Paris will be noticeably quieter in February 2026, and not just because tourists finally realized the Mona Lisa is underwhelming. The NFT Paris and RWA conferences have officially been cancelled with barely a month's notice, proving that even the French can't escape crypto's brutal bear market grip. Organizers took to X to deliver the bad news, essentially admitting that market forces had crushed their dreams faster than a degen's leverage position.
The farewell message to would-be attendees read like a breakup text from someone who just got liquidated. The team announced they're "clos[ing] this chapter" on conferences, explaining that "the market collapse hit us hard." Apparently, "despite drastic cost cuts and months of trying to make it work, we couldn't pull it off this year" – which roughly translates to "we tried everything short of selling kidneys and it still wasn't enough."
Here's where it gets spicy: while all ticket holders will supposedly receive refunds within 15 days (press X to doubt), some sponsors are reportedly getting the full crypto experience – meaning they're getting absolutely nothing back. The organizers did leave themselves a tiny bit of hopium, refusing to completely rule out future events, because apparently pain is temporary but delusion is forever.
The cancellation comes as the NFT market continues its epic faceplant into oblivion. Total market cap has cratered from roughly $9 billion in January 2025 to a pathetic $2.7 billion this week – a staggering 68% year-over-year drop that would make even the most hardened crypto veteran wince. At this rate, JPEGs of bored apes might soon be worth less than the electricity used to display them.
Sales volumes have also absolutely tanked, plummeting to about $320 million in November 2025 and reportedly dipping even lower in December. These numbers are so bad they make 2022's crypto winter look like a mild autumn breeze – we're talking about volumes so low they could fit in a shoebox, with room left for your disappointment.
The market's spectacular implosion has triggered a wave of pivots and shutdowns across the industry that would make a gymnast dizzy. Former market darling OpenSea announced in October that it would rebrand from an "NFT marketplace" to a platform that lets users "trade everything" – which is corporate speak for "we'll sell anything that might make us money because NFTs are dead, Jim."
Other major players have also pulled the ultimate crypto move: the pivot. X2Y2, another NFT marketplace that probably wishes it had diversified, said in March that it would shut down and pivot to AI – because when your business fails, just slap "AI" on it and watch the VC money flow in. Not to be outdone, Rarible unveiled a new model in September to redistribute tokens to active traders, openly admitting that "previous designs were not sustainable" – a refreshingly honest admission that's about as rare as a profitable NFT project these days.
