At a time when the Nasdaq is approaching 16,500 points and the S&P 500 is over 4,700, historic highs for both indices since their creation, some observers like to see in 2021, a crazy stock market year, the beginnings of a new bubble.

Largely inflated by central bank liquidity injections (under the guise of rescuing economies from Covid) and a combination of frenetic factors (cryptocurrencies, meme stocks pushed by reddit's WallStreetBets, stimulus checks, etc), all stock markets are posting record highs. This was without counting on the new fad of investors and collectors: the NFTs.

NFTs, for non-fungible tokens, are dedicated cryptographic elements, i.e., authenticated digital works of art, thanks to blockchain methods. Like the Dotcoms on the stock market in their day, NFTs have made a splash in the art world, and are now getting a red carpet treatment outside their original arena, in the video game or networking world, for example. Last March, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, sold his first tweet in NFT for the modest sum of 2.9 million dollars. A tweet.

 

In recent months, a small digital design by the name of CyberPunk 3100 was selling at auction for $7.1m. The more astute will note that this is a lot less than the $532 million it cost to get CryptoPunk #9998 just 3 weeks ago, but still. Aren't we getting a little high here?

 

NFT le nouveau dotcom
By Amandine Victor