“Crypto winter” is in full swing now after a series of unfortunate but not unexpected events: the collapse of the so-called stablecoin Terra, the bankruptcy of major crypto exchange FTX, and the failure of multiple crypto lenders like Celsius. It seems the whole market is basically in turmoil.

And, of course, all this market uncertainty has hit NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, too. For example, the biggest NFT brand, Bored Ape Yacht Club, is now trading down 80 percent from its peak value just eight months ago.

But that’s not the only thing hurting NFTs. Many online communities have come out strongly against the idea of tokenizing everything on the blockchain, effectively turning their favorite brands and hobbies into speculative assets.

Yet, some brands are still buying into the NFT-hype. And Mashable couldn’t help but take a look back at some of the more bizarre ones from this past year.

Donald Trump Digital Trading Cards

Getting in at number one on the list (and just under the wire, too) is the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

In the final weeks of 2022, Trump posted on his social network, Truth Social, that he had a major announcement to make on Dec. 15. His supporters all speculated that it had to be something big for Trump to tease such an announcement. Dilbert comics creator Scott Adams guessed that since Trump had already announced his 2024 presidential campaign, this big reveal could be his VP pick announcement.

Low and behold, Dec. 15 came and Trump announced…an NFT collection called: Trump Digital Trading Cards.

babe wake up
Trump just dropped an NFT collection pic.twitter.com/1Eh9XjpSiu

— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) December 15, 2022

(opens in a new tab)And it was great timing, too! Smack dab in the middle of the biggest crypto downturn in years, Donald Trump has decided to enter into the NFT market.

The Trump card collection includes 45,000 NFT pieces consisting of badly photoshopped portrayals of the former president as a superhero and a professional football player, as well as riding an elephant, and much more. Priced at $99 each, the Trump NFT collection includes a chance to win prizes such as a dinner with Trump, a group Zoom call with Trump, or “autographed memorabilia.” If someone buys 45 NFTs — yes, $4,500 worth of NFTs — they receive a guaranteed ticket to a Trump gala event in Florida.

The whole thing is very weird and poorly timed, but once you see the infomercial Trump released when announcing the NFTs, you’ll find that it’s very on brand for Trump, too.

JUST IN: Donald Trump’s “major annoucement” turned out to be a launch for his new NFT collection.

Each collectible purchase entitles you to a sweepstakes entry to win a chance to spend time with the Former President.

pic.twitter.com/2jt4BopSgS

— CoinGecko (@coingecko) December 15, 2022

(opens in a new tab)

Starbucks’ Loyalty Program (now with Web3!)

Coffee giant Starbucks has long offered rewards to its customers via its successful loyalty program. It’s fairly simple: Customers download an app and get exclusive offers, as well as earn food and drink rewards based on their purchases.

Then Starbucks decided to experiment with a new loyalty program…powered by NFTs.

The coffee chain started rolling out its Web3 rewards program, called Starbucks Odyssey, in early December. The new program on the Polygon blockchain appears to mostly gamify the old, already existing program. Instead of just buying your favorite drink and earning rewards, Starbucks wants customers to go on “journeys” and accept challenges from the company. For example, users can earn NFTs by going to a new Starbucks location that they haven’t previously visited. These NFTs act as “stamps” and each stamp has a certain number of points associated with it. Users can earn more points by completing challenges which give them additional NFTs or by trading NFTs on the aftermarket.

Starbucks has not yet divulged just how many users are currently beta testing the program, but it did share that there was “unprecedented interest” in Starbucks Odyssey.

Why just passively buy your morning coffee on your way to work when you can spend your day completing challenges and then speculatively trade NFTs on the crypto markets in order to earn that free latte?

But, really, the most incredible NFT-related Starbucks moment of the year came in April. During a time when unionization campaigns were spreading across Starbucks locations nationwide, CEO Howard Schultz attempted to rally his employees during a company-wide meeting. Right there, before a live and livestream-viewing audience, Schultz excitedly announced that Starbucks was looking into entering the NFT space. His audience — the workers at his company — looked like they couldn’t have cared less.

Here's the video of Howard Schultz revealing his genius plan to use Starbucks NFTs as a way to woo back unionizing workers. This man has a net worth of $4.3 billion. pic.twitter.com/VYX6SYgYVq

— Jordan Zakarin (@jordanzakarin) April 5, 2022

NFTs “R” Us?

Who doesn’t remember Toys “R” Us?

If you’re reading this, it’s possible you have fond memories of going there yourself as a kid. It was once the biggest toy store chain in the United States.

Then in 2017, Toys “R” Us declared bankruptcy. Stores closed. In fact, some of the biggest Toys “R” Us locations actually still remain empty to this day. The company and its beloved mascot “Geoffrey the Giraffe” all but disappeared in the U.S. for a while. There were attempts to bring the brand back as new management companies opened up seasonal locations for the holidays over the years. A deal was finally made with Macy’s to basically open up toy sections with the Toys “R” Us name within its department stores.

Oh yeah, and there’s Toys “R” Us NFTs now, too.

.@ToysRUsNFT 🦒 is the latest collection to launch with Open Creator Protocol & the first on Launchpad!

Looking forward to protecting royalties with you 🫡 pic.twitter.com/mQdJqfIMOz

— Magic Eden 🪄 (@MagicEden) December 9, 2022

(opens in a new tab)Toys “R” Us began selling 10,000 NFTs of digital animated versions of Geoffrey the Giraffe toys that are apparently “inspired” by physical toys available in the company’s stores. According to the official website for the Solana-based NFTs, all seem to have sold out.

Who is the market for NFTs, again essentially speculative volatile assets, from a toy store?

“I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys “R” Us kid,” went the lyrics to the earworm tune that was the Toys “R” Us theme song. So perhaps this was more a nostalgia play, trying to hook in those adult fans of the toy store who have fond memories running down the aisles when they were a kid.

Still, the hook here, if not for pure speculation, includes exclusive discounts, in-store experiences, and events for NFT holders. As one Twitter user discovered when inquiring about the NFTs at a physical retail location, Toys “R” Us employees aren’t aware of the program.

GM ☀️
Just as crypto Twitter is finding out for the first time today that @ToysRUs is still alive, Toys R Us employees are also finding out for the first time that they are now selling #digitalcollectibles @EasyEatsBodega #NFTs pic.twitter.com/4sKfcNMWIM

— Trizzytrunk.eth ⌐❀-❀ 💐🗑️🎨 (@trizzytrunk) December 9, 2022

NFT sharks doo-doo, doo-doo

One can buy that Toys “R” Us NFTs are for adults looking to reminisce about good times at their favorite childhood toy store. But what’s the deal with these Baby Shark NFTs?

Baby Shark became a viral hit song for children through a version uploaded in 2015 by the South Korean kids entertainment brand Pinkfong. It inspired a never-ending line of products ranging from toys to TV shows. There’s no nostalgia effect here. The kids who grew up listening to Baby Shark are very much still children.

Yet, in November, Pinkfong announced it was partnering with Toekenz, which bills itself as a “kid-friendly” NFT platform, in order to create a blockchain-based Baby Shark game “for kids age 5 to 9.”

According to the announcement, Toekenz turns buying and selling NFTs into a game for kids. Children will be able to earn “licensed digital tokens” while learning about cryptocurrency and NFTs.

Translation: Kids under the age of 10 will be speculating on securities. What’s next? Baby’s first day trading platform?

Your favorite ’90s music apps sell NFTs now

Who didn’t use ’90s-era media player Winamp? I bet just seeing that name takes you back to the good old days of Windows 98 and AOL dial-up.

Fast forward decades later to March 2022, and Winamp had a moment in the spotlight again. But not for a good reason. Winamp announced via Twitter that it was launching an NFT collection based on Winamp skins.

The reaction from Winamp supporters was not good to say the least.

straight-up garbage move, nice work

— Jeff Gerstmann (@jeffgerstmann) March 17, 2022

But no take was more biting than one from Justin Frankel, one of the original creators of the Winamp software.

“I have spent the last number of years giving the owners of Winamp benefit of doubt,” Frankel tweeted. “No more. You are terrible.”

https://twitter.com/JustinFrankel/status/1504140679655858177(opens in a new tab)

Frankel went further on his website and derided NFTs as a “negative-sum ecosystem” where people are told to buy-in just so NFT promoters can dump on them and cash out.

Unfortunately, Winamp wasn’t the only beloved old-school internet audio relic to turn to the NFT-darkside.

Remember Limewire? Sure, you may have downloaded numerous viruses while illegally downloading your favorite music. But, you also probably discovered a slew of unsigned indie bands that wanted you to listen to their music.

Well, Limewire’s basically just an NFT platform now. Bummer.

RadioShack goes edgelord to promote crypto

Speaking of zombie brands, RadioShack made waves over the summer, years after the company went bankrupt (twice) and essentially closed all of their retail locations.

Why? The official Twitter account for RadioShack, the electronics store which once sold ham radios to your grandpa, started tweeting like a little 4chan-wannabe edgelord.

WHAT IN TARNATION is going on with Radio Shack's Twitter????? pic.twitter.com/AEbaGjRFXF

— Brent Black (@brentalfloss) June 29, 2022

“If you find a squirter marry her,” RadioShack posted in June.

People quickly started speculating that the RadioShack handle had been hijacked by hackers. But, no, that wasn’t the case. Its new owner, get-rich-quick internet marketer Tai Lopez, was just doing a little guerilla marketing for his re-branded RadioShack.

What is this re-branded RadioShack? Well, it still sells some electronics in its e-commerce store. But that doesn’t seem to be its only focus. RadioShack hawks NFTs and crypto now. The company has rolled out its own cross-blockchain bridge to swap crypto and launched its very own NFT collections.

What a bizarre turn of events for the store where you used to get Duracell batteries for your RC cars.

Disgraced former OpenSea product manager Nathaniel Chastain was arrested in New York City on Wednesday for insider trading of NFTs. In its statement, the Department of Justice called it the “first ever digital asset insider trading scheme.”

Chastain has been charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering as a result of his NFT insider trading scheme.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are digital assets on a blockchain that represent artwork or other forms of media. OpenSea is the largest NFT marketplace platform, and is where the vast majority of aftermarket sales occur.

According to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams, Chastain used his insider knowledge of what NFT projects were going to be featured on the OpenSea platform and then exploited that information for personal financial gain.

As part of his position at OpenSea, Chastain was responsible for picking which NFT projects to feature on the marketplace’s frontpage. According to the U.S. attorney, from June 2021 to September 2021, Chastain utilized this confidential information about which NFTs would be featured to secretly acquire NFTs using anonymous accounts before they were placed on the homepage. This allowed Chastain to purchase these digital assets at low prices, before they spiked in value as a result of appearing on the frontpage of OpenSea. Chastain reportedly netted two-to-five times his purchase price for the NFTs.

“NFTs might be new, but this type of criminal scheme is not,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in a statement. “As alleged, Nathaniel Chastain betrayed OpenSea by using its confidential business information to make money for himself. Today’s charges demonstrate the commitment of this Office to stamping out insider trading – whether it occurs on the stock market or the blockchain.”

The U.S. government has recently signaled that its taking cryptocurrency-related crimes much more seriously. In February, a married NYC couple were arrested for their alleged involvement in laundering billions of dollars that were stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

If convicted, Chastain faces a maximum of 20 years in prison.

On Tuesday, Instagram announced a plan to introduce in-app NFTs. Coming immediately on the heels of a significant non-fungible token market downturn, the new feature would let users connect digital wallets to their Instagram accounts and share verified NFTs.

“We’re beginning to test digital collectibles with a handful of U.S. creators and collectors who will be able to share NFTs on Instagram that they have created or bought,” reads Instagram’s blog post in part. “Once a creator or collector posts a digital collectible, it will have a shimmer effect and can display public information, such as a description of the NFT.”

Tweet may have been deleted

Instagram says it’s initially supporting NFTs on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains, and promised that support for Flow and Solana are coming soon. Crypto wallets MetaMask, Rainbow, and Trust Wallet will be the first wallets compatible with Instagram.

When it comes to rolling out new products and ideas, Zuckerberg’s Meta (formerly Facebook), which owns Instagram, is perhaps best known for shamelessly copying features from competing apps once they’ve already found success. In the case of bringing NFTs to Instagram, the feature not only comes well after Twitter incorporated NFTs, but right as the general public’s interest in NFTs cools and marquee projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club see prices tumble.

To be clear, non-fungible tokens are still big business — a hyped NFT sale wreaked havoc on Ethereum earlier this month — and Instagram’s digital asset plan doesn’t end at adding a “shimmer effect” to posts.

“Soon, we’ll be rolling out digital collectibles on Facebook, and allow people to display and share their digital collectibles as AR stickers in Instagram Stories,” continued the blog post.

That’s right, if all goes according to Zuckerberg’s plan, NFTs are also coming to Facebook. That is, unless this is all some major Metaverse-like diversion and the scandal-plagued CEO gets distracted trying to rip off another competitor first.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO and soon-to-be Twitter owner has changed his avatar on Twitter into a collage of Bored Ape NFTs, a popular collection which currently costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per NFT.

For an explainer of what NFTs are, go here. Suffice to say that they’re a special type of cryptocurrency, each one is unique, and they can get very pricy.

Bored Apes (the full name of the project is Bored Ape Yacht Club) are highly coveted among NFT collectors. So coveted, in fact, that a recent NFT project launch by Yuga Labs, makers of the Bored Ape NFT, caused gas fees on Ethereum to rise into thousands of dollars. Ethereum is a blockchain platform that charges users gas (which is basically just ETH, the underlying currency of the platform) for each transaction. When the blockchain gets clogged due to high number of transactions, gas fees go up, sometimes astronomically.

So, what does it all mean? Does Elon Musk own a Bored Ape? Is he buying that entire project as well? Is this his Ethereum wallet (it owns the Bored Ape that Musk used for his Twitter avatar)? We don’t know for sure, cause Musk hasn’t commented on it. But rest assured, the man will say something about it on Twitter very soon. He always does.

The answer to that question is always yes, it can. Case in point: Starbucks is planning to enter the NFT fray.

During Starbucks’ Q2 2022 earning call on Tuesday evening, the company announced plans to enter the Web3 space with a line of NFTs. The NFT component plays a role in the coffeehouse chain’s new branding as a “third place,” which Starbucks describes as a “warm and welcome place” that’s neither home or work, where people can “connect and build community.”

If this sounds familiar, you’ll often find crypto advocates using the exact same jargon about “community building” when promoting their NFT projects.

Non-fungible tokens, better known as NFTs, are tokens minted to a blockchain in order to provide proof of ownership. Like any token, these are speculative assets. These tokens often point to a link of a piece of media – whether that be digital art, a photo, etc. – and act as a digital receipt for the purchase. It should be noted that the asset that is owned is the NFT itself, the token, and not the media it’s linked to.

Tweet may have been deleted

Interestingly, Starbucks’ announcement comes just after an eye-opening report in the Wall Street Journal which found that the NFT market was “flatlining.” According to the report, NFT sales have dropped 92 percent from its peak in September of last year.

As for how Starbucks plans to use NFTs, it’s still anyone’s guess.

“We plan to create a series of branded NFT collections, the ownership of which initiates community membership, and allows for access to exclusive experiences and perks,” reads a blog entry posted by Starbucks on its website in an attempt to further explain their NFT vision. “The themes of these collections will be born of Starbucks artistic expressions, both heritage and newly created, as well as through world-class collaborations with other innovators and like-minded brands.”

What is this community membership? What are those exclusive experiences and perks? Why can’t Starbucks just add these perks to its already popular app to accomplish these exact same goals? Starbucks still seems to be trying to work it all out.

Current interim Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said on the call that the company is hoping to land a new permanent CEO with an understanding of Web3 technology, according to TechCrunch.

This isn’t the first time Schultz has mentioned a possible foray into the NFT space for Starbucks. At a “Partner Open Forum” early last month, Schultz spoke to thousands of Starbucks employees amid an ongoing unionization drive within the company throughout the country. While Schultz laid out his anti-union position to his employees, he shared something they could look forward to…Starbucks NFTs.

Tweet may have been deleted

“Raise your hand if you’re a digital native,” Schultz asked the employees he was speaking to at the forum. The response was lackluster, which seemed to have caught Schultz off guard. He proceeded to explain that the company was planning to get into the NFT space in an effort to excite younger people.

It’s pretty clear that Stabucks’ NFT idea is a work-in-progress at this point. But one thing is for certain: Those NFT perks probably won’t include union benefits.

Coinbase launched its NFT marketplace to the public on Wednesday, allowing anyone to sign up on the new platform. Day one did not go well.

Tweet may have been deleted

When Bloomberg looked into how things were going yesterday at 5:15pm, only 110 transactions had been made. By the end of the day, according to crypto tracking platform Dune Analytics, there had only been 40 more. This amounted to less than $75,000 in sales. The platform had 1,120 users at the close of the day.

Day two doesn’t look like an improvement. At 5:15pm ET on Thursday, there had been approximately 107 transactions for a total of around $119,500. Today’s most recent user total, 1,215, suggests slow growth.

In contrast to Coinbase’s platform, the most popular NFT marketplace, OpenSea, recorded $124 million in transactions on May 3, according to Bloomberg.

While the NFT platform is now public, Coinbase says it’s still in its beta testing phase. However, it should be noted that the platform went public with 972 users grandfathered in from its private testing phase.

Tweet may have been deleted

And the current state of the NFT market doesn’t offer much hope that things will get better soon. A recent Wall Street Journal report found that NFT sales have fallen 92 percent since their peak last year, to an average of 19,000 transactions per week. Active wallets fell to around 14,00 as well, a decline of 88 percent.

Coinbase originally announced plans for its NFT marketplace in October, but even by then it was late to the game. The Coinbase NFT platform opened to a waitlist of users in April, right before Wednesday’s public launch. Analysts have estimated that Coinbase would need to sink $300 million into its NFT marketplace this year.

It’s clear that Coinbase has a long way to go before ever competing with OpenSea. Then again, it’s also clear that the NFT marketplace has a long way to go to even make sense for Coinbase.