The NFT crash has started, says Belarusian-American entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk at his VeeCon event in Minneapolis, to correct “excess speculation.”
Speaking at his NFT conference in Minneapolis, internet personality Gary Vaynerchuk said that he had previously predicted an “NFT winter” as far back as May 2021.
“I saw this coming – that [a crash driven by short-term greed] is absolutely potentially what we’re in,” said the founder of VaynerMedia, which provides social media-centric services to Fortune 500 companies. He believes that similar to the internet’s early days, where internet-centric companies like Pets.com became overhyped and overvalued and then failed, the NFT market experienced overvaluation in 2021.
“The macro is super right – NFTs are here forever,” he said, “the micro is wrong; that’s why we’re correcting.”
Vaynerchuk’s NFT claim to fame
Vaynerchuk, who claims to be an early NFT proponent, released a signature NFT collection called VeeFriends in May 2021. The collection includes 10,255 NFTs of characters possessing traits Vaynerchuk admires and wants people to aim for. Those holding any of these tokens were granted entry into this year’s VeeCon, the first gathering of an annual “superconference” destined to take place in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
At this year’s conference, music stars include Snoop Dogg, Liam Payne, and “Happy” singer Pharrell Williams. Williams, following a performance, extolled the virtues of Web 3.0, telling the enthusiastic audience of mostly 20 and 30-year-olds that they were “changing the paradigm right now.”
Not holding celebrities responsible for the crash
Vaynerchuk called a New York Times piece criticizing the silence of celebrities previously involved in crypto advertisements “lazy reporting.” While he agrees that stars should be cautious when endorsing products, much of the market turmoil had nothing to do with them.
“But I think it’s ludicrous for people to blame them on the price…Celebrities did not invade Ukraine, inflation was not celebrities, and so the correction of the global economy has also had a direct impact on the crypto economy. And so we have to be thoughtful when we point fingers,” he cautioned.
When questioned why NFTs have not preserved their value as other collectibles like Andy Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’ and a 1955 Mercedes Benz, which sold for $143M and $195M, respectively, Vaynerchuk said that NFT prices are relative.
“They’re down from the completely unsustainable gold rush numbers of January. They’re also so up from a year ago, and it’s not even close,” he said.