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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Alex Hern and Dan Milmo

NFTs: the great rush may be over – but are they in actual decline?

Blockchain entrepreneur Vignesh Sundaresan, aka MetaKovan, showing a digital artwork non-fungible token
Blockchain entrepreneur Vignesh Sundaresan showing the Beeple NFT he bought for $69m in April 2021. Photograph: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images

It was described as the Mona Lisa of the digital world and it came with a connoisseur’s price tag: $2.9m (£2.4m) for the first tweet by Twitter’s co-founder. This was March 2021 and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, were bursting into the mainstream.

One year on, an attempt to sell on Jack Dorsey’s Twitter debut for $25m was pulled after auction bids topped out at just $14,000 (£11,350). Explosive growth of NFTs over the past 12 months has levelled off, and may even be in decline, according to analysis of the sector, as attention consolidates around a few of the largest players.

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