Everyone keeps saying NFTs are dead, but honestly that narrative doesn't hold up if you actually look at who's still active in the space. Just saw Yat Siu from Animoca Brands making the same point - wealthy crypto collectors are absolutely still driving the NFT market, and they're not going anywhere.

The thing is, the retail hype cycle definitely cooled off. Those days of random profile pics selling for millions? Yeah, that's mostly gone. But that was never really the foundation anyway. What's actually sustaining the market is a completely different demographic - serious collectors with real capital who see NFTs as digital assets worth holding long-term.

Think about it: when you filter out the speculation and meme culture, you're left with actual use cases and genuine collectors. That's the market that's proven resilient. These aren't people checking prices every hour. They're accumulating, they're building collections, they're treating this like any other alternative asset class.

So the 'NFTs are dead' take is kind of missing the point. It's not that NFTs survived - it's that the market matured. The weak hands left, the noise disappeared, and now you've got a smaller but way more serious collector base driving actual volume and value.

The narrative around NFTs being dead was always too simplistic. What we're seeing now is actually healthier - less hype, more substance, and collectors who actually know what they're doing. That's way more bullish long-term than the casino vibes from a few years back.