Note that the popularity of NFT-tokens has predictably declined of late. NFT-tokens belong to illiquid assets, i.e. it becomes very difficult to sell them at the stages of market collapse. Against this background, the industry has seen a decline in trading volumes with a relatively stable number of sales. This means that non-interchangeable tokens are being bought and sold, but at a much lower price.

Specifically, trading volumes with NFTs in September are down 97 per cent from their peak in January 2022. Here is the relevant chart where the decline in volumes can be seen.

Decline in trading volumes in the NFT token industry

Analysts today also shared the results of the change in trading volumes directly on OpenSea, the most popular platform with NFT. Overall, the third quarter of this year showed a 60 percent dip in the index compared to the second quarter.

Change in trading volumes with NFT tokens on the OpenSea platform

The leader among blockchains in terms of NFT transactions remains Etherium, while Solana comes in second place.

Blockchain popularity among NFT token users

How NFT tokens are making money

Keith Grossman was at the Mainnet conference in New York the day before and was interviewed by Decrypt. The conversation was about how TIME has changed since it adopted the NFT concept in its business model.


As a reminder, TIME got in touch with NFT-tokens back in spring 2021, when the topic was experiencing one of the first peaks of popularity in the previous bullrun. For example, in March representatives of the project announced the sale of covers of their own legendary issues in the form of non-interchangeable tokens along with the start of accepting crypto-assets.

Already in August representatives of the company announced distribution of NFT-tokens for created memes. Read more about this initiative in a separate article.

The first NFT tokens from TIME

In addition, Grossman also shared his opinion on the naysayers who still deny the huge potential of unique tokens. Here’s his rejoinder to that.

We didn’t want to introduce Web3 to TIME, that wasn’t our main plan. We were simply rehabilitating a brand that had been gradually losing popularity for the last ten years.

That is, Grossman makes it clear that the connection with the new generation of digital assets allowed the project representatives to improve its reputation - after all, almost all thematic resources wrote about TIME's connection with NFT-tokens and the corresponding auctions. Accordingly, in terms of brand popularity the idea really turned out to be a winner.

TIME head Keith Grossman

The head of TIME sees the impetus for virtual worlds in the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. After the rapid spread of the virus, many countries around the world imposed strict quarantine, forcing employers to move their employees to work remotely whenever possible. It was then that Grossman realised that his ‘digital identity’ was just as important as his real one.

By the way, for Grossman, integrating something new from the cryptocurrency world was not exactly a grandiose decision. He has been interested in digital assets since 2014, when he worked on the staff of the popular portal WIRED. Back then, he successfully pursued the idea of buying a separate computer for mining crypto in order to research the industry within the materials.

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However, Grossman’s real interest in crypto came in 2021, when the famous Nyan Cat meme was sold as NFT for 300 ETH or approximately $587,000 at the cryptocurrency exchange rate at the time of the transaction. At that time, the project manager realised the clear parallel between memes and NFT.

The TIME cover and its red frame have been a meme for the last 99 years.

NFT token Nyan Cat page on the Foundation auction

In September 2021 Grossman started actively promoting initiatives with unique tokens to promote the publication. At first his idea seemed crazy, but since then, TIME has already released five NFT collections, announced a collaboration with the rapper Timbaland, immortalized one of the issues with the creator of Etherium Vitalik Buterin on the blockchain, and also launched initiatives to help the victims in Ukraine.

Vitalik Buterin on the cover of TIME

In about a year, TIME’s revenue from the aforementioned projects surpassed the $10 million mark. According to Grossman, this is a success that should not be translated into politics. He continues.

I don’t understand the attraction of politics to technology. People say they like to change. But in reality, people don’t like change when they either don’t understand where change is going, or they don’t control it themselves.

NFT editions of TIME magazine on crypto

Despite all the controversy surrounding NFT, Grossman’s position on Web3 is unwavering: he believes that society will move towards acceptance of what he calls the ‘state of experience’. That is, virtual measures will only become widespread in everyday life when they can provide people with valuable experiences. It is far better to see a useful meta-universe once with your own eyes than to hear a thousand times about its “enormous potential”.


We believe that TIME's result could set an example for other companies that, for whatever reason, have bypassed digital assets. In this case, the company also got an excellent financial result, which means it could be an additional reason to engage with coins and tokens. However, this kind of activation will clearly be seen during the next phase of market growth, as only blockchain technology fans are willing to mess with crypto during bearish trends.

What do you think about it? Share your opinion in our Millionaire Crypto Chat. There we discuss other topics of interest to users of digital assets.