Just checked Polymarket and the odds for NFTs making a comeback in 2026 are sitting at 65% now - apparently the highest they've ever been. Over a million bucks already bet on it too. Honestly, that's a pretty bullish signal from the market, but I'm not totally convinced yet.

So the NFT sector's holding above $3 billion in market cap, and there's been some decent activity lately - trading volume jumped 26% in the last day. CryptoPunks and Bored Apes are the main things propping things up. But here's the thing: even with these gains, most blue chips are still crushed compared to their 2021 peaks. CryptoPunks is down like 80%, Bored Apes down 95%. We'd need the entire sector to 5x just to get back to the $15 billion peak from 2022. That's a huge ask.

The real problem nobody's talking about enough is the utility angle. NFTs still don't have real use cases beyond speculation and collecting. OpenSea basically gave up and pivoted to being a crypto aggregator. Nike sold off RTFKT after shutting it down for a year. X2Y2 just killed its NFT marketplace entirely. Meanwhile NFT Paris got cancelled last week because of market conditions. These aren't small signals - they're the industry basically admitting the comeback might take way longer than 2026. Will NFTs actually come back this year? The odds say maybe, but the actions suggest otherwise.