Key Takeaways
- Snoop Dog’s Telegram NFT collection sold out in minutes.
- Telegram launched native support for NFTs on TON at the start of the year.
- However, the overall market is in decline, with monthly sales volume down 67% in June.
On Wednesday, Snoop Dog debuted a collection of Telegram “gifts,” the platform’s native NFT format on TON, that raised $12 million and sold out in just 30 minutes.
While the release proves that NFTs can still generate buzz, the wider market remains sluggish, with overall sales down 29% in June.
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Snoop Dog Gifts Boost Telegram NFTs
Launched at the beginning of the year, Telegram’s collectible gifts can be displayed on profiles. They can also be easily sent between users over chat or traded for Telegram’s native cryptocurrency, stars.
Gifts also incorporate popular NFT features, including simple animations, limited mints, secondary attributes, and custom upgrades.
Snoop Dog’s collection of nearly a million gifts is the kind of slick publicity campaign that the rapper is known for. It coincides with the release of a new song and the ongoing promotion of his personal Telegram channel and brand.
While Telegram introduced support for NFTs at the start of the year, Snoop Dog’s gifts are the first collection to go viral, boosting awareness of the concept and stimulating broader interest.
NFT Market Remains Suppressed
Since the NFT boom of 2021-2022, the overall market for on-chain digital collectibles has slowed significantly.
Despite a brief uptick in 2024, sales have dwindled over the last year. According to CryptoSlam data, monthly NFT sales volume dropped 67% in June.
Is Snoop Dog Collection Bullish for the NFT Market?
While some market watchers have celebrated the success of Snoop Dog’s gift collection as a bullish sign for NFT prices, that doesn’t necessarily mean seven-figure Bored Apes are coming back any time soon.
The viral Telegram collectibles sold for an average of $12 each, with most selling for just a few cents. And with nearly a million in circulation, only the rarest are likely to ever command a high price.
By value, the most successful Telegram gifts NFT collection to date is Plush Pepes, which can sell for over $10,000 each. However, only 2,500 were ever minted, making them much rarer than Snoop Dog’s animated joints.
Ultimately, however, such mass-market, broadly accessible NFT collections may represent an important new direction for the digital collectibles movement.
Evolving Attitudes
Three years after the speculative bubble of 2022, NFTs remain an important medium for digital creators, with ongoing utility for blockchain gaming, community-building, promotion, and branding.
While sales volume may be declining, adoption hasn’t stalled. In fact, the overall user base continues to grow, suggesting less interest in trading and more focus on free ow low-value collections.
It is also worth noting that some of the most significant NFT collections today aren’t the tokenized images or GIFs most people associate with the term.
On TON, the top two collections by trade volume are anonymous Telegram numbers and usernames, which frequently swap hands for thousands of dollars each.
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James Morales is CCN’s blockchain and crypto policy reporter. He has been working in the news media since 2020, writing about topics such as payments, banking and financial technology. These days, he likes to explore the latest blockchain innovations and the evolving landscape of global crypto regulation.
With an educational background in social anthropology and media studies, James uses his platform as a journalist to explore how new technologies work, why they matter and how they might shape our future.
