The NFT boom gave way to a steep contraction, but “biggest losers” depends on what is measured. On CoinGecko’s comparison of 11 selected blue-chip collections, Moonbirds had the largest reported U.S.-dollar floor-price decline—97.3% from its recorded peak to July 19, 2023. That does not mean every Moonbirds owner sold at a 97.3% loss: a collection floor, a modelled token value, an attempted resale and a completed sale are different things.
How the NFT boom turned into a downturn
The 2021 boom was too large for one agreed total
There is no single uncontested figure for NFT sales in 2021. Reuters reported three estimates from tracking firms, which differed in coverage and methodology. DappRadar said it tracked ten blockchains; NonFungible.com’s cited total covered Ethereum. Reuters also noted that off-chain auction transactions can be missed by trackers.
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| Tracker | Reported 2021 NFT sales estimate | Coverage note |
|---|---|---|
| DappRadar, as reported by Reuters in 2022 | $24.9 billion | DappRadar said it tracked ten blockchains. |
| CryptoSlam, as reported by Reuters in 2022 | $18.3 billion | Coverage differs by tracker; Reuters did not provide a directly harmonized comparison. |
| NonFungible.com, as reported by Reuters in 2022 | $15.7 billion | The cited estimate covered Ethereum. |
Marketplace activity fell sharply in 2022
Reuters reported OpenSea monthly NFT volume of nearly $5 billion in January 2022, $2.6 billion in May and $700 million in June. Separately, NonFungible.com’s average-sale-price measure, as reported by Reuters, fell from $1,754 at the end of April to $412 by late June 2022. Volume and average sale price measure different things; neither establishes what an individual holder received when selling.
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The contraction unfolded alongside a cryptocurrency bear market, rising interest rates and a broader retreat from risky assets, factors Reuters cited as context rather than proof of a single cause. NonFungible.com co-founder Gauthier Zuppinger told Reuters, “The crypto bear market has definitely had an impact on the NFT space,” and described the market as having seen “so much speculation, so much hype around this kind of asset.”
#1 Best Overall
Which NFT collections lost the most value?
CoinGecko compared daily floor prices for 11 selected blue-chip profile-picture collections, using each collection’s recorded all-time high and its floor on July 19, 2023. It aggregated floors from OpenSea, LooksRare and the CryptoPunks marketplace. Its figures are percentage declines in collection floor price—not changes in total market capitalization or realized losses across holders. CoinGecko cautioned that trackers can differ because of marketplace coverage and calculation methods.
| Collection | Floor decline in USD | Floor decline in ETH |
|---|---|---|
| Moonbirds | 97.3% | 95.7% |
| Cool Cats | 96.8% | 94.5% |
| World of Women | 96.5% | 94.6% |
| Doodles | 95.5% | 93.2% |
| Clone X | 95.3% | 91.3% |
| VeeFriends | 94.9% | 90.5% |
| Azuki | 90.5% | 82.7% |
| Mutant Ape Yacht Club | 90.0% | 84.6% |
| Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) | 84.9% | 78.2% |
| CryptoPunks | 80.2% | 60.1% |
| Pudgy Penguins | 38.9% | 45.9% |
The ranking changes somewhat with the currency because ETH and the U.S. dollar move against each other. The table is a selected collection comparison through July 19, 2023, not a ranking of every NFT project or a present-day price list.
Rank #2
A different 2023 window gives different declines
The Block reported that from January 1 to November 28, 2023, BAYC and CryptoPunks floor prices fell 57.6% and 13.8%, respectively. Those figures do not contradict CoinGecko’s larger declines: CoinGecko measured from each collection’s all-time high to July 19, while The Block used the start of 2023 as its baseline and a later endpoint. The Block also reported that BAYC and CryptoPunks still dominated its list of that year’s most expensive NFT sales.
Individual NFT examples: estimated losses are not sale records
Collection floors do not reveal what a particular owner paid, whether a specific token could attract a buyer, or what its owner ultimately received. That distinction matters in the most publicized individual cases.
Rank #3
Logan Paul’s K4M-1 #03
DappRadar reported that Logan Paul bought K4M-1 #03 for $626,393 on August 23, 2021. In its 2022 article, DappRadar’s NFT Value Estimator put the token’s value at $8,250. That is a large gap between the reported purchase price and a modelled estimate—not evidence that Paul sold the NFT for $8,250 or that this is its current value.
Seven tokens in DappRadar’s estimate
DappRadar reported a combined estimated decline of $29,650,760 for seven selected NFTs, using their last sale prices and its NFT Value Estimator. The figure is an aggregate modelled decline, not a record of seven completed sales at those lower estimates.
Rank #4
The first tweet NFT’s failed resale attempt
Reuters reported that a Malaysian businessman who bought an NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.5 million struggled to receive bids above a few thousand dollars when he tried to resell it in April 2022. This illustrates the gap between an asking or hoped-for price and the bids available at a given time; Reuters did not report that the NFT sold at the lower amount.
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Why “value lost” can mean several different things
- Sales volume totals transactions tracked over a period. It does not tell you the value of all NFTs or the result for a particular owner.
- Average sale price describes transactions in a defined sample and period. It can move differently from total volume.
- Floor price is the lowest listed or otherwise tracked price for a collection under a provider’s method. It does not prove a holder sold at that price, or that a buyer would pay it for every token.
- Modelled token value is an estimate produced by a valuation method. It is not a completed transaction.
- Realized gain or loss depends on an owner’s acquisition cost and actual sale proceeds, neither of which a collection-wide floor comparison supplies.
These measures also vary with tracker coverage, marketplaces included, time windows and currency. A thin market adds another complication: a listed price or estimate does not establish that a buyer is available at that price.
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Was the market recovering—and what can be said about it now?
There was a partial bounce in Ethereum NFT sales in early 2023. CryptoSlam data reported by Reuters put sales at $780.2 million in January 2023, up from $546.9 million in December 2022. Reuters contrasted January 2023 with roughly $5 billion in January 2022 and described the increase as a bounce from a November low, not a return to boom conditions.
A later El País article in March 2026 attributed to DappRadar a 93% fall in NFT sales value from the 2021 peak to early 2025, reporting $197 million for 2024 and $23.8 million for the first quarter of 2025. These are figures reported by El País from DappRadar, not a harmonized market-wide total established across trackers. They do not establish October 2026 sales volume or current floor prices for the collections above. No market-wide transaction record in these figures shows that every holder—or any specific holder—realized a loss.
What the collapse says about NFT risk
The boom’s large sales estimates and headline purchases did not guarantee a liquid market or lasting prices. Reuters quoted technology research firm L’Atelier CEO John Egan saying, “Ultimately it’s a situation where extraordinary amounts of money are being paid for extraordinarily limited assets that don’t really produce any cash flow.” Egan also said, “Most gamers prefer games which do not include NFTs or ‘play-to-earn’ components.” Those comments describe concerns about speculation and use cases; they do not by themselves explain every collection’s decline.
The clearest defensible conclusion is narrower than “NFTs are worthless”: activity and many prominent collection floors fell steeply from their peaks, while the scale of any owner’s actual loss depends on the token, purchase price, currency, sale timing and whether a sale happened at all.
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