Let’s take a trip back to a simpler time. It’s 2021, and COVID had us all trapped indoors for two straight years. We survived on TikTok coffee trends and Tiger King. That’s going to be our millennial version of “back in my day.” Back in my day, we spent two years stuck inside while people spent thousands of dollars on cartoon apes wearing sunglasses. One day, our kids will look at us and say, “Okay Grandpa, time for your nap.” It was a weird time.

We’re talking, of course, about NFTs—Non-Fungible Tokens. It was the millennial and Gen Z answer to Beanie Babies—except instead of plush bear toys, it was JPEGs sold by college dropouts and crypto bros who didn’t even really know what a "blockchain" was. It was a massive game of musical chairs where everyone tried to get rich quick and no one wanted to be left holding the bag.

Some of us watched from the sidelines and thought, "This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen." And—spoiler alert: we were right. So, in honor of everyone who confidently sprinted into the most predictable financial faceplant in history, let’s look back at the wild, ridiculous rise and fall of NFTs—and where they stand in 2025.

A Brief History of NFTs

The first NFT was created in 2014 with a project called Quantum, developed by digital artist Kevin McCoy and tech entrepreneur Anil Dash. It was a short video clip created by Jennifer McCoy (Kevin's wife) and was registered on the Namecoin blockchain, a Bitcoin fork. McCoy minted it during a live presentation at the Seven on Seven conference in New York, a conference focused on the intersection of art and technology.

A still from Quantum

The original creators of NFTs envisioned them as a way to protect artists and assert verified digital ownership over works. Anil Dash would later express regret over the state of NFTs in 2021 in an article for The Atlantic.

After their invention, NFTs struggled to find mainstream success for a few years. In 2016, the "Rare Pepes" project — yes, the infamous alt-right meme frog — became one of the first mainstream NFT successes. The project began when an anonymous user called “Mike” created three Pepe trading cards, backing them on Counterparty, an application layer of the Bitcoin blockchain. By linking the trading cards to an established blockchain, Mike had tokenized the trading cards as Counterparty assets in indistinguishable editions. ​

The Rare Pepes project was highly influential in the development of the crypto art movement. Before Rare Pepes, NFTs had remained a niche project, and only a few enthusiasts were exploring the idea of tokenizing assets. With Rare Pepes, anyone with basic design skills could submit their creations to make Rare Pepe cards. In doing so, Rare Pepes set the foundations for creating crypto art and attracted hundreds of users and first-time collectors. ​

Growing NFT Mania

With such solid foundations as a racist frog, how could things possibly go wrong? After the success of the Rare Pepe project, a wave of other NFT ventures began to emerge. ERC-721, introduced in 2018, was proposed as the technical standard for creating unique, NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Introduced in a 2018 whitepaper by a group of community enthusiasts, its goal was to standardize the creation of NFTs. This standard made NFTs accessible to anyone with the right tools, allowing creators to mint tokens for digital art, collectibles, and other assets. It led to the rise of platforms like OpenSea (the largest NFT marketplace), but also opened the floodgates for countless low-effort, speculative cash grabs.

NFTs became the hot new thing, and it seemed like everyone suddenly became an art collector overnight. Except instead of fine art, they were collecting JPEGs of low-effort memes. From digital artwork to virtual real estate in the mostly unsuccessful Metaverse, people were snatching up NFTs as if they were the last roll of toilet paper in April 2020. The whole thing became a giant "get rich quick" scheme for the masses, with the mantra: “Buy high, sell higher, and do not dare ask any questions.”

Some famous examples include:

Snoop Dogg

Snoop Dogg made a significant mark in the NFT world with a slew of high-profile collections. In 2021, he dropped "A Journey with the Dogg," a series of digital artworks celebrating his life and legacy. He also launched the "Snoopverse," a virtual land collection. And then there was his "Snoop Dogg’s Doggies" collection, featuring cartoon dog avatars. He even released exclusive music NFTs under Death Row Records. Say what you will about the guy, but Snoop knows how to hustle.

A young Snoop NFT from "A Journey with the Dogg"

Taco Bell

The fast-food chain that once won hearts with their offbeat Chihuahua-based marketing decided to mint their own set of NFTs. The "NFTacoBells" collection was a series of digital art pieces featuring tacos and the brand’s logo. Unsurprisingly, it sold out in minutes. This was the pinnacle of corporate youth outreach: “wow, a corporate Twitter account made a meme.”

A Taco Newton's Cradle from "NFTacoBells"

Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee, the actual inventor of the World Wide Web, auctioned off his original source code for the internet as an NFT in 2021. The NFT went for $5.4 million. Honestly, I’m not mad about it. Berners-Lee laid the foundations for the modern digital age—and did it all without a patent or other barriers to entry to build on his work. It was high time he got a slice of the pie for himself. Go for it, Tim.

A still from the NFT sale of the original source code

The Bored Ape Yacht Club

It's 2021 and NFTs have hit their height. Suddenly, everything needed to be an NFT. Your profile picture? NFT. Your SoundCloud music? NFT. Your digital land parcel in the Metaverse? Believe it or not-NFT. But perhaps nothing embodied the NFT frenzy more than the "Bored Ape Yacht Club."

One of the Bored Ape NFTs

Launched in April 2021 by a previously unknown entity called Yuga Labs, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) consisted of 10,000 unique ape-themed NFTs. Yuga Labs seemingly came out of nowhere. They were founded by pseudonymous figures who went by the online aliases such as “Gargamel,” “Gordon Goner,” “Emperor Tomato Ketchup,” and “No Sass." Eventually, some of their real identities surfaced, but details remained scarce.

BAYC was an almost instant success, riding the wave of NFT-mania and turbocharged by celebrity endorsements. The NFTs initially sold for 0.08 ETH (about $190 at the time), and the entire collection sold out in just 12 hours. If only the absurdity stopped there. It seems crazy enough that some anonymous guys allegedly made $2 million in a single day selling cartoon JPEGs of apes. Honestly? Impressive. Sure, there was probably some astroturfing, double-speak, and backroom deals going on but the hype and the money were very real. Why apes, you ask? According to the founders, it was a nod to the crypto slang 'aping in,' which refers to diving headfirst into a new investment with zero due diligence.

Between late 2021 and early 2022, media outlets couldn’t stop reporting on stars scooping up Bored Apes: Eminem, Gwyneth Paltrow, Shaquille O’Neal, Neymar, Snoop Dogg, Mark Cuban, Post Malone, Steph Curry, Serena Williams, Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, and more were all linked to the BYAC in one way or another. Fallon and Hilton even showed off their apes in a very unfunny segment on The Tonight Show.

Peak BAYC Mania

In September 2021, Sotheby’s auctioned off a collection of Bored Apes for $24.4 million. That’s right—$24.4 million for the digital ownership rights to a folder of images.

By December 2021, BAYC had become the most expensive NFT collection in existence. Yuga Labs was now describing itself as a “Web3 lifestyle company” (whatever the fuck that means). The idea was that your ape wasn’t just a picture—it was a key to the brand. Yuga Labs raised $450 million at a $4 billion valuation in 2022, with such prestigious backers as cryptocurrency exchange FTX. For reference, Yuga Labs' valuation at its peak was worth more on paper than the NFL's Carolina Panthers.

Who Saw This Coming?

The party didn’t last forever. In October 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began investigating Yuga Labs and BAYC over concerns that their NFTs might be functioning as unregistered securities. When you combine anonymous founders, millions in speculative trading, and a haze of vague “investment” language, it’s only a matter of time before someone in a government office asks a follow-up question. So to recap: BAYC was investigated for potentially selling unregistered securities, had financial ties to what is now considered the modern-day Enron, and was created by a group of pseudonymous founders with no significant technical or artistic pedigree. Yikes.

The SEC eventually dropped the investigation, concluding that BAYC NFTs didn’t meet the definition of securities. So no enforcement action was taken, and nothing legally came of the FTX association either. Just your standard “nothing to see here” in the wreckage of a speculative mania.

According to data from OpenSea, BAYC has seen a dramatic decline—up to 90% off its peak value. But you don’t have to take my word for it—the price charts speak for themselves.

BAYC Sales on OpenSea

BAYC isn't alone. The broader NFT market has taken a collective nosedive since its peak. CryptoPunks, another hugely popular NFT project, have also seen their prices collapse. Even Snoop Dogg’s “Doggies” NFTs, which once sold for over $1,000, are now available for around $20. A 2022 report found that over 80% of NFTs minted on OpenSea were either plagiarized, fake, or spam.

In hindsight, the NFT craze attracted an impressive cross-section of society’s most entrepreneurial spirits: influencers, YouTubers, celebrities—basically anyone with a follower count and absolutely no patience for due diligence. They launched low-effort collections, hyped them as life-changing "investments" and walked their fans like sheep to the slaughter.

Predictably, the lawsuits showed up. Shaquille O’Neal reportedly settled for $11 million over his involvement in Astrals, an NFT project that promised financial products and delivered... less. Some BAYC investors sued Paris Hilton and Sotheby’s for their role in allegedly inflating prices. Cristiano Ronaldo is facing a class-action suit for promoting Binance NFTs. The list goes on.

Conclusion

So where are NFTs in 2025?

Mostly gone. The NFT market has plummeted from its peak. The only real winners were the insiders who minted early and flipped to the wave of hopefuls who bought into the hype or those who timed the market at the height of the madness. What started as a niche technical curiosity quickly devolved into a pyramid scheme coated in blockchain jargon and adorned with lazy memes.

And people lost serious money. Many were left holding the bag while celebrities and influencers abandoned ship, cashing out as fast as they could. The rise and fall of NFTs is a cautionary tale of greed, tech-bro evangelism, FOMO, and collective delusion.

But to be fair, the tech itself wasn’t the villain—NFTs had, and still have, potential as tools for digital ownership, royalties, and community. It was the fraudsters, grifters, and hype merchants who hijacked the idea and torched its credibility. While the market for overpriced JPEGs has vanished, NFT infrastructure still lives on quietly, powering use cases like in-game assets, digital tickets, and decentralized identity.

NFTs weren’t the problem—they were a genuinely innovative idea, hijacked by opportunists who saw only dollar signs.