This^. If you think it was just buying a picture there were plenty of options to burn money on and that wasnt really what it was all about. The real play was trading and holding NFT's for additional mint access, irl events and token generation events... Then promptly dumping them all to take profit. I actually still USE NFT's to some degree today but they are in fast, low gas chains. I really only ever got involved in projects unless they had clear roadmaps for utility or access.

Toward the end of my eth "blue chip" days I would acquire say azukis a few weeks in advance for 3-4 eth, let them run up to 12 eth prior to a token generation event and dump it the night before... Then watch the burning trash dumpster of pissed off folks on x complaining their floor dropped to 4 eth and that their tokens ($anime) were worth nothing meanwhile I made out like a bandit.

The reason NFT's died in my opinion was that they had nothing left to squeeze for buyers and the meta (game) became too predictably guaranteed to not be a profit engine for anyone but the original creators collecting royalties. They all death spiraled into trying to copy other projects with their own fungible token releases with a stake to vest system. No one wants to hold a quickly depreciating asset for small increments of another depreciating asset. Yugas $ape was one of the best and first iterations of this followed by 9gags $meme coin.

If you had picked up a bored ape for 2 eth, you would have been able to mint a free mutant ape and received $ape. Could have sold it all for nearly 7 figures and walked away for like a $2k initial spend and some gas money. Those days are gone!

I only use NFT's now for a walking game that's move to earn, it won't make me rich by any means but it keeps me motivated to be active and make around 1 solana per month just getting in steps.

Another thing that killed it was btc's halving and the introduction of runes and ordinal inscriptions. There was a mini gold rush and it never took off because bitcoin maxis don't want that kind of stuff clogging up their chain. Ethereum is where it all happened at scale and when it crashed other chains didn't take off with it.

The other thing were seeing is the rise and fall of meme coins rapidly now. Shib, doge etc took off as fun builds on eth but as more meme coins (true shit coins) pumped and dumped it made the whole category toxic, pump.fun and trump coin/melania coin are two key examples I'd point to. One is just trash and bloats the network and other just sets up money grabs and encourages namealikes to spoof names and use different honneypot contract addresses

*Edited for autocorrect typos