The Wordsmith Who Speaks for You · Digital Art Watch
October 2–9, 2026
The NFT market as a whole fell by more than 20% this week. I scrolled through the rankings looking for winners, and by the end I found one: an American company that opened in 1961 and mainly prints sports-card stickers. Its stock rose more than fivefold in a week.
A company that sells paper
absolutely steamrolled a roomful of people selling pictures.
Here’s another number: the average sale price across the whole market this week was about $47, while the number of buyers’ wallet addresses rose to more than 200,000. Translation: more people showed up, but each had less money in their pockets. This isn’t a recovery; it’s a discount sale drawing in more customers. Before, one big spender would come in and snap up 60 pixel avatars. Now, it’s 20,000 people, each buying one for $47.
The week’s biggest spectacle played out right on the Apes’ doorstep.
A veteran who made money from Apes in 2021 posted this on social media: “Apes ruined NFTs.” His argument was that the technology had real potential, but a sea of profile pictures overshadowed it. Now, when the public hears “NFT,” they think of monkeys, and the market spent the following years churning out copycats. Later, he changed his tune: perhaps it wasn’t the founders who ruined what came next, but the project’s success. It got the pricing structure right, and the art worked well as a profile picture—leaving no room for an entire category of experimental projects.
One of the Apes’ co-founders replied directly, and didn’t hold back: you sold Apes that could have been worth $500 million for just a few million—he was referring to an estimate based on peak holdings, not the sale price. Then you turned around and promoted a bunch of knockoffs. And the NFT projects you founded have now all been scrubbed from your bio.
The final line cuts deep: either become the change you want to see, or enjoy the house the Apes bought you.
Numbers go cold faster than words: this reply got seven times as many likes as the original post, while the Apes’ floor price has fallen by about 95% from its 2022 peak.
It’s always the other person’s fault,
The house is community property.
These two once joined forces to put the Apes on a pedestal. Now one says, “You tore down the temple,” while the other says, “You were the first to run off with the scriptures.” That’s what a breakup between partners in the NFT scene looks like.
Meanwhile, someone else was doing serious work. Three years ago, an artist released an open-edition work for $8, and the series generated $250 million on the secondary market. This week, he did it again, still for $8, but with a different payment method: no website login, no wallet connection. Just send $8 using the social platform’s payment feature, put your receiving address in the note, and the transaction ID from each payment is used to generate a one-of-a-kind work.
24 hours. More than 25,000 wallets.
That’s what makes it so funny: in 2021, he was mocking this very platform model; three years later, he became a customer of that platform himself. And this time, the checkout was only open to the U.S., required a subscription, required identity verification, stored data on someone else’s servers, and relied on manual distribution of the works. Someone making decentralized art used the most centralized method possible to pull off the week’s most successful release—and then said that was part of the art.
The work is called “Credit”—the Latin word originally meant “to believe.” Eight dollars for a piece of trust; it sounds like some kind of religious ritual. And eventually, it really did become ritualized: collect 80 pieces and you can burn them to make one “Declaration.” There can be at most 1,500 or so in total. Stack them seven times, and the paper turns permanently black.
Let me get this straight: elsewhere, you burn 80 receipts and end up with a pile of ash; here, you can burn them and get a more valuable receipt in return.
Over on the penguins’ side, something more concrete happened this week: the company behind them announced it would shut down its own chain on December 15. After 18 months of operation, it had lost eight figures.
The numbers weren’t actually bad: over 300 million transactions, billions of dollars in trading volume, more than 140 apps, and 400,000 users. The partner list even included Disney and the Red Bull Racing team. But the chain itself brought in about $3,900 a day in transaction fees, while the apps running on it earned around $39,000 that same day. The landlord’s rent was one-tenth of the tenants’ revenue—plenty of people showed up, but nobody could keep the landlord fed.
The notice was very clear: move your assets before the shutdown.
The most absurd part came next: after the news about the chain shutting down broke, the penguin profile pictures actually went up in value. The floor price rose from 3.07 to 3.37 ETH, with 69 sales and over 200 ETH in volume in a single day—ten times the usual amount.
The chain is dead; the profile pictures live on.
People voted with their wallets, and the message was clear: we don’t care about that chain; we care about that penguin. By the way, this was the second chain to shut down in four days. So far this year, more than 300 projects have ceased operations.
That same week, Paris’s Pompidou announced the creation of a digital art committee, with a five-year agreement to provide support through 2031. Art Basel’s digital art section expanded to its largest edition ever, with 19 projects and 22 galleries. The fair as a whole reduced its floor space by about 10% this year, but this was the only section that grew. And an artist held a solo exhibition in New York, featuring a work called “Transactional Sculpture,” created using smart contracts.
One piece of good news came from Paris,
One came from New York,
The bad news is all on-chain.
One last thing that has nothing to do with art, but is really interesting: Microsoft’s official social media account was hijacked for half an hour this week. A post appeared saying, “Get 500,000 likes and we’ll bring Clippy back.” The profile picture was changed to Clippy, and the post really did get over 500,000 likes.
What happened afterward was a scam, and had absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft—the post was promoting a token trading on nostalgia. The post has since been deleted, and Microsoft clearly stated that it had never authorized any related token. But you have to admit, the whole scene was pretty remarkable: an assistant that users collectively shut off in 1997 because it was so annoying was turned into a fundraising prop more than twenty years later.
Back then, it asked, “Need some help?” Now someone’s asking on its behalf, “Want to buy some?”
This week, stickers won, the Apes turned on each other, the penguins’ chain shut down, art entered the museum, and Clippy was turned into a token.
The chain will shut down,
The museum will open,
In the end, art has never been about technology,
Someone was willing to tell a story about it:
$8 each time,
First come, first served.
1 · MOUTHPIECE COPYWRITING
Want to write an article like this? Mouthpiece Wordsmith
Your internet mouthpiece, here to fix overly formal writing. There are just four steps—one fewer than transferring coins out of cold storage:
Search “WorkBuddy” in WeChat Mini Programs → Get 2,000 points when you sign up → Tap “Experts” → Search “Mouthpiece Wordsmith”
The points are free. Unlike certain digital collectibles, the points you get as a gift won’t lose value.
Mouthpiece Wordsmith · Digital Art Watch
October 2–9, 2026
The NFT market as a whole fell by more than 20% this week. I went through the leaderboard looking for winners, and in the end, the winner was an American company that opened in 1961 and primarily prints sports trading-card stickers. Its stock rose more than fivefold in a week.
A company that sells paper,
Wipes the floor with a roomful of people selling pictures.
Now look at another number: the average sale price across the market this week was about $47, while the number of buyer wallet addresses rose to over 200,000. In other words, more people showed up, but each had less money to spend. This isn’t a recovery; it’s a sale attracting more customers. Before, one big spender would come in and sweep up 60 pixel avatars. Now, it’s 20,000 people each buying one for $47.
The week’s biggest spectacle played out right on the Apes’ doorstep.
A veteran who made money from Apes in 2021 posted this on social media: “Apes ruined NFTs.” His argument was that the technology had real potential, but a sea of profile pictures overshadowed it. Now, when the public hears “NFT,” they think of monkeys, and the market spent the following years churning out copycats. Later, he changed his tune: perhaps it wasn’t the founders who ruined what came next, but the project’s success. It got the pricing structure right, and the art worked well as a profile picture—leaving no room for an entire category of experimental projects.
One of the Apes’ co-founders replied directly, and didn’t hold back: you sold Apes that could have been worth $500 million for just a few million—he was referring to an estimate based on peak holdings, not the sale price. Then you turned around and promoted a bunch of knockoffs. And the NFT projects you founded have now all been scrubbed from your bio.
The final line cuts deep: either become the change you want to see, or enjoy the house the Apes bought you.
Numbers go cold faster than words: this reply got seven times as many likes as the original post, while the Apes’ floor price has fallen by about 95% from its 2022 peak.
It’s always the other person’s fault,
The house is community property.
These two once joined forces to put the Apes on a pedestal. Now one says, “You tore down the temple,” while the other says, “You were the first to run off with the scriptures.” That’s what a breakup between partners in the NFT scene looks like.
Meanwhile, someone else was doing serious work. Three years ago, an artist released an open-edition work for $8, and the series generated $250 million on the secondary market. This week, he did it again, still for $8, but with a different payment method: no website login, no wallet connection. Just send $8 using the social platform’s payment feature, put your receiving address in the note, and the transaction ID from each payment is used to generate a one-of-a-kind work.
24 hours. More than 25,000 wallets.
That’s what makes it so funny: in 2021, he was mocking this very platform model; three years later, he became a customer of that platform himself. And this time, the checkout was only open to the U.S., required a subscription, required identity verification, stored data on someone else’s servers, and relied on manual distribution of the works. Someone making decentralized art used the most centralized method possible to pull off the week’s most successful release—and then said that was part of the art.
The work is called “Credit”—the Latin word originally meant “to believe.” Eight dollars for a piece of trust; it sounds like some kind of religious ritual. And eventually, it really did become ritualized: collect 80 pieces and you can burn them to make one “Declaration.” There can be at most 1,500 or so in total. Stack them seven times, and the paper turns permanently black.
Let me get this straight: elsewhere, you burn 80 receipts and end up with a pile of ash; here, you can burn them and get a more valuable receipt in return.
Over on the penguins’ side, something more concrete happened this week: the company behind them announced it would shut down its own chain on December 15. After 18 months of operation, it had lost eight figures.
The numbers weren’t actually bad: over 300 million transactions, billions of dollars in trading volume, more than 140 apps, and 400,000 users. The partner list even included Disney and the Red Bull Racing team. But the chain itself brought in about $3,900 a day in transaction fees, while the apps running on it earned around $39,000 that same day. The landlord’s rent was one-tenth of the tenants’ revenue—plenty of people showed up, but nobody could keep the landlord fed.
The notice was very clear: move your assets before the shutdown.
The most absurd part came next: after the news about the chain shutting down broke, the penguin profile pictures actually went up in value. The floor price rose from 3.07 to 3.37 ETH, with 69 sales and over 200 ETH in volume in a single day—ten times the usual amount.
The chain is dead; the profile pictures live on.
People voted with their wallets, and the message was clear: we don’t care about that chain; we care about that penguin. By the way, this was the second chain to shut down in four days. So far this year, more than 300 projects have ceased operations.
That same week, Paris’s Pompidou announced the creation of a digital art committee, with a five-year agreement to provide support through 2031. Art Basel’s digital art section expanded to its largest edition ever, with 19 projects and 22 galleries. The fair as a whole reduced its floor space by about 10% this year, but this was the only section that grew. And an artist held a solo exhibition in New York, featuring a work called “Transactional Sculpture,” created using smart contracts.
One piece of good news came from Paris,
One came from New York,
The bad news is all on-chain.
One last thing that has nothing to do with art, but is really interesting: Microsoft’s official social media account was hijacked for half an hour this week. A post appeared saying, “Get 500,000 likes and we’ll bring Clippy back.” The profile picture was changed to Clippy, and the post really did get over 500,000 likes.
What happened afterward was a scam, and had absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft—the post was promoting a token trading on nostalgia. The post has since been deleted, and Microsoft clearly stated that it had never authorized any related token. But you have to admit, the whole scene was pretty remarkable: an assistant that users collectively shut off in 1997 because it was so annoying was turned into a fundraising prop more than twenty years later.
Back then, it asked, “Need some help?” Now someone’s asking on its behalf, “Want to buy some?”
This week, stickers won, the Apes turned on each other, the penguins’ chain shut down, art entered the museum, and Clippy was turned into a token.
The chain will shut down,
The museum will open,
In the end, art has never been about technology,
Someone was willing to tell a story about it:
$8 each time,
First come, first served.
1 · MOUTHPIECE COPYWRITING
Want to write an article like this? Mouthpiece Wordsmith
Your internet mouthpiece, here to fix overly formal writing. There are just four steps—one fewer than transferring coins out of cold storage:
Search “WorkBuddy” in WeChat Mini Programs → Get 2,000 points when you sign up → Tap “Experts” → Search “Mouthpiece Wordsmith”
The points are free. Unlike certain digital collectibles, the points you get as a gift won’t lose value.
2 · CUSTOM VIDEO
The Complete Guide to End-to-End Digital Avatar Talking-Head Videos
If you’ve finished the article and still want more, you don’t have to figure everything out on your own. I’ve organized my entire video-making workflow into a document called (The Complete Guide to End-to-End Digital Avatar Talking-Head Videos).
Write viral copy → Make a video → Create a cover
The document walks you through what to use at each step, how to set it up, and about how long a beginner’s first video will take. Just follow along.
It doesn’t have a wallet, isn’t afraid of bear markets, and can’t get stuck holding the bag. If you want one, leave a comment or DM me.
WeChat Channels: Search “VOBC”
2 · CUSTOM VIDEO
The Complete Guide to End-to-End Digital Avatar Talking-Head Videos
If you’ve finished the article and still want more, you don’t have to figure everything out on your own. I’ve organized my entire video-making workflow into a document called (The Complete Guide to End-to-End Digital Avatar Talking-Head Videos).
Write viral copy → Make a video → Create a cover
The document walks you through what to use at each step, how to set it up, and about how long a beginner’s first video will take. Just follow along.
It doesn’t have a wallet, isn’t afraid of bear markets, and can’t get stuck holding the bag. If you want one, leave a comment or DM me.