The History of NFTs
NFTs were first made in 2014 and were bought in New York during a live presentation for the Seven on Seven conferences. It was called “Quantum”. In October 2015, the first NFT project, Etheria, was launched. Most of Etheria’s 457 purchasable and tradable hexagonal tiles went unsold for more than 5 years until March 13, 2021, when renewed interest in NFTs sparked a buying frenzy. Within 24 hours, all tiles of the current version and a prior version, each hardcoded to 1 ETH ($0.43 cents at the time of launch), were sold for a total of $1.4 million.
Public awareness in NFTs began with the success of CryptoKitties, an online game where players adopt and trade virtual cats. Soon after release, the project went viral, raising a $12.5 million investment, with some kitties selling for over $100,000 each. This started in 2018.
Later in 2018 Decentraland, a blockchain-based virtual world which first sold its tokens in August 2017, raised $26 million in an initial coin offering. Decentraland is a decentralised 3D virtual reality platform that consists of 90,601 parcels land. Virtual estate in decentraland are NFTs which can be bought by the cryptocurrency MANA, which is based on the Ethereum blockchain.
NFTs really came to light during 2020! They really started taking off and becoming a hit for all collectors! People started paying big money for them and they quickly became very expensive. The NFT market had a rapid growth during 2020 which tripled it’s value to $250 million! Then in 2021 the first three months $200 million was spent on NFTs! That is a ridiculous amount spent on NFTs in three months! The NFT market is only set to grow bigger in the coming years as the bigger companies are set to invest into NFTs and start creating them. EA is soon to be on the list. NFTs will be around for a long time so if you are looking to start collecting then you should do now before they get too big and are quadruple their current price.
Games are starting to make NFTs their primary interest and they are starting to make NFTs for players to collect very soon!
The most expensive NFT to be sold is $532 million and there are predicitions this will rise as the price of ETH rises!