Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against an individual it says is a moderator on Reddit, accusing him of piracy and facilitating a network of websites that offered pirated Nintendo Switch games.
The video game publisher is seeking $4.5 million in damages from James C. Williams, who went by the username “Archbox” on the social media site. (That account has since been suspended.)
“Williams not only copied and distributed Nintendo game files without authorization; he actively promoted their distribution and copying to thousands of others across a variety of websites and online ‘communities,’ and knowingly trafficked in unlawful software products aimed at circumventing Nintendos technological measures protecting against unauthorized access,” Nintendo alleges in the lawsuit.
The filing claims Williams used Reddit to send thousands of messages, steering people to piracy websites and to help people modify their Switch consoles. In exchange for his services, he asked for “donations” of Nintendo eShop gift cards, the company alleges.
Nintendo says it initially sent a cease-and-desist order to Williams in March of 2024, telling him to “shut down his pirate shops.” But Williams ultimately denied involvement with the sites and became “combative,” eventually deleting his posts, many of which were on the subreddit “SwitchPirates,” where Williams was cited as a moderator, the suit alleges.
Williams is alleged to have made “hundreds or thousands of copyrighted Nintendo Switch Games” available for download. In its filing, Nintendo lists 30 specific titles that were pirated.
While $4.5 million is a significant sum, Nintendo says in the filing that it could easily have demanded more. It based the amount it is seeking on other piracy cases, including one in which Bungie Software, creators of the Halo franchise, were awarded millions in damages for piracy sales.
“Here, the amount of money sufficient to remedy NOAs injury would be extremely difficult to quantify; but it is indisputable that such an amount would be large,” the filing reads.
Nintendo is serious about piracy
Nintendo has taken an aggressive stance against piracy for years.
Dolphin, an open-sourced emulator for the Nintendo Wii and GameCube, was a target of the gaming giant in 2023 when its developers announced plans to put its emulator on the Steam game distribution platform. Nintendo sent a cease-and-desist order to Valve, which pulled the listing. Days later, Dolphins developers announced, with much disappointment, that it had postponed the Dolphin release indefinitely.
Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers, a spokesperson for Nintendo told the gaming news website Kotaku in May of 2023.
Last year, Nintendo successfully shut down the Yuzu emulator, saying the team behind it had “facilitate[d] piracy at a colossal scale. The Yuzu team agreed to pay $2.4 million and ended all operations.
Earlier this year, Nintendo updated its user agreement, informing Switch owners that if that console is found to contain pirated games or modifications, Nintendo has the right to remotely render the system useless.
Should users “bypass, modify, decrypt, defeat, tamper with, or otherwise circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Nintendo Account Services,” the update read, Nintendo might make that “applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part.”
First came the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Then came the news Snapchat is constructing a paywall around Memories.
The company announced last week that its capping users free Memories storage at 5GB. Those who have spent the better part of a decade cultivating massive personal archives on the app will now be forced to either export those Memories or sign up for one of Snapchats new Memories Storage plans in order to preserve them.
The promise of free unlimited storage has been a big part of Snapchat’s identity. For many, it has long served as something of a time capsule, where users could store and revisit old Snaps long after they expired from the apps ephemeral main feed.
In the US, storage plan costs will be $1.99 a month for 100GB of storage, 250GB with a Snapchat+ subscription, or 5TB with Snapchat Platinum. If users exceed the limit but choose not to sign up for a plan, their oldest Snaps will be saved. The most recent ones, however, will be deleted to stay within the storage limit.
The news that users will soon have to pay for what they had long enjoyed for free was met with backlash online.
The only reason I have snapchat in my phone is bcs it stores all the memories, i had no idea snapchat would betray us like that, one X user wrote. Just ordered a usb stick so i can transfer 10 years worth of snapchat memories onto it, another added.
An online petition with almost 9,000 signatures at the time of writing dubbed the charge a “memory tax”, pointing to the declining availability and affordability of physical media in an increasingly digitized world. For the buy everything, own nothing generation, an ever-mounting number of subscription fees are increasingly required to access everything from their own data and memories, to music and movies.
Funny how i had to explain to my mom, 2 days ago, that you cant buy music anymore because theyve [put] subscriptions in place for us to pay for the rest of our life, until we die, one TikTok user wrote. And now I hve to transfer all my Snapchat memories from my teenage years on a hard drive.
While most social media platforms dont charge for data storage (yet), Snapchat Memories can be positioned more like a personal photo album than a public profile. Companies like Apple and Google, which are also commonly used for photo storage, all currently charge for cloud storage once a user reaches a limit.
High stakes for Snapchat
For many loyal Snapchat users, the stakes are high. Users have saved more than 1 trillion “Memories” since the feature was launched in 2016, according to Team Snapchat.
“Its never easy to transition from receiving a service for free to paying for it, but we hope the value we provide with Memories is worth the cost, the company said in a news release last week. Thank you for trusting us with some of your most precious moments. These changes will allow us to continue to invest in making Memories better for our entire community.”
For those unwilling to pay, they are left with two options to rescue their Memories from deletion. First is to manually download Snapchat Memories to the camera roll. This is limited to batches of 100 at a time, which can be a gargantuan taks if users have years worth of saved Snaps.
Another option is to use Snapchats Download My Data tool to save the Memories archive and have it emailed over in a .zip file.
Either way, the company has given users with more than 5 GB of Memories one year to upgrade before the storage limits come into effect.
Dell on Tuesday nearly doubled its annual profit growth target for the next four years, betting on robust demand for its servers that power artificial intelligence workloads.
The company, whose customers include Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI and CoreWeave, lifted its expectations for annual growth in adjusted earnings per share to at least 15% from around 8%.
Dell also said it expects compounded annual revenue growth between 7% and 9% for the next four years, up from its prior view of 3% to 4%.
Insatiable demand for servers that provide the computing power needed to run services such as ChatGPT has turned Dell into one of the biggest winners of the generative AI boom.
Its strong profit growth expectation may also ease investor concerns about the margin hit from competition in AI servers and the high costs of building the products.
“Dell has a volume advantage due to its scale, established supply chain, and relationships with major buyers, compared to rivals like Super Micro,” Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said.
Dell also reiterated its third-quarter and annual forecasts. It had raised its expectation for AI server shipments in August to $20 billion for fiscal 2026.
“Customers are hungry for AI and the compute, storage and networking we provide to deploy intelligence at scale,” CEO Michael Dell said, adding that the company was in the early stages of AI adoption despite two years of progress.
Dell expects long-term compounded annual revenue growth of 11% to 14% for the infrastructure solutions group – home to its storage, software and server offerings. That compares with its earlier expectations of 6% to 8%.
The company continues to expect revenue growth of 2% to 3% for its client solutions group, which includes personal computers. Strong competition in the consumer market has hit the business in recent years, even as Dell keeps a strong position among enterprise clients.
Jaspreet Singh, Reuters
Ear-splitting ads on Netflix and Hulu are no more at least if you live in California.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Monday that requires streaming services to prevent commercials from cranking the volume when they think the viewer might have popped into the next room for a snack.
Unlike many pieces of legislation, California SB 576 is short and sweet. Starting next July, any streamer that serves video to California residents shall not transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany. The bill cites a federal version of the law designed for traditional broadcast TV, extending the rules to the newer medium.
We heard Californians loud and clear, and whats clear is that they dont want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program, Newsom said in a press release. By signing SB 576, California is dialing down this inconvenience across streaming platforms, which had previously not been subject to commercial volume regulations passed by Congress in 2010.
Bringing old rules into the streaming era
The federal version of Californias legislation, the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation or CALM Act, became law in 2010 under former President Barack Obama. That law was designed to solve a complaint almost as old as TV commercials themselves, namely that commercials are often many times louder than the content that theyre sandwiched between.
“Since the 1960s, consumers have complained about the jarring effect of television commercials that jump considerably in volume a trick used by the ad industry to grab viewers’ attention, Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a co-sponsor of the CALM Act, said when the bill passed. That bill mandated that broadcast stations ensure that volume remain consistent with the level set by the viewer across ads and normal programming.
The CALM Act has been settled law for more than a decade, but enforcement is a different story. In spite of the prohibition on unreasonably loud commercials, complaints to the FCC the only way the regulatory agency learns of violations are rising dramatically. The FCC received around 750 complaints in 2022, but by 2024 that number had more than doubled to 1,700. Ultimately, complaints are subjective, but advertisers and broadcasters might just be ignoring the law due to the FCCs scant enforcement efforts.
Because the CALM Acts requirements pertain to the average volume of an ad, the FCC notes that advertisers may amp up the volume during some parts of a commercial while keeping other parts quieter to get around the law. To take volume irregularities into their own hands, the FCC points consumers to in-TV settings for gain control and audio limiters that internally smooth out volume across different kinds of content.
The rules are evolving, slowly
Californias new law adapts the federal CALM Act to the streaming era, but actually investigating violations and pursuing enforcement is far from figured out.
In 2023, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Anna G. Eshoo introduced an update to the CALM Act that would bring the law into the streaming age. Known as the CALM Modernization Act, the bill set out to accomplish what California just achieved on a state level, regulating the volume of ads on streaming services. Notably, the new version of the act also sought to strengthen the FCCs investigation and enforcement abilities, but both the House and Senate versions of the bill ultimately languished after being referred to committees.
Enforcement is still an issue, but state laws can have an outsized nationwide impact depending on how theyre written. Californias government oversees the fourth largest economy in the world and the entertainment and streaming companies regulated by the new law are largely headquartered in the state, two factors that give the bills passage extra oomph.
While an update to the federal legislation seems to have stalled out for now, the FCC could make some changes of its own. Early this year, the FCC signaled its interest in fixing the system when it opened a public comment phase in which the agency would consider other actions it could take to make sure TV viewers arent inundated by exceedingly loud commercials in the future. The FCC said that initially it saw viewer complaints drop in the early years after the CALM Acts passage, but that trend hasnt continued.
Over the past several years the Commission received thousands of complaints about loud commercials on broadcast, cable, and satellite television, the agency wrote in a press release. The high number of complaints took a troubling jump last year, which warrants a second look.
Toyota is recalling nearly 400,000 vehicles because the rearview camera may not display when backing up, increasing the risk of a crash, federal traffic safety regulators said.
Included in the recall are 2022-2025 Toyota Tundras and Tundra hybrids and 2023-2025 Sequoia hybrids. The number of automobiles in the recall total 393,838, with the non-hybrid Tundra making up more than half of them.
The camera display malfunction is caused by a software problem, which will be fixed with an update by dealerships free of charge.
Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed November 16. Owners can contact Toyotas customer service at 1-800-331-4331. The numbers for the recall are 25TB10 and 25TA10.
Owners may also contact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration vehicle safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-888-275-9171), or go to www.nhtsa.gov.
Every night some 74,000 gallons (280,000 liters) of water are frozen at Norton Audubon Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. The hospital used to get all of its air conditioning from a conventional system found in most U.S. buildings, but now 27 tanks of ice sustain a network of cold-water pipes keeping operating rooms at safe temperatures and patients comfortable.
This type of thermal energy storage, also known as ice batteries, is being added to buildings in the U.S. for its ability to provide cool air without releasing planet-warming emissions. These systems cut electricity usage and lower the strain on the grid. With rising temperatures and the growing demand for electricity in the U.S., ice thermal energy storage offers a sustainable option for cooling buildings.
Trane Technologies, a company that makes heating and cooling equipment, says it has seen a growing demand for this technology over the past few years. Its ice batteries are mostly used in schools as well as commercial and government buildings. Nostromo Energy, another company that makes ice batteries, is pursuing customers among energy-intensive data centers that have high cooling demands. Smaller systems are also made for homes by companies such as Ice Energy.
Tanks of ice thaw to create air conditioning
Ice thermal energy storage technology varies between manufacturers, but each follows a similar concept: At night, when electricity from the grid is at its cheapest, water is frozen into ice that thaws the next day to cool the building. The ice chills water that is circulating through pipes in the building, absorbing heat from the rooms and creating a cooling effect. Air cooled by the system is then pushed through vents.
Norton Audubon Hospital uses a Trane ice battery system. Trane said its ice batteries are often used alongside traditional air conditioning, and the ice-based cooling is used to lower energy costs during peak demand times. The traditional AC components are typically left in place or downsized when ice batteries are added.
The stored ice doesn’t require energy to thaw, which reduces the strain on the grid and minimizes the buildings electricity usage, ultimately lowering monthly bills.
Storing energy for further uses is where were going with the future of the grid, said Ted Tiffany, senior technical lead at the Building Decarbonization Coalition. He said access to air conditioning is a major public health need that is being exacerbated by a warming planet, and ice batteries are a sustainable way to address health risks associated with extreme heat.
Energy costs at Norton Audubon were $278,000 lower for the first year the ice battery system was in operation after it was installed 2018. The hospital estimates that the system and other energy-saving measures have saved it nearly $4 million since 2016.
The technology has been awesome for us, said Anthony Mathis, a Norton Healthcare executive who oversees sustainability. He said he receives inquiries from other building operators about the technology and thinks more facilities will adopt it as awareness grows.
Using ice to meet growing energy demands
Experts on sustainable energy say ice thermal energy storage is among the options commercial buildings can use to reduce electricity demand or store excess energy. Some commercial buildings use lithium batteries, which can store excess solar or wind energy that are available intermittently.
Dustin Mulvaney, environmental studies professor at San Jose State University, said ice batteries are a sensible option for health care settings and senior homes because lithium batteries can pose a fire risk.
Manufacturers also see opportunities in data centers, which are increasing in number to support artificial intelligence and have high energy and cooling needs. A December report from the Department of Energy found that data centers consumed more than 4% of the electricity in the country in 2023 and that number could grow up to 12% by 2028.
Data centers are very energy-hungry and about 30% to 40% of their energy use is for cooling thats where a solution like ours could really help, said Yoram Ashery, CEO of Nostromo Energy.
Nostromo Energy said it is discussing deals to install its systems with several large data center operators, but declined to provide further details. Its ice battery technology is also used at the Beverly Hills Hotel in California.
California is currently the biggest market for this technology because the grid there uses a lot of solar power during the day but switches to polluting energy sources such as natural gas after the sun sets. Ice batteries can be used for air conditioning in the late afternoon and evening instead of drawing from the grid.
A lot of utilities are really interested in this type of load-shifting technology, said Joe Raasch, chief operating officer at Ice Energy, another ice thermal energy storage company. He said summer is typically the most expensive time for utilities to operate because of the air conditioning demand.
Its really great technology that the grid really needs because so much of the future electric load is driven by cooling, said Raasch.
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Isabella O’Malley, Associated Press
LeBron James had another decision to announce. Turns out, it was an ad.
The Los Angeles Lakers star teased that he would have something to say Tuesday. The decision reference is a nod to how he announced in July 2010 that he was joining the Miami Heat.
It was supposed to come out at noon Eastern, but Hennessy the cognac brand that James has been partners with for some time made the announcement public about 90 minutes ahead of schedule. James’ training schedule for the day changed, the brand said, necessitating the change in release plans.
This fall, I’m going to be taking my talents to Hennessy V.S.O.P, James said in the clip. Even the wording he used in that announcement mirrored how he announced that he was joining the Heat 15 years ago with his infamous take my talents to South Beach line.
Hennessy announced that it would be releasing a limited edition orange bottle featuring James’ name on the label and his signature crowning gesture a nod to his King James moniker. Where the first moment marked a pivotal career move, this second decision celebrates a creative reunion and shared cultural legacy, Hennessy said in the release announcing the move.
James teased the campaign by posting on X that he would be making the decision of all decisions.” The short video shows him walking toward a chair, then taking a seat opposite another man seated a few feet away mildly reminiscent of the setup for his first decision when he sat opposite broadcaster Jim Gray for a televised announcement of the news that he was joining the Heat.
Social media went wild with speculation after the Monday post, as would be expected. James the NBA’s all-time leading scorer turns 41 in December and is not only the NBA’s oldest current player but also is about to set a record by appearing in his 23rd season in the league. He is not under contract past this season, which prompted obvious wondering if this would be how he announces a retirement plan.
Ticket prices for the Lakers final regular season game in April soared on Monday on secondary markets, with fans willing to spend big money just in case James does decide that this season is his last.
There were also many guesses on social media correct ones, it turned out that the latest decision would be James participating in an ad campaign of some sort.
I like my decision, James says at the end of the ad.
Theres a double whammy hitting the U.S. alcohol industry lately: Americans are drinking less, while foreigners have soured on our exported spirits amid higher tariffs. Those dynamics have worsened a crisis thats already seen some distilleries go out of business this year and thousands of jobs eliminated.
Exports of U.S. spirits to Canada plunged by 85% in the second quarter from a year ago, marking the steepest declines among four key markets, according to data released Monday by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DSCUS). Overall, exports of American spirits fell 9% in the second quarter as U.S. spirits makers pay the price of persistent trade tensions.
Particularly problematic for U.S. spirits makers is the double-digit decline in exports to each of four key markets that represent 70% of total exports by value: the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan.
After a record year for U.S. spirits exports in 2024, this steep slump in exports in the second quarter is very troubling for U.S. distillers, Chris Swonger, president and CEO of the spirits council, said in a statement. Theres a growing concern that our international consumers are increasingly opting for domestically produced spirits or imports from countries other than the U.S., signaling a shift away from our great American spirits brands.”
This data shows the extent of the effect of Canadas retaliatory tariffs on U.S. spirits, along with the decision by liquor stores in many provinces to yank American brands from their shelves altogether.
While Canada did remove its retaliatory tariffs on U.S. spirits last month, drinkers there may have found other options that are more appealing to their palettes. In April, for example, sales of U.S. spirits plummeted 68%, though sales of Canadian and other imported spirits rose about 3.6% each, according to DSCUS.
TARIFFS RIPPLE THROUGH WHISKEY COUNTRY
The spirits industry has emerged as a perhaps unlikely victim of President Donald Trumps aggressive tariff policy that he embarked on this spring. And thats reverberating through the heart of Americas whiskey country, where the international market has become especially crucial especially as Americans have cut back on consumption. Tennessee led the country with spirits exports of $934 million in 2024, followed by Kentucky with $751 million, according to DSCUS.
The plummet in exports is only part of the problem for American whiskey distillers.
Through April of this year, whiskey distillers had produced 78 million proof gallons, a 28% decrease from the same period last year and the lowest level since 2019, according to figures from the Treasury Departments 2025 monthly national statistics report and reporting by The Lexington Herald Leader. Whats more, American whiskey inventories have tripled since 2012, according to DSCUS, which means these distillers are sitting on a lot of product.
Combined, these factors have spelled trouble. Big conglomerates like Brown-Forman, which owns Jack Daniels and Woodford Reserve, have slashed jobs by double digits or, in the case of Diageo, halted production altogether at two of its whiskey distilleries in Tennessee and Texas. Kentucky Owl, which is owned by Stoli Group, filed for bankruptcy protection.
Whats more, brands that might not be household namesUncle Nearest, Limestone Farms Distillery, Garrard County Distillery, and Luca Marianohave also faced problems ranging from bankruptcy to shutting down production to lawsuits related to millions of dollars in debts.
AMERICANS ABSTAINING
Another factor upending the spirits industry is that Americans are laying off booze like never before. Only 54% of U.S. adults say they consume alcohol, according to an annual poll released in August, the lowest level since Gallup began tracking drinking habits in 1939. The decline has been especially steep recently: In 2022, 67% of Americans reported drinking alcohol.
Slowing demand for alcohol domestically means that its critically important that U.S. distillers have the certainty of zero-for-zero tariffs with key export markets, Swonger said.
The spirits council is urging President Trump to reconsider his tariff stancesomething elected politicians from affected states havent been so universally vocal about.
TARIFFS AND POLITICS
While Kentuckys top leadersDemocratic Governor Andy Beshear, along with Republican Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paulcame together in a rare act of bipartisanship in March to push back on Trumps tariffs, the same hasnt happened in Tennessee. Republican Governor Bill Lee backed Trumps tariff policy in the spring and hasnt been quoted on the impact to his states spirits industry more recently.
In a 25-year span, the U.S. has seen the number of distillers explode from about 60 to more than 3,100 today in whats been an amazing growth story, Swonger tells Fast Company. And the industry thrives best with a zero-for-zero tariff policyzero tariffs on imports, zero tariffs on exportssomething the council is hopeful President Trump will be able to achieve once again with key trading partners, while furthering his goals to reduce the trade deficit.
That might seem counterintuitive because tariffs on imported spirits could theoretically provide U.S. distillers with a competitive advantage, Swonger says. But the current 15% tariff imposed on imports of all spirits from the European Union, for example, has a ripple effect on restaurants, retailers, distributors, bartenders, and consumers. We want to compete for taste, he adds.
The council is optimistic that Trump will successfully navigate trade talks to alleviate the uncertainty and lack of predictability currently facing the industryincluding in a highly anticipated meeting between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney this week. Thos talks might help ease the iciness thats seen many state-owned liquor stores in various Canadian provinces continue to abstain from carrying American spirits altogether.
Thats unfortunate, Swonger says of the current dynamic. The emotions in Canada are high, and we hope the prime minister and president have a good meeting.
The launch of a digital art department at upscale auction house Christies was precisely as well-publicized as its eventual shuttering was devoid of fanfare.
On March 11, 2021, Christies made history as the first major auction house to sell art in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT). Digital artist Beeple managed to offload his massive mosaic, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, for a whopping $69 million, generating hundreds of astonished headlines and getting those three letters, NFT, in front of untold scads of early-adopter eyeballs. It was the sale heard ’round the world, a starter pistol kicking off the NFT gold rush.
Cut to last month, when Christies quietly closed its digital art department. It was as if the moment when NFTs briefly became the molten core of culture, tech, and commerce had never happened at allas if the vague memory of surly apes with unconscionable price tags had just been a fever dream. There may be a lesson, however, in examining how quickly the hype cooled on NFTsespecially considering what the market has evolved into in the years since.
Here comes the boom
For those who may have forgottenor never bothered to learnNFTs are unique digital certificates stored on a blockchain, proving ownership or authenticity for an array of items, including art. Unlike the typical crypto asset, where each Bitcoin or Ethereum is identical and equal, these tokens are not interchangeable. Hence, they aresay it with menon-fungible.
Though the first-ever NFTa short, looping generative animation called Quantumwas created in 2014, the technology only started making waves a few years later, with the arrival of CryptoKitties. Minted on the Ethereum blockchain, CryptoKitties were playfully animated feline NFTs, designed not only to collect and trade, but also to breed new kitties with inherited traits, lending them a gamified aspect that proved to be a game-changer.
We saw all the craziness going on at that time with ICOs [initial coin offerings] and we said, ‘Hey, look, not everything has to be a coin, recalls Roham Gharegozlou, CEO and cofounder of Dapper Labs, the pioneering NFT company behind CryptoKitties and other digital collectibles. CryptoKitties was the first time we showed that crypto could be a lot more than just currency, and it attracted the attention of a lot of people who saw the potential of digital ownership as applied to these massive, billion-fan communities like the NBA, the NFL or Disney.
By the time the notorious Beeple auction took place, Dapper had collaborations in the works with all three companies, and had already launched NBA Top Shot, turning video clips from NBA games into NFTs. One such moment, a gnarly LeBron James dunk from February 2021, went for $208,000, a headline-worthy sum that preceded the art worlds own NFT coming-out party by about three weeks. It was official: NFTs were the Next Big Thing. Soon enough, fashion houses, entertainment companies, and more major brands wanted in. As did the speculative set.
Among the names most associated with NFTs is Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). Launched in April 2021 by the four pseudonymous founders of Yuga Labs, the project consisted of 10,000 singular cartoon apes, stylized to evoke esoteric personality types. On the surface, the apes were similar to CryptoKitties, but unlike that venture, Yuga marketed BYAC as an exclusive club. Those willing to pay prices that started art $190 in the early days received promises of perks like merch drops and a private Discord, along with access to special events. They also got to feel like they shared space on an ever-unfurling red carpet with celebrities like Justin Bieber and Serena Williams, who started touting their newfound Apes as status symbols.
As consumer interest in NFTs soared, so did the value of Ethereum and the tokens on its blockchain. The prices of some Bored Apes skyrocketed from hundreds of dollars to hundreds of thousands in a matter of months. Green-eyed investors started tracking their value like stocks. By the end of 2021, the trading volume of NFTs altogether reportedly surpassed $13 billion.
Id been looking into these kinds of things for years, and then suddenly my barista was asking about NFTs, says Merav Ozair, an expert on responsible innovation and the founder of Emerging Technologies Mastery, a Web3 consultancy shop. Everyone wanted to know about it and how they could benefit from it. People from every industry suddenly came to me with questions, and then I understood this had become much more than it was supposed to be.
Omar Kholief, a curator, professor, and author of the book Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs, had a similar experience during the NFT feeding frenzy of 2021.
It was not surprising that [the Beeple sale] would make news. What shook me, however, was the vast speculation around this sale, and the number of start-ups professing to be specialists in NFTs all of a sudden, who wanted to enlist my knowledge, labor and support, Kholief says. I was being offered jobs by company after companyand today, well, none of them exist.
Things fall apart
At their mainstream peak, NFTs were everywhere and could seemingly be anything. Rock band Kings of Leon released an NFT album. Reese Witherspoons production company Hello Sunshine made a deal to adapt NFTs into movies and TV shows. (To date, no Hello Sunshine NFT adaptations have seen the light of day.) Author Neil Strauss released a book as an NFT, and an NFT of New York Times writer Kevin Rooses column about NFTs sold for $560,000.
The cumulative effect of so much all-in hype from high places was that anyone tuned into pop culture at the time might have strted to feel like a schmuck for not diving in, wallet first. Of course, many holdouts eventually saw their hesitancy validated, once it turned out these digital assets were not as sturdy an investment at the time as the loudest hype-peddlers portrayed them.
Everyone jumped on the bandwagon, causing market saturation supremely quickly, as well as confusion and boredom, Kholief says. Because the mouthpieces at the front of the companies had not a clue what an NFT actually was.
When the Federal Reserve started hiking interest rates in March 2022 to fight pandemic inflation, it lowered investor confidence in crypto. Prices of tokens fell sharply as more hikes followed, alongside geopolitical chaos including a then-new war between Russia and Ukraine. A major downturn in the crypto market had begun, one that would peak with the November 2022 crash of FTX. By that point, NFT trading volume for the year had collapsed by 97%.
And where were the celebrities whod proudly and quite publicly shown off their Bored Apes? By December 2022, when most BYAC tokens were worth a fraction of what their owners paid for them, several bold-face names were listed in a class action lawsuit against Yuga Labs. Snoop Dogg, Madonna, Post Malone, and many others were alleged to have participated in a scheme to artificially increase the interest in and price of Bored Ape NFTs without disclosing the nature, source, and amount of any compensation paid, directly or indirectly, in exchange for the endorsement.
Even before the lawsuit, which was dismissed on October 1, though, celebrities had pumped the brakes on their NFT enthusiasm. As quickly as the decibel-shattering hype had begun, it was over.
It had already started to wind down, but after FTX, people decided they werent touching this space anymore, says Ozair. They figured, Maybe all these NFTs are just a scam.
In it for the long term
The NFT market collapsed for many reasons, but chief among them were excessive hype and rapid expansion.
It was definitely too much too soon, Dapper Labs Gharegozlou says of peak NFT hype. Because crypto is this odd industry where, even though the technology was immature for many years, there was opportunity to make money, so that brought a rush of people in, whereas with most new technologies, people leave them alone until they’re a lot more mature.
What had started as a new frontier in digital ownership quickly got conflated with a faddish money-printing machine. As the dust settled in 2023, it became clear that just because an image was digital and unique didnt make it inherently valuableand also that maybe Starbucks didnt need an NFT program, something the company finally conceded in early 2024.
So, what might the NFT market look like in maturity? Over time, a smaller, more pragmatic set of use cases has emerged among collectors and various fandoms. Gaming companies are figuring out how to better integrate NFTs in their open worlds, and fashion brands like Louis Vuitton are tying (wildly expensive) physical garments to their NFTs. Meanwhile, regulatory changes like this years GENIUS Act are helping to firm up cryptos infrastructure, making the waters safer for consumers. NFTs now trade in smaller volumes, to more niche audiences, with the speculative crowd mostly having moved on to things like meme coins.
Dapper Labs had found success with NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day prior to peak NFT hype, but the company only unveiled its Disney collaboration, Disney Pinnacle, in November 2023a year after the bottom fell out of the market, when people were reassessing NFTs. The turn in public opinion apparently had an impact on the companys efforts to launch a new venture.
It sort of reset expectations, Gharegozlou says. We had to approach things from a very cautious standpoint, because we wanted our customers as well as our partnersin the case of Disneyto know that we’re in this for the long term.
The team at Dapper Labs moved thoughtfully and slowly as it created a line of collectible digital pins for various Disney IP, free from the speculative craze that enveloped previous projects. Disney Pinnacle seems focused on serving fans reasonably priced collectibles, while inspiring deep-pocked collectors to bid tens of thousands on limited drops. (NBA Top Shot also still produces NFTs that occasionally fetch six figures on the market.) As the Disney fandom embraces Pinnacle, Disney+ has harnessed these digital pins as a perk for subscribers. Its a hint of how a more grounded, practical market for NFTs might play out in the future.
What can the NFT boom tell us about AI?
As NFTs settle into their niche within the greater crypto ecosystem, its important to remember what happened when they were previously in the global spotlight. Silicon Valley, after all, appears to be making similar mistakes with artificial intelligence. While many have compared the AI craze to the dot-com bubble, it also closely resembles the NFT boom.
At their 2021 height, NFTs thrived on novelty over utility. They were a shiny new concept that could not maintain mass interest when the hype died down. A similar phenomenon now plagues AI. Nearly three years after Chat GPTs arrival, the incorporation of AI in any product or service is still meant to signal valueeven if, in practice, most shoehorned-in AI components tend to just make consumers want to opt out. The market is now willing to bet billions on, say, an energy real estate investment trust, seemingly because AI is involved at all, rather than because its involved in a particularly useful or innovative way.
Beyond prizing novelty over utility, the executives touting AI the loudest have been over-promising what the technology can deliver. Instead of emphasizing the practical use cases of today, they are claiming AI will cure cancer tomorrow, for starters.
There is a lot of overpromising, Ozair says.When Sam Altman says GPT-5 is like having PhDs in your pocket for every discipline, that is false advertising. It doesn’t have that capability. The fact that it got a gold medal for mathematics and physics [at the Olympiad] doesn’t say anything about what it can actually do.
For all the mistakes the NFT movement made that AI can learn from, though, the fact that the industry is still standing after it took such a reputational drubbing should be inspirational for those who see AI as a bubble on the brink of bursting. After falling back to Earth in 2022, the supposed end of NFTs in the mainstream might eventually just be seen as a blip.
I think everything’s working out the right way, Gharegozlou says. There were speculative excesses within the industry, but I think that also was a stress test for everything to come.
If the AI industry is to survive its own current phase of rapid experimentation and expansion, it would do well to heed the lessons of the last Next Big Thing.
A group of U.S. officials want to know why London’s FTSE Russell, a top financial services firm, chose to include the underperforming Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) in one of its most high-profile indexes.
Their concern stems, in part, from the fact that analysts generally do not view TMTG, which owns the presidents social media platform Truth, as particularly stable. Trading under the symbol DJT, shares are down 38% year to date and currently trade at about $17.50. Last fiscal year, the company reported a net loss of $400.9 million And in the most recent quarter, it reported a loss of $20 million.
The Russell 3000 tracks the performance of the 3,000-largest publicly traded companies in the United States. While investors can’t buy the index directly, several ETFs or index funds include the Russell 3000.
Signed by Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak, fiscal leaders from New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maryland, as well as the comptroller of New York City, the letter expresses concern about TMTGs inclusion in the Russell 3000, which occurred last year. The drop in the company’s share price, negligible revenues and risks that come with the stock are among the issues they raise.
“The Russell 3000 is one of the most influential benchmarks in U.S. capital markets, with approximately $10.6 trillion in assets,” the officials write. “Its credibility depends on consistent, transparent, and rigorous standards that ensure its companies reflect the U.S. equity market and meet the expectations of institutional investors and public stewards alike. The continued presence of TMTG in the index raises troubling questions on both financial and governance grounds, as well as on the integrity of the benchmark itself.”
London’s FTSE Russell nor TMTG responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Pieciak’s signature on the letter is notable. Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott has urged leaders in his state to take a less confrontational posture with the White House. (Notably, Scott rejected two requests this summer to send the Vermont national guard to Washington, D.C., as part of Trump’s federal takeover of the nation’s capital.)
In their letter, the officials have asked FTSE Russell to explain TMTG’s inclusion in the Russell 3000. They’ve also asked for an assessment of how the group accounts for the company’s risks and detail on any safeguards in place to ensure that future index picks demonstrate sound market fundamentals.
Noting that “two of the last three Trump financial ventures have resulted in significant investor losses,” the letter expresses concerns that people investing in Russell 3000 tracking indexes might not realize they’re buying shares in TMTG.
An evolving list
The Russell 3000 is an evolving list of companies. On the last Friday of each June, the list is reconstituted to reflect changes in the U.S. equity market. Companies are evaluated to determine where they lie along the investment spectrum from value to growth stocks.
FTSE typically looks at the market capitalization of the stock as a bellwether for inclusion. TMTG currently has a market cap of $4.87 billion.
That ranks the stock 3099th among publicly traded companies, as of 10 a.m. ET Tuesday. In June of this year, when the list was last reconstituted, shares were about $3.50 higher than they are now, which likely put TMTG within the top 3,000, which could explain its inclusion.
In January, on the final day of trading before the presidential inauguration, TMTG boasted a market cap of $8.68 billion as investors flocked to the company before Trump’s second term began.
