NFTs: The Wild West of Digital Culture

Non fungible tokens, or NFTs, are blockchain based digital certificates of ownership. Think of them as receipts that say: yes, you own this. Unlike Bitcoin or ETH, where one coin is equal to another, NFTs are unique. Each has its own metadata, its own ID, and often its own story. At first glance NFTs sound silly. You mean a JPEG I can right click and save? That is the punchline. But ownership is not about the pixels; it is about the proof. Anyone can photocopy the Mona Lisa, but only one hangs in the Louvre. NFTs are blockchain’s answer to the question of who really owns this.

The NFT boom did not start with million dollar apes. It started with digital cats. In 2017, CryptoKitties exploded on Ethereum. Each cat was a unique NFT, breedable with others to create new cats. People paid thousands for rare traits. Ethereum actually slowed to a crawl because of cat breeding. It was absurd, adorable, and a preview of what was coming. NFTs back then felt like Beanie Babies 2.0. Collectibles with artificial scarcity. Most fizzled. But the proof of concept was there: people would pay real money for provable digital uniqueness.

By 2021, NFTs went nuclear. The pandemic locked people inside. Stimulus checks landed. Crypto markets pumped. And NFTs became the social flex of the internet. Beeple sold a digital collage at Christie’s for 69 million dollars. Suddenly NFTs were not just degen fun; they were fine art. Bored Ape Yacht Club launched, giving holders not just images but club membership perks, exclusive merch, and a flex pass on Twitter. EtherRocks, literally pixelated clip art rocks, sold for hundreds of thousands. Absurd? Yes. But they proved one thing: the market priced culture, not just utility. NFTs became the Lamborghinis of the timeline. Owning one said: I made it.

With every gold rush comes fool’s gold. Rug pulls became infamous. Teams hyped NFT collections, sold out, then vanished with the ETH. Holders were left with worthless tokens. Wash trading inflated sales volume to fake momentum. Some marketplaces saw 90 percent or more of trades were insiders flipping to themselves. Thousands of lazy derivative projects flooded OpenSea. For every Bored Ape, there were 100 knock offs. By 2022 the bubble burst. Floor prices collapsed. Twitter PFPs went back to selfies. Critics laughed: see, it was all a scam. But underneath the wreckage, the infrastructure had been built. Marketplaces, wallets, minting tools, and cultural momentum did not vanish. They set the stage for NFTs 2.0.

Even if prices tanked, NFTs changed digital culture forever. They gave us proof of belonging: NFTs were not just art, they were membership cards. Hold a BAYC and you were in an elite club. Hold a niche project and you belonged to that micro community. This was digital tribe signaling. They gave creator empowerment: for the first time artists could sell work directly to fans without middlemen. Smart contracts enabled royalties so artists got paid on every resale. They powered the meme economy: NFTs turned memes into assets. The original Doge photo NFT sold for millions. Internet jokes became investable. They also became identity: NFTs acted like digital tattoos. People identified with their PFPs, sometimes more than their real life photos. Whole personalities were built around cartoon monkeys, frogs, or penguins.

NFTs are smart contracts with metadata. They do not store the actual art on chain because that is too expensive. Instead, they store links to IPFS or Arweave plus rules: royalties, attributes, and ownership. This technical layer opens up endless use cases. Gaming: in game skins, weapons, and characters as NFTs mean true ownership of your loot. Tickets: concert tickets as NFTs cut scalpers and add perks like lifetime discounts. Music: songs as NFTs let fans own limited releases or even royalty shares. Fashion: brands drop limited sneaker NFTs, sometimes paired with physical items. NFTs are Lego bricks. Today they are mostly art. Tomorrow they will be utilities in games, finance, and identity.

This chart shows the NFT trading volume over the years, illustrating the 2021 boom and subsequent market adjustments.

If NFTs are about tribe, flex, and perks, then $MemO nailed the formula. The Jacket NFTs are not just art; they are entry passes into games, raffles, and bonus multipliers. The DRIP collections keep the perks flowing month after month. Forget pixel apes; this is functional flex. Membership with momentum. And yes, members of The $MemO Collective get special site benefits too. Consider it a nod to the fact that NFTs are about belonging as much as about ownership.

The NFT crash was brutal. But history says this is the dot com bubble moment. After the bust comes real businesses. Amazon rose from the ashes of dot com. NFTs will too. Future directions are already taking shape. NFTs as infrastructure: identity, credentials, and certificates. Dynamic NFTs: art or items that evolve based on interaction. NFT Fi: financialization of NFTs like fractional ownership, lending, and indexes. Cross chain NFTs: own an NFT on Algorand, flex it on Ethereum, and use it in a Solana game. Bridges will make PFPs portable. NFTs may look like toys now, but toys have a funny way of becoming infrastructure.

At the heart, NFTs are about human culture. Our desire to signal, belong, flex, and collect. They are messy, scam ridden, and meme fueled, but so was the internet in the 1990s. Out of that chaos came trillion dollar companies. NFTs may look like toys now. But toys have a way of becoming infrastructure. Do not bet against culture.