Nfts Shifted To Utility And Culture As Price Faded In 2025
In 2025, non-fungible tokens were reshaped by falling volumes, cultural repositioning and a growing focus on real-world use cases.
In 2021, a non-fungible token (NFT) by digital artist Beeple was sold for a staggering $69.3 million at a Christie's auction. Roughly a year later, blockchain entrepreneur Deepak Thapliyal bought a CryptoPunk NFT for $23.7 million in one of the most expensive digital art pieces ever sold.
But those were the glory days of NFTs, when digital collectibles routinely commanded eight-figure prices and mainstream institutions rushed to legitimize the market.
In 2025, the market has changed, with NFT trading volumes down sharply from their 2021 peaks and buyers placing greater emphasis on utility, community and long-term relevance rather than headline-grabbing prices.
The NFT market opened 2025 under pressure, with first-quarter sales falling 63% year over year to $1.5 billion, down from $4.1 billion during the same period in 2024. The downturn accelerated in March, when monthly sales plunged 76% to $373 million from $1.6 billion a year earlier.
In November, NFT sales fell to their lowest monthly level of the year, with digital collectibles down more than 66% in market capitalization from their January highs. CryptoSlam data shows monthly sales dropped to $320 million, roughly half of October’s $629 million.
Despite the broader slowdown, a small number of collections continued to attract buyers. Pudgy Penguins recorded $72 million in Q1 sales, up 13% year-over-year, potentially supported by a market transition beyond Web3 into a physical toy brand.
Long-running blue-chip collections have also leaned into cultural positioning rather than price momentum. In May, Yuga Labs sold the intellectual property rights to CryptoPunks to the nonprofit Infinite Node Foundation, a move aimed at placing one of the earliest NFT projects under long-term cultural stewardship.
CryptoPunks’ floor price now stands at 26.99 ETH (ETH), down roughly 78% from its August 2021 peak of 125 ETH, but still enough to keep it ranked as the top profile picture (PFP) NFT collection.
At the time of writing, CoinGecko data showed that the total NFT market cap has fallen to about $2.56 billion. At the peak of the NFT craze in April 2022, the market cap was about $16.8 billion.
Source: CoinTelegraph
