Despite Crypto Market Crash, NFT Enthusiasts Continue to Party at NFT.NYC Convention

The crypto market has crashed. Digital artwork transactions are down. But for the world's largest gathering of NFT enthusiasts, the party was more intense than ever.

More than 15,000 people are expected to gather in Times Square this week for the NFT.NYC conference. NFTs have been hailed as digital tokens of fidelity, and enthusiasts are calling them the future of everything from art and collectibles to the internet itself. Driven by surging cryptocurrency prices, NFTs became a $40 billion market last year.

As a digital movement built on overwhelming positivity, the NFT community shows no signs of letting recent market issues shake its confidence.

“It’s a marketplace to build,” said Travis Wright, co-host of the Bad Crypto podcast and one of the hosts on the main stage at Tuesday’s event in Radio City Music City. With the help of sponsors such as Coinbase, the convention rented the storied theater. Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, recently announced layoffs of about 1,100 employees, or about 18% of its workforce.

"Are you feeling a little bit tough in this meeting?" said Joel Comm, Wright's podcast partner and co-host. "No, it's a great thing."

The conference occupied six floors of the nearby Marriott Marquis, and the corridors were packed with people, mostly in their teens to their 30s, who were constantly offering their thoughts on how to Improving what they all seem to think is the future of art and digital collectibles.

The NFT market grew slowly for a few years before exploding in 2021. But prices for some NFTs have fallen sharply, and the number of accounts trading NFTs has declined this year.

At the same time, the broader crypto market also retreated sharply. Ethereum, the cryptocurrency that underpins most NFTs and other Web 3.0 projects, is now worth a third to a quarter what it was for most of last year.

But NFT.NYC organizers expect triple the attendance compared to last November. Undeterred by Crypto Winter, attendees paid $599 to $1,999 for tickets and waited in long lines to get into the Marriott.

Many of the attendees interviewed by NBC News were both optimistic about NFT technology and believed it was an inevitable trend. Many still see this as the early days of NFTs, ripe for people to experiment with their own projects.

David Angelo and three friends started an NFT art project called Naughty Giraffes, a series of 10,000 giraffe animations. He said he has long-term confidence in the technology.

"Not everyone will be successful," said Angelo, who attended the meeting in a giraffe costume. "Not everyone will make it to the Promised Land, and it may take longer than we hope and anticipate."

Like many attendees, Angelo, an early adopter of cryptocurrencies, said he personally weathered the crypto winter well, seeing it as an investment opportunity rather than a sign that the NFT market is peaking. But he acknowledged that those who had just invested in the space before the crash could be scapegoated.

He's not alone in his long-term optimism. Despite the market crash, venture capitalists continue to invest in NFTs and other Web 3.0 companies.

On Wednesday, digital asset trading platform FalconX said it was valued at $8 billion in a new funding round. Magic Eden, an NFT marketplace launching in 2021, raised another $130 million. On Wednesday, Meta released a beginner’s guide to NFTs, part of a broader effort by the company to convince users it’s home to virtual worlds.

Some have also seen real-world applications. Jeanne Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Danvas, which plans to sell screens as digital art canvases, said at NFT.NYC that despite the downturn, art galleries that have invested heavily in NFTs are welcoming the market.

"Everyone knew winter was coming," she said. "It's coming a little sooner than some estimate, but no one is going into 2022 thinking there won't be a period of change."

“Very few institutional museums respond immediately to trends. It’s not something a museum would normally do,” Anderson said.

Still, she said she was lucky that her company raised $7 million in funding last December.

“Of course, it’s going to be difficult to start financing at this point in time,” she said. "I guess I feel lucky that we raised money in the first place."

Skeptics of NFTs have expressed concern about the community’s propensity to overcommit, sometimes fudging details. At one point, a security guard cleared the way for what appeared to be the rapper Snoop Dogg in the hallway of a Marriott hotel.

A closer look revealed that the man was a copycat hired by an NFT company, and his official conference badge read "Doop Snogg."

This article is compiled from NBC News

Original link: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/crypto/crypto-crash-nft-enthusiasts-keep-party-going-rcna34498