What’s up with NFTs?
This week, two of the five announced transactions related to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing digital assets like music and art. Aptos is acquiring HashPalette, a Japan-based platform that enables the mining, sale, management, and trading of entertainment-related NFTs. For context, this transaction involves a token exchange (PLT for APT), suggesting a value of $10.5M based on the current price of APT tokens.
Vinyl Group, an Australian ASX-listed company, is acquiring Serenade, a music NFT marketplace with broad participation from record labels and artists. However, the transaction value of $800,000 – $2.3M highlights the continuing challenges in this market.
Returning to the question above, it’s often after the hype fades that foundational progress is made. It’s fair to say that NFTs have not yet found product-market fit at scale, particularly those representing digital assets like music, art, and game assets. However, The Block reports that between $70M – $95M of trades occur weekly, and thousands of newly minted NFTs are distributed daily. While these levels of activity are only a small fraction of the heyday, experimentation continues, and the NFT dream remains a work in progress.