There are about 1.6 billion NFTs by CryptoSlam’s broadest figure, and about 1.36 billion by the same tracker’s yearly table. Nobody publishes one agreed count, and the reasons are below.
Are NFTs dead? Not quite, but the market is a small fraction of what it was. Trading is down about 97% from the peak month of January 2022, and most collections have no market at all. A small number still trade.
NFT sales peaked at $6.05 billion in January 2022. In September 2026 they came to $167.3 million. Below is how the count works, the crash in numbers, who shut down, and what it means if you still own one. Live figures on this page were read on the date in the sources line at the bottom.
Nobody publishes one agreed count. Trackers differ on which blockchains they cover and which tokens they call an NFT.
Sales figures are CryptoSlam’s and floor prices are CoinGecko’s. Every source is listed at the bottom of this page.
How many NFTs are there?
Start with the number most people want. CryptoSlam’s global index shows a supply of about 1.61 billion NFTs in its all-time view, across more than 15 blockchains. Its yearly table shows about 1.36 billion for 2026 so far.
We could not find a published definition of that field, and the two views do not match. Cointelegraph read the yearly column as the total number of NFTs in circulation when it reported 1.34 billion for 2025. Treat either figure as one tracker’s tally, not a census. It may include tokens you would not call an NFT and tokens that have since been destroyed.
Other counters measure different things, which is why you will see very different answers.
| What is counted | Count | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| CryptoSlam supply, all-time view | 1,614,266,265 | All time | CryptoSlam |
| CryptoSlam supply, yearly table | 1,364,435,563 | 2026 so far | CryptoSlam |
| Inscriptions on Bitcoin (Ordinals) | 128,024,961 | All time | ordinals.com |
| NFTs on Ethereum in one research dataset | 12,359,778 | Through December 2021 | Right Click Save |
| NFT sales ever recorded | 429.5 million | All time | CryptoSlam |
The yearly column is the cleanest way to see how fast the supply grew, because it is one tracker measured the same way each year: 37.8 million in 2021, 106.9 million in 2022, 559.3 million in 2023, 1.08 billion in 2024 and 1.34 billion in 2025.
Why the counts disagree
| The reason | What it does to the number |
|---|---|
| Which blockchains are included | A count for Ethereum alone leaves out Bitcoin, Solana, Polygon and the rest. CryptoSlam says it covers more than 15 blockchains. |
| What gets called an NFT | Bitcoin’s 128 million inscriptions include tokens that trade like coins. CryptoSlam lists those as BRC-20 NFTs and has a switch to hide what it calls fungible NFTs, so its total may include things you would not call an NFT. |
| Editions and copies | One artwork can be issued as many identical tokens. Some counters treat that as one NFT and others count every copy. |
| Made versus still around | Tokens can be destroyed, which is called burning. A count of everything ever created will be higher than a count of what exists today. |
| Free and spam tokens | Many NFTs were never sold to anyone. They are handed out as giveaways, tickets and game items, or dropped into wallets uninvited. |
How many people own NFTs?
Nobody knows. Blockchains record wallets, not people, and one person can use many wallets. What can be counted is activity.
CryptoSlam has recorded about 25.3 million wallets buying an NFT at some point. Far fewer are active now. Its monthly table shows 1,459,086 unique buyer wallets in January 2022 and 240,381 in September 2026, a drop of 84%.
CryptoSlam’s own numbers do not agree here either. Its home page shows about 60,000 buyers over the latest 30 days. Whichever figure you use, the crowd is far smaller than it was in 2022.
The famous collections are also held by a small group. The 9,998 Bored Apes sit in 5,652 wallets, according to CoinGecko.
What happened to NFTs: the crash in numbers
NFT sales went from almost nothing to tens of billions of dollars in two years, then gave most of it back. The chart uses CryptoSlam’s yearly table. It reports the trades it flags as wash trading separately, and they are not in these figures. Its monthly rows add up to more, which is laid out further down.
NFT sales by year
Total sales in U.S. dollars, from CryptoSlam’s yearly table
The 2026 bar covers the year through early October only. Source: CryptoSlam NFT Global Sales Volume index, yearly table.
CryptoSlam’s monthly table is starker. January 2022 was the peak month at $6.05 billion. March 2026 came in at $153.2 million, the lowest month since January 2021. September 2026 was $167.3 million, 97% below the peak month.
Prices fell along with volume. In the yearly table, the average NFT sale was $462.80 in 2021. So far in 2026 it is $73.74.
CoinGecko puts the combined market cap of the NFT collections it tracks at $1.92 billion. That number is each collection’s floor price multiplied by its size, so it is a paper value, not what the NFTs would fetch if they were all sold. CryptoPunks alone make up 44% of it.
Why you will see bigger numbers elsewhere
Trackers do not agree on the size of the boom, mostly because of wash trading. That is when someone sells an NFT back and forth between wallets they control to fake demand.
For 2022, CryptoSlam’s yearly table counts $23.84 billion in sales and flags another $27.34 billion as wash trades. Add the two and you get about $51 billion. The Block Research puts the 2022 peak at more than $50 billion and 2025 at roughly $5.5 billion.
Older figures can also measure something else. Chainalysis reported that at least $44.2 billion in crypto was sent to NFT smart contracts on Ethereum in 2021. That is a different yardstick from marketplace sales, so the two do not line up.
Even one source can disagree with itself, and by a lot. Add up CryptoSlam’s monthly rows and you get $24.73 billion for 2021, $26.88 billion for 2022 and $5.83 billion for 2025. Its yearly table shows $15.77 billion, $23.84 billion and $5.63 billion for the same years. We could not find an explanation on the site.
We kept the yearly table for the chart and for every year-to-year comparison on this page. Those are figures the tracker prints, and Cointelegraph reported the same $5.63 billion for 2025. Every monthly figure here comes from the monthly table, and no comparison mixes the two. Use any single figure as a rough size, not a precise one.
What the famous NFT collections are worth now
A floor price is the cheapest NFT listed for sale in a collection. It is the quickest way to see what the boom-era names are worth today. These are CoinGecko’s figures.
| Collection | Peak floor price | Floor price now | Change in ETH |
|---|---|---|---|
| CryptoPunks | 125 ETHAug. 29, 2021 | 32.89 ETHabout $84,291 | Down 74% |
| Bored Ape Yacht Club | 153.7 ETHMay 1, 2022 | 5.8 ETHabout $14,857 | Down 96% |
| Mutant Ape Yacht Club | 40 ETHMay 1, 2022 | 0.8 ETHabout $2,049 | Down 98% |
| Pudgy Penguins | 36.33 ETHDec. 17, 2024 | 2.92 ETHabout $7,477 | Down 92% |
| Azuki | 31.8 ETHApril 3, 2022 | 0.6 ETHabout $1,537 | Down 98% |
| Moonbirds | 38.5 ETHApril 22, 2022 | 0.43 ETHabout $1,099 | Down 99% |
| Doodles | 23.95 ETHMay 3, 2022 | 0.27 ETHabout $684 | Down 99% |
| Clone X | 19.5 ETHApril 6, 2022 | 0.14 ETHabout $364 | Down 99% |
The change column is measured in ETH, the currency these collections trade in. In dollars, a Bored Ape floor of $420,430 at the peak is about $14,857 now.
Single sales tell the same story. Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold as an NFT for $2.9 million in March 2021. When the buyer tried to resell it in April 2022, the top bid was about $277. Beeple’s digital collage sold for $69,346,250 at Christie’s on March 11, 2021. Christie’s closed its digital art department in September 2025.
How many NFT collections are worthless?
Most of them, by two different measures.
A dappGambl report that Futurism covered in September 2023 looked at 73,257 collections using NFTScan data and found that 69,795 had a market cap of zero. That is 95%. It also found that 79% of collections had not sold out. Among the 8,850 largest collections, 18% had a floor price of zero, 41% were priced between $5 and $100, and fewer than 1% were priced above $6,000.
Keep the source in mind. dappGambl is a crypto gambling review site, and its original report page no longer loads, so these figures come from an archived copy.
A 2024 report from NFT Evening measured something else. It examined more than 5,000 Ethereum collections and called 96% of them dead, meaning a collection failed any one of three tests: no trading volume, fewer than 20 sales in a week, or no activity on Twitter for three months. It put the average NFT’s lifespan at 1.14 years.
The two figures are not the same measure. The 95% counts collections with a market cap of zero. The 96% counts collections that failed at least one activity test.
You can see it in live data too. When we read CoinGecko’s list, three of its ten largest collections by market cap showed zero trading volume over the previous 24 hours.
Who shut down, left or changed course
The companies followed the money out. Each item below was reported by a major news outlet, and the link goes to that report. Rows are in order of when the news broke, and each row says when the change itself took effect.
| Who | News broke | What happened | Reported by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta | March 13, 2023 | Said it was winding down NFT features on Instagram and Facebook. | TechCrunch |
| GameStop | January 2024 | Said its NFT marketplace would close on Feb. 2, 2024, citing regulatory uncertainty in crypto. The marketplace officially launched on Oct. 31, 2022, after a public beta that began in July 2022. | The Block, The Block |
| Starbucks | March 2024 | Said Odyssey, its NFT rewards program, would end on March 31, 2024. | The Block |
| DraftKings | July 30, 2024 | Shut its NFT marketplace and its Reignmakers fantasy game the same day, citing legal developments. | PYMNTS |
| Kraken | Nov. 26, 2024 | Said its NFT marketplace would switch to withdrawals only on Nov. 27, 2024 and close on Feb. 27, 2025. | The Block |
| Nike (RTFKT) | Dec. 2, 2024 | Said RTFKT, the NFT brand Nike bought in December 2021, would wind down in January 2025. | Cointelegraph |
| OpenSea (a pivot) | February 2025 | Added regular crypto token trading with its OS2 open beta in February 2025, which left beta in late May 2025. In October 2025, more than 90% of the $2.6 billion it had handled that month came from tokens, not NFTs. On March 16, 2026 it postponed its planned SEA token and gave no new date. | CryptoSlate, The Block, Decrypt, The Block |
| X2Y2 | March 31, 2025 | Said it would close at the end of April 2025, after handling more than $5.6 billion in Ethereum NFT trades. Weekly volume had fallen from over $100 million in 2022 to about $1 million. | Decrypt |
| Bybit | April 1, 2025 | Said its NFT marketplace would shut on April 8, 2025, to streamline its products. | Cointelegraph |
| Christie’s | September 2025 | Closed its digital art department and moved NFT sales into its 20th and 21st century art category, according to a report first published by Now Media. | Cointelegraph |
| DappRadar | Nov. 17, 2025 | The widely cited NFT and app data tracker said it would wind down because running it was no longer financially sustainable. | Cointelegraph |
| Nifty Gateway | Jan. 24, 2026 | The NFT marketplace owned by Gemini said it was closing and switched to withdrawals only. Its site says the platform officially closed on April 23, 2026 and that it will keep working with customers to move their NFTs out. | The Block, Nifty Gateway |
| Foundation and Rodeo | January 2026 | Rodeo, an NFT app led by Foundation’s CEO, said in January 2026 that it would shut down on March 10, 2026. Foundation closed its NFT marketplace in April 2026 after a planned sale fell through, and its site says the platform will stay offline indefinitely. It had handled about $230 million in artist sales since 2021. | Cointelegraph, Cointelegraph, Foundation |
| Magic Eden | March 2, 2026 | Said it would close its Bitcoin and Ethereum-compatible NFT marketplaces on March 9, 2026 and its crypto wallet on April 1, 2026. It kept Solana and said it would focus on Dicey, its crypto casino. | Cointelegraph |
The list includes names that defined the boom. By late 2025 OpenSea was getting most of its volume from regular crypto tokens, and in 2026 Magic Eden turned toward a casino.
What still has activity
NFTs did not go to zero. About $175.5 million changed hands over the latest 30 days on CryptoSlam’s home page. What sells now looks different from 2021.
| Collection | Blockchain | Sales, last 30 days | Number of sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Courtyard | Polygon | $28.99 million | 502,307 |
| CryptoPunks | Ethereum | $12.55 million | 132 |
| Argonauts | Ethereum | $9.50 million | 4,500 |
| Credits | Ethereum | $8.35 million | 109,187 |
| Guild of Guardians Heroes | Immutable | $4.80 million | 3,319 |
| Bored Ape Yacht Club | Ethereum | $3.50 million | 211 |
| Pudgy Penguins | Ethereum | $3.26 million | 387 |
The five largest collections by 30-day sales, plus two boom-era names for comparison (ninth and tenth on the same list). Source: CryptoSlam collection rankings, 30-day view.
The top seller is not a cartoon ape. Courtyard sells digital packs backed by physical trading cards that it says are vaulted and insured. It accounted for about one in every six dollars of NFT sales over those 30 days.
The old names still trade, in small numbers and at high prices. CryptoPunks moved $12.55 million in 132 sales. Bored Apes moved $3.5 million in 211.
Pudgy Penguins shows the gap between a brand and its NFTs. Its CEO told Decrypt in August 2025 that the company was on track for $50 million in revenue that year and that he wanted to take it public within two years. The NFT floor price is still down 92% from its December 2024 high.
What this means if you own an NFT
If you bought during the boom, you are probably holding something worth a fraction of what you paid. Five checks will tell you where you stand.
1. Check what it would sell for, not the floor
Look up your collection on CoinGecko or NFT Price Floor. The floor is only the lowest asking price. What matters is whether anything is selling.
When we checked, Bored Apes had 10 sales in the previous 24 hours, out of 9,998 apes. Plenty of collections had none. When nothing is selling, the real price is the highest bid, and that can be zero.
2. Find out who is holding it
If the NFT is in your own crypto wallet, a marketplace closing does not delete it. GameStop’s closing notice told customers they could sell their NFTs on other marketplaces, because the NFTs live on the blockchain, The Block reported.
You may still have something to do. Foundation’s site says NFTs still listed through its contracts have to be delisted manually, and that it will keep its file gateway running through April 27, 2027.
It is different when a platform holds the NFT for you. Nifty Gateway’s site says the platform officially closed on April 23, 2026 and that it will keep working with customers to move their NFTs to a wallet of their choice. If you still have NFTs there, log in to withdraw them or contact its customer support.
3. See where the picture is stored
An NFT is a record that points to a file. One analysis of 12.4 million Ethereum NFTs found that only 9% stored the artwork on the blockchain itself. About 41% pointed to an ordinary web server, which means the image can vanish if whoever runs that server turns it off.
4. Know how a loss works at tax time
These are the IRS rules for tax year 2025, the return due in 2026. The IRS lists NFTs as digital assets and treats digital assets as property. Sell one for less than you paid and you have a capital loss. If your capital losses are bigger than your gains for the year, you can deduct up to $3,000 of the difference against other income ($1,500 if married filing separately) and carry the rest forward.
There are two catches. A price drop alone is not a loss until you sell. And the IRS does not allow losses on personal-use property, so this applies to NFTs you held as an investment. The IRS pages we read do not say what to do with an NFT that has no buyer at any price, so ask a tax professional before you claim a loss on one you still hold.
If you sold at a gain instead, how long you held it matters. A gain on an NFT held for a year or less is short-term and taxed as ordinary income. A gain on one held longer is long-term. The IRS has said it may treat some NFTs as collectibles, and long-term gains on collectibles can be taxed at up to 28%. This is general information, not tax advice.
5. Ignore anyone offering to get your money back
People who lost money get targeted a second time. The FTC’s advice is simple. If someone contacts you and asks for an upfront payment to recover what you lost, that is a scammer.
Thinking about buying one now?
Go in knowing three things from the numbers above. Most collections end up with no market at all. The survivors in the table are down 74% to 99% from their highs. And there are far fewer buyers than there were in 2022, so selling can take a while.
None of that tells you what prices will do next. It does tell you what happened to people who bought near the top.
A quick refresher on what an NFT is
NFT stands for non-fungible token. The IRS describes it as a unique digital identifier, recorded on a blockchain, that can certify who owns a particular asset. Usually that asset is a digital file such as a picture, a video clip or a game item.
Non-fungible means one of a kind. A dollar or a bitcoin is interchangeable with any other. An NFT is not. You normally buy one with cryptocurrency, which is why the two get lumped together. If the crypto side is new to you, start with our guide to cryptocurrencies.
NFT FAQ
A few are. At this update, the cheapest CryptoPunk was listed at 32.89 ETH, about $84,291, and the cheapest Bored Ape at 5.8 ETH, about $14,857. Most are not. A 2023 report found that 95% of NFT collections had a market cap of zero, and a 2024 report on Ethereum collections called 96% of them dead. An NFT is only worth what someone will pay today, so check recent sales and not the asking price.
About 1.6 billion by CryptoSlam’s broadest figure, and about 1.36 billion by its yearly table. Nobody publishes one agreed count, because the answer depends on which blockchains are included and what gets called an NFT. Bitcoin alone has 128 million inscriptions.
Not dead, but a small fraction of what they were. NFT sales were $167.3 million in September 2026, down 97% from $6.05 billion in January 2022, according to CryptoSlam. Since 2024, Nifty Gateway, Foundation, X2Y2 and the NFT marketplaces run by Kraken and Bybit have all announced closures. Trading continues in a few older collections and in newer tokens tied to physical trading cards.
No one knows the number of people, because blockchains record wallets and one person can use several. CryptoSlam has recorded about 25.3 million wallets that bought an NFT at some point. Its monthly table shows 240,381 unique buyer wallets in September 2026, compared with 1,459,086 in January 2022.
If the NFT is in your own crypto wallet, it stays there and can be listed on another marketplace. If the platform was holding it for you, move it out when the company announces a closure. A passed deadline does not always mean the NFT is gone. Nifty Gateway closed on April 23, 2026 and says it will keep working with customers to move their NFTs out. The image can still disappear if it was stored on a company server that goes offline.
Not just because the price fell. Under the IRS rules for tax year 2025, you have a capital loss when you sell an asset for less than you paid for it. If you held the NFT as an investment and sell it at a loss, that loss can offset capital gains, and up to $3,000 a year of extra losses can offset other income ($1,500 if married filing separately). Losses on personal-use property are not deductible. The IRS pages we read do not cover an NFT that nobody will buy, so ask a tax professional about that case.
Cryptocurrency is interchangeable. One bitcoin is the same as any other. An NFT is one of a kind. It is a unique token on a blockchain that records who owns a specific item, usually a digital file. You normally need cryptocurrency to buy one.
