No, NFTs are not just "speculative".

A real little bombshell. A few days ago, the American company DappGambl released a shocking report explaining that 95% of the world's NFT collections (a sample of 73,000 collections) had lost all their value. In other words, everyone who was interested in them, or almost everyone, had been taken for a ride 😅.

As is often the case, the study was widely picked up in the media - we talked about it last week - to explain that NFTs are just a "speculative bubble". But summing up the NFT market in this single dimension is far too reductive, because NFTs, which are unique digital tokens, are much more than that!‍

👉 Being part of a community

The term NFT was notably popularised by the famous "monkey images" from the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The company that came up with the collection then convinced stars like Justin Bieber and Snoop Dogg to buy them at prices sometimes exceeding a million dollars 🤑.

In the case of Bored Ape, these NFTs should be seen as a kind of entry ticket to a closed club. The owner of the NFT can then enjoy benefits such as access to a concert, derivative products or a privileged moment with stars.

This principle has also been taken up by the Musée d'Orsay. Since yesterday, the famous Parisian museum has been offering NFTs at a non-speculative price. One of the collections is inspired by the painting "The Starry Night" by the painter Vincent Van Gogh, distributed in a limited edition (2300 copies).

Baptised "digital souvenirs", they are available for purchase at a price of 20 euros. Some of them will give access to benefits such as lifetime access to the museum for 2 people 💫.

"The aim is to reach a younger, more digital audience that isn't necessarily used to going to a museum," explains Guillaume Roux, director of development and international relations at the Musées d'Orsay and the Orangerie.

Guillaume Roux also emphasises that museums have a pioneering role: "Museums have always been heavily criticised. When they created the first products derived from works of art, they were even accused of murdering art! Centuries on, today it's completely integrated."‍

👉 Cutting out the middleman‍

The start-up Oval3 has a sense of timing. Right in the middle of the Rugby World Cup (in France), it has just announced a fundraising round of €2.5 million to develop its game based on rugby player cards in the form of NFT.

It is also on this principle mostly applied to football that French unicorn Sorare succeeded in the record round of €680 million in 2021. Each card is issued in the form of an NFT and therefore has its own rarity.

In this case, the advantage of NFTs is that they allow users to exchange these cards directly without the authorisation of a third party, often a company, and benefiting from a global network thanks to the blockchain. But imagine that tomorrow, what NFT represents is a Netflix or Spotify subscription 👀. Thanks to the blockchain's traceability, it would be possible to rent it, or even resell it!

👉 Leave a trace

Since mid-September, the Molitor swimming pool has also gone NFT. Since 2018, its winter pool, left abandoned for nearly 30 years, has been open to several artists who have graffitied one booth each.

"From the outset, we knew that these works wouldn't stay forever because the idea was to bring other artists to this place," a few weeks ago its director, Grégory Million.

And that's where the NFTs come in! To compensate for this physical disappearance, the hotel, which belongs to the Accor group, came up with the idea of using non-fungible tokens to take advantage of the immutability of the blockchain and thus retain them, even after they have been deleted.

Holding the NFTs will also give access to benefits and thus "test new models" in the words of its manager.