‘The Market Collapse Hit us Hard‘

The organizers behind nonfungible token (NFT) and real-world asset (RWA) conferences in Paris have cancelled the events with a month’s notice, citing market forces.

In a Monday post, the event’s X account said NFT Paris and RWA Paris, initially set for February, would not be happening as scheduled in 2026. Although the organizers did not explicitly say events would not take place in the future, the message to attendees signaled that they are “clos[ing] this chapter” on conferences.

“The market collapse hit us hard,” reads the post. “Despite drastic cost cuts and months of trying to make it work, we couldn’t pull it off this year.”

Some of the event sponsors reported that they would not be receiving a refund, but NFT Paris said it would refund all the tickets purchased within 15 days. Cointelegraph reached out to the organizers for details on potential future events, but had not received a response at the time of publication.

Related: NFTs shifted to utility and culture as price faded in 2025

The NFT market experienced a significant downturn in 2025, with sales falling to about $320 million in November and reportedly even lower in December. According to data from CoinGecko, the total NFT market capitalization was about $2.7 billion as of Monday, representing a 68% year-over-year drop.

NFT marketplace OpenSea moved to ‘trade everything’

OpenSea was the market leader in NFTs in April, but CEO Devin Finzer announced in October that the platform would undergo a “transformation, from ‘NFT marketplace’ to ‘trade everything.’” Finzer told Cointelegraph at the time that the move would allow OpenSea users to trade “tokens, collectibles, culture, digital and physical.”

X2Y2, another NFT marketplace, said in March that it would shut down and pivot to AI. The Rarible platform, also a significant market player, unveiled a new model in September to redistribute tokens to active NFT traders, saying “previous designs […] were not sustainable.”