Dead NFT Market and Wash Trading

КЛЁ 23 октября, 2026 4 минут чтения

Dead NFT Market — $35.6 billion in artificial trading volume, price manipulation, and a chronic shortage of buyers. Scientific research published in 2025–2026 has exposed the darker side of the NFT market: billions of dollars in trading activity did not necessarily reflect genuine demand. Investors expected to buy liquid digital assets, but many ended up holding images that became almost impossible to sell..

$35.6 Billion in NFT Trading Volume Was Artificial

In September 2026, researchers Quoc Khanh Nguyen, Vinay Patel, and Tālis J. Putniņš published a study titled Does Wash Trading Distort Asset Prices? Evidence from NFT Markets.

Of the $89 billion in trading volume examined, approximately 40%, or $35.6 billion, was attributed to artificial transactions.

This practice is known as wash trading, where NFTs are repeatedly traded between connected wallets without any genuine change in economic ownership.

Such transactions create the appearance of a popular asset: sales increase, trading volumes rise, and prices appear to climb.

The researchers’ most significant finding was that artificial trades affected real NFT prices in much the same way as genuine purchases.

The $35.6 billion figure represents estimated artificial trading volume, not stolen funds.

Inflated Prices, Followed by Sales to Real Buyers

In 2025, the Journal of Banking & Finance published another study examining the 500 most actively traded NFT collections.

Researchers found that only 6.7% of transactions were classified as wash trades, yet they accounted for more than half of the total trading volume by value.

The study identified a recurring pattern: artificial trading activity was followed by rising prices, insiders sold their NFTs, and prices subsequently declined.

Buyers who purchased NFTs during these price spikes suffered losses.

NBER: Low Liquidity Even on Major NFT Marketplaces

In February 2026, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) published a working paper titled Non-Fungible Tokens as Investment.

Researchers William Goetzmann, Dong Huang, and Milad Nozari examined NFTs as investment assets using data from OpenSea and SuperRare.

The study found that even the most active NFT marketplaces suffered from low liquidity.

A relatively small number of exceptionally successful transactions accounted for a substantial share of overall market returns.

According to the researchers, profitable NFT investments during the market bubble required an exceptionally favorable combination of purchase timing, resale opportunities, and market conditions.

TON: A Weak NFT Market and Artificial Trading Activity

According to Blockworks Research, NFT trading volume on TON reached $131.2 million in the first quarter of 2026.

For comparison, the academic study examined $89 billion in NFT trading activity. TON’s quarterly volume represents approximately 0.15% of that figure.

TON market statistics for the first quarter of 2026 showed:

The average NFT sale price in US dollars declined by 10.8%.
TON’s price fell by 26.4%.
The number of seller addresses increased by 11.4%.

Trading incentives deserve particular attention. The TON ecosystem has hosted competitions and reward programs in which participants received prizes based on the number of transactions and trading volume.

These mechanisms encouraged additional transactions aimed at earning rewards. The 2026 academic study also found a higher concentration of wash trading on marketplaces that offered similar trading incentives.

The structure of TON’s NFT market also reveals a high concentration of trading activity. In one monthly snapshot from 2026, approximately 99% of NFT trading volume came from three categories: Telegram collectible gifts, anonymous numbers, and usernames.

All other NFT categories, including independent collections, accounted for less than 1% of trading volume in that snapshot.

The situation is particularly difficult for smaller NFT collections whose developers have stopped providing support, abandoned their projects, or failed to fulfill commitments to their communities.

Once a project shuts down, its NFTs may lose their gaming utility, access to services, and other features that originally motivated purchases.

Owners of such assets can spend months listing their NFTs for sale, repeatedly lowering their asking prices without finding buyers.

For abandoned NFT collections on TON, the main problem is no longer simply falling prices, but an almost complete lack of liquidity.

Sources

Ваша реакция на материал