One of the newest segments in crypto is the NFT. For a long time, trading Non Fungible Tokens seemed to be the newest way to make money in crypto. Now the hype seems to be gone. Is that right? We analyze the future of NFT, see how OpenSea is receiving criticism and influencing perceptions about NFTs. Finally, we look at how NFT scams are becoming more massive.
Looking at the NFT market it seems that the absolute hype has receded somewhat. When NFT broke through we saw astronomical prices being offered for specific NFTs. Traders who tried to sell these NFTs this year at a profit came up short. Yet, on the other hand, we see that more and more large companies are focusing on the NFT. For example, we informed you that both Instagram and Spotify are betting heavily on the NFT on their channels. This raises the question of what the future of NFT is. Is it time for the 2.0 version?
These are the factors that keep the NFT from breaking through further (yet)
According to researchers, there are structural problems that are causing the NFT market to stagnate at the moment. They mention the following problems:
NFT platforms are not designed for mass adoption;
The onboarding process is complicated;
Volatility and the difference between the price charged by the developer and market price cause reluctance;
Developers do not stick to their road maps and this causes less confidence in projects;
Buyers avoid the market because of the many scams and other types of scams.
With that, the market seems less interesting for the “get rich quick” investor at the moment, but the investments and plans of large companies indicate a future for the NFT market.
It is expected that a similar professionalization will take place here as in the regular crypto market. In particular, one is looking at the transition from Web2 to Web3 technology for the Internet. This offers opportunities for organizations to prepare for this now and for the mass adoption that is to come. Analysts expect the development of this market to go the way of the development of email.
NFT marketplace OpenSea innovates, but comes under fire
As we saw in the analysis, reliability, usability and ease of use are important to keep consumers happy. One of the parties that is now experiencing this with shame is NFT marketplace OpenSea.
In a blog post, the largest marketplace for trading Non Fungible Tokens announced how it is going to change its platform. There will be new profile pages, new pages for collections and more improvements. Those who are counting on a rabid cryptospace with this are sadly mistaken.
Users are critical. For example, they complain about the many technical problems, such as the instability of the platform and the speed at which you can trade. Users also feel that OpenSea does not do enough about scam projects on their site. As if that were not painful enough, users also criticize the design of the updates themselves.
Misleading figures OpenSea harms NFT market
If we zoom in on the trading volume we see that it has dropped by a whopping 44% in the last 30 days. Many media outlets combine this fact with the disappointing returns of well-known NFTs and thus conclude that this market has a problem. However, this is a distorted picture.
Those who zoom further into this market do indeed see a cooling off from last year’s hype, but also that OpenSea users are mostly moving. Other marketplaces such as NFTrade, Magic Eden and MoonBean actually see many more transactions, with the volume sometimes increasing by a hundred(s) percent.
NFT Scams investigated: old wine in new bottles
As NFT becomes more popular, more and more wrong types are also getting involved in this segment of the crypto market. We see this in a survey by cyber security company Tenable. They list the 5 most common types of NFT scams. These are:
Hacking or buying a verified Twitter account or account with many followers in order to fool users. We saw this for example recently with the hacked Twitter account of NFT artist Beeple;
Faking social media accounts of well-known projects and people in the hope that users will follow these fake accounts;
Posting announcements of airdrops and releases with links to phishing websites;
Directly contacting users who talk about a particular NFT Project on social media;
Installing malware and thus gaining access to wallets.
Since we already saw these cunning tricks in crypto and other online investments, you would expect that people would not fall for this kind of attempt by now, but the scammers are becoming more and more professional. Therefore, many investors still fall for the proverbial axe. Perhaps these 5 tips to recognize crypto scams can help you not to become the next victim.
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