The Rise and Fall of the NFT Empire: The Social Phenomenon of Non-fungible Tokens

Abstract

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) burst into popular culture in 2021 with the $69 million dollar sale of Beeple’s artwork Everydays: The First 500 Days. Since then, this potentially disruptive technology created new digital markets that have been making waves both in incredible successes and steep failures. This paper explores NFTs as a social phenomenon. Using user-generated data from Twitter, I apply frequency tables, sentiment analysis, and community clustering to begin filling in a knowledge gap by mapping who were engaging with NFTs, what topics and discourse these users were discussing, and what sentiments the users possessed about NFTs throughout their discourse.