Can NFTs Make A Come Back During This Bull Market?

With crypto markets having entered a new bullish cycle following Trump's victory, there has been talk of an "NFT comeback."

Over the last seven days, the sales volume of NFTs has almost doubled, with the biggest winners being the most iconic Ethereum collections, such as CryptoPunks, and also Bitcoin Ordinals.

Strengthening the idea that an NFT revival is underway, McDonalds has announced a partnership with the Doodles collection to launch a limited edition of a McCafé x Doodles Holiday cup in the United States.

The campaign includes a limited-time in-app offer of tickets to stream Doodles' exclusive content. Even before it was officially unveiled on Thursday, it had already led to an increase in the collection sales volume of over 1000% and a spike in its market cap of over 65%.

The hype around NFTs is also being fuelled by Open Sea V2, which the NFT marketplace CEO Devin Finzer announced last week and is expected to launch in December.

According to people who tried the beta v2, the new version of the platform introduces a new user interface, changes to the wallet section that make trading easier, a leaderboard of traders and rewards to top users, and a loyalty program.

"NFT rebirth are one of the sleeping giants that could accelerate ETH fees and burn," said CEO of crypto VC Framework Ventures Vance Spencer on X, adding that the revival of Open Sea will play a part in reviving the sector.

NFTs will come back because "retail will want to flex their profits," believes one user.

But not all agree.

"I honestly don't see NFTs picking back up again, friends," wrote artist Theo Chronis on X last week.

Chronis publishes all his work as digital collectibles due to the format's unique ability to authenticate digital art. Yet, he believes that "the narrative of NFT art as a force pushing crypto forward" is dead.

NFTEvening and Storible have looked through the performance of 30,000 NFT collections launched in 2024, and their conclusions were rather bleak.

Of the collections that dropped during the first eight months of the year, 98% are dead (no trading activity in the last two months); 64% had less than 10 mints overall; the price of 98% of collections dropped more than half during the first three days after launch. Only 0.2% have generated profit for investors.

With an average of 3,635 collections created per month, the market is saturated, leading to low minting rates and poor price performance.

New product entries are also in the space that can, at least partially, replace NFTs. Memecoins, especially, have dominated conversations in the crypto space for most of the year, and their growth has been explosive.

But, there is a third way of looking at the situation: NFTs are not making a comeback because NFTs were never gone.

"People who are now saying that NFTs are making a 'comeback' have clearly not paid any attention to what many teams have built in the bear market," commented Azuki research wale.moca.

The researcher mentioned the recent Doodles partnership with McDonalds, Pudgy Penguins partnership with Walmart, and other projects' recent achievements.

NFTs have evolved. They have started being used in games, loyalty programs, and in bridging the real world with the digital one. They are no longer (only) speculation assets or status symbols: NFTs have gained utility and long-term value.

Much like the report from NFTEvening and Storible concludes, the NFT market is busting with innovation. It has just been much harder to succeed in recent times than it was in 2021, when there were no legacy collections and no meme coins to divert attention.

While holders left empty pockets when the market crashed are hoping for nothing less than an NFT comeback, the crypto market has evolved, and the non-fungible tokens sectors have changed, too.