Are NFTs about to fall out of vogue? That was, what, maybe a year long run? What a drag, eh? A technology and art cross-innovation, the NFT was unique and beautiful in its ugliness. It gave pretty art patrons who typically shop at Christie’s auctions an introduction into the world of funny ape jpegs and decentralized investment opportunities that offered astounding ROI. At the same time, NFTs also provided the perfect platform for an ugly group of financial fraudsters, thieves and money launderers to pilfer and profit from, without much recourse.

As fast as NFTs became a ‘thing’, especially with the influencer and celebrity set like two weeks ago, could they also disappear just as quickly, because of the ugliness part? Before you answer, are you ready for the worst NFT news of all? The creation and existence of NFTs is destroying our planet. Even as someone who would never invest in an NFT, I was a fan and a fly on the wall, hoping what I assumed was going to happen, which is happening on the FinCrime front, would never happen. As with crypto, I knew too that there was an enviro dark side with NFTs, but until reviewing the data I would have never guessed the extent of the problem.

Innovations rise and fall quickly in decentralized land (see the ICO). Here is why I think the NFT will soon fall: the environmental costs of NFT creation are beyond sustainable; the financial costs of an ever increasing number of fraudulent token sales is too big to accurately assess; and the fact that my mother-in-law, bless her heart, could easily launder the profits from the sale of an expensive, rare NFT, is sort of a bad joke. The promise of the NFT was the ability to buy something potentially rare, at a ground floor price and sell it later for a ridiculous price, not to play Rug Pull Russian Roulette.

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