Whether NFTs are dead is harder to answer with data than it appears. Not because the data is missing, but because it contradicts itself.
The problem with the figures
At least three figures circulate for NFT market capitalisation in 2026: roughly 2.4 billion, roughly 2.7 billion and roughly 5.6 billion US dollars. Trading volume for 2025 is cited at 5.5 billion, and elsewhere at 2.8 billion for the first half of 2025 alone.
This range does not arise from sloppiness but from differing definitions. Is only Ethereum counted, or Solana and Bitcoin Ordinals too? Are wash trades included? Is market capitalisation calculated as floor price times supply, or from actual sales? Are gaming assets included?
In practice this means individual NFT market figures should be treated with caution. More reliable are directions and orders of magnitude that several sources show independently.
What multiple sources agree on
The decline is substantial and real. Market capitalisation fell from just under 9 billion US dollars in January 2025 to a low single-digit billion figure in early 2026. Trading volume in 2025 was roughly 37 percent below the 2024 level.
Activity is not zero. Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands, put monthly NFT sales at roughly 300 million US dollars in January 2026 speaking to CoinDesk, against more than a billion at the 2021/22 peak. That is a decline of about 70 percent — but still a nine-figure monthly sum.
Trader counts have fallen further than volume. Active traders peaked at 529,101 in 2022 and fell to 19,575 by the first quarter of 2025, a decline of 96 percent. At the same time, 42 percent of wallets from the 2022 peak were reportedly still active in January 2026.
These two figures sit in tension. The plausible resolution: those who stayed trade less often. A market of speculators has become one of holders.
The contradiction that explains the most
More than 1.34 billion NFTs were minted in 2026 — a record. Annual revenue meanwhile continued to fall.
Supply exploded precisely as demand collapsed. That is the most compact explanation for why the overwhelming majority of individual NFTs are effectively worthless today while a handful of collections still generate revenue.
Related: the twenty most-traded art NFT collections from 2021 recorded an average decline of 95 percent by 2024 in both trading volume and number of sales.
The marketplaces have reordered
Blur captures roughly 38 percent of Ethereum NFT volume according to several sources, having overtaken OpenSea through incentive-driven trading mechanics. Magic Eden leads on Solana and Bitcoin Ordinals.
OpenSea itself has shifted strategically and increasingly positions as a broader crypto trading platform rather than a pure NFT marketplace. For the launch of its own token in the first quarter of 2026 it announced allocating 50 percent of supply to the community and using half of platform revenue for buybacks.
That shift is itself a data point. When the best-known provider in a category broadens its business model, that is a statement about the category.
Also worth noting is where collecting demand went. Physical collectibles markets outside crypto remain highly active; Pokémon trading cards are cited with trading volume in the tens of billions. Collecting interest has not disappeared — it has changed venue.
How tax applies in Germany
This section is missing from almost all international NFT coverage and is the practically most important part for investors here.
Held privately, NFTs count as other economic assets and therefore fall under Section 23 EStG, as long as trading is private in nature. Concretely: after a holding period of more than one year, a disposal gain is tax-free. Within the holding period, the 1,000-euro annual threshold applies across all private disposal transactions combined.
The qualifier "as long as trading is private in nature" matters. High trading frequency, minting for resale, or operating in a commercial manner can constitute a business activity, with entirely different consequences. Exactly where that line falls depends on the individual case.
Royalties from your own NFT sales, and income from NFT-related activity, must be assessed separately and do not automatically fall under Section 23 EStG.
A practical note independent of tax: acquisition records for NFTs are harder to reconstruct than for coins, because marketplaces disappear and transaction histories go with them. Anyone holding positions should preserve transaction hashes, acquisition dates and prices independently of the marketplace.
For meaningful sums or unclear classification, this article is not a substitute for tax advice.