Remember NFTs? For about five minutes the art world was losing its mind over them. Galleries, celebrities, and tech bros all declared them the future. Artists were told if they didn’t mint their work on the blockchain, they’d be left behind. The hype was relentless with auctions selling pixelated clip-art for millions. Yet to most of us, it just seemed like a massive scam.

The first major NFT sale should have been a sign of the scam. Everydays: the First 5000 Days by Mike Winkelmann, AKA Beeple, was sold at Christie’s in 2021 for $69.3 million. The buyer, who paid in Ether (digital currency) was a founder of the Metapurse Project and along with the artist, was accused of driving up the price for publicity. Surely someone at Christie’s could see this was a scam?

Celebrities piled in too, buying NFTs as if they were modern-day Picassos. Justin Bieber famously paid over a million dollars for a cartoon ape that today is worth a fraction of that, allegedly $60,000 in 2025. Other stars followed suit, hoping to prove they were “visionary collectors” when really they were just jumping on a bandwagon. For a brief moment, showing off your NFT collection was the ultimate status symbol, until the market tanked and it started looking more like you’d been conned. If rumours are true, the creators of the cartoon ape gifted Bieber the 500 ETH (digital currency) to buy the NFT to drum up interest. So, if you’re one of the celebrities that jumped on that bandwagon, there’s the con.

Revolutions don’t usually collapse in under two years. The NFT bubble popped as quickly as it inflated. Prices crashed. Buyers disappeared. The rest of us watched from the sidelines, wondering how anyone ever thought this was “art” and not just another pyramid scheme.

NFTs promised a new era of ownership, creativity, and freedom for artists. What they actually delivered was environmental destruction, endless scams, and a rush of speculators who cared more about flipping JPEGs than supporting culture.

Now the dust has settled, and most people don’t want to talk about NFTs anymore, especially if you spent a small fortune having your JPEGs minted, only for them still to be sat there on OpenSea. The galleries that once sang their praises have quietly scrubbed them from their press releases. And those celebrity buyers don’t brag about their “exclusive” cartoon monkeys anymore. They’ve quietly moved on, pretending it never happened.

I’m just glad I’m not getting messages every five minutes from someone wanting to buy my art, only for them to reveal it’s not the originals they want, just the NFTs. I’m sure the next art scam is just around the corner.