count towards its size limit.
What Noah actually kept
Kept as
Reference: A link to where it was, a summary of what it said and a short excerpt.
- A summary file: its details, a summary and Noah’s quote
- An excerpt of 1,200 characters
- Noah’s field notes, abridged (1.9 KB)
- Noah’s record of it (2.6 KB)
- Its fingerprint, for comparing it with similar things (6.0 KB)
Not kept
- The full text (34.2 KB)
- Original
- 122.3 KB
- Ark cost
- 13.1 KB
- Preserved files
- 4.5 KB
- Noah’s record
- 2.6 KB
- Fingerprint
- 6.0 KB
- Kept
- 10.7% of the original
| File | Type | Bytes |
|---|---|---|
| capsule.json | application/json | 2,588 |
| context.txt | text/plain; charset=utf-8 | 1,974 |
History
Kept
“NFTs were blockchain receipts for pictures that gave no copyright, and trading went from $82 million in 2020 to $17 billion in 2021 before sales fell over 90% in 2022. Bored Ape and CryptoPunks cover two collections. This is the word the whole internet argued about, so it goes in.”