Have you heard of the Gartner Hype Cycle?
It suggests that disruptive technologies go through 5 key phases...
1. Technology Trigger
The emergence of a potentially disruptive technology.
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations
Early publicity creates hype for tech with an unproven market fit. In the speculative NFT bubble of 2021, Beeple sold a collage of his artwork "Everydays: the First 5000 Days" for $69 MILLION. Similarly, NBA Top Shot sold hundreds of millions of $ of video-collectible moments. This was probably the peak of inflated expectations.
3. Trough of Disillusionment
Early projects fail to deliver on promises and the public loses interest. I suspect Crypto & NFTs are somewhere around this trough of disillusionment now. NFT volumes and transaction counts on OpenSea have fallen by more than 90% from the peak.
4. Slope of enlightenment
The tech slowly starts to show successful use cases, and gain real adoption.
5. Plateau of Productivity
Broader market applications are successful & the market fit is very clear.
Here, we'll see mainstream adoption & the tech may become omnipresent. If the market is large, the growth may not plateau for a long time.
Here's a more detailed visual of the Gartner Hype Cycle from Wikipedia.
As an investor, the trough of disillusionment isn't a bad place to be.
It's still relatively early - just keep an eye out for the slope of enlightenment.
i.e - crypto use cases that are actually proving to be successful and making a dent (even on a small scale).
In the future, I believe we’ll see a lot more REAL use cases.
I did a visual exploration post about The Future of NFTs that got over 2 million eyeballs on Twitter.
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