From Coloured Coins to Axie Infinity: The True Story of How NFTs Conquered the Crypto World

Most people think that NFTs were born in 2021 with the bored apes and Logan Paul, but the reality is much more interesting. The real journey began a decade earlier when no one called them that.

The first step: tokenize without blockchain

It all started in 2012. Meni Rosenfield, founder of the first Bitcoin exchange in Israel, had a crazy idea: to use the Bitcoin blockchain to prove that you owned something unique. He called it Coloured Coins (colored coins). The concept was simple but revolutionary: to paint bitcoins with metadata to represent real-world assets. The problem was that Bitcoin had enormous technical limitations. But the seed was planted.

The first real NFT ( and it's hard to believe the price )

On May 3, 2014, Kevin McCoy minted Quantum on Namecoin. It was a pixelated octagon that pulsed and changed color, accompanied by a video clip created by McCoy's wife. It sold for 4 dollars.

Nobody knew it then, but the first NFT in history had just been born.

The wildest part: when the NFT market exploded in 2021, that same Quantum was resold for 1.5 million dollars. An increase of 375,000x. That's how crazy the boom was.

Etheria and the First Blockchain Video Games

Months after Ethereum, Etheria World appeared: a metaverse game with hexagonal tiles that functioned as land. Each tile was an NFT that you could buy for 1 ETH (less than a dollar in 2015).

In 2021, those same lands were quoted between $130k and $150k. History would repeat itself.

CryptoKitties: when NFTs paralyzed Ethereum

In 2017, CryptoKitties ( created by Dapper Labs, a Canadian studio ) changed everything. They were collectible cats with unique attributes that you could breed. In December 2017, the transaction volume was so brutal that it congested the entire Ethereum network.

It was the first “Aha moment” for the world: NFTs were not just digital art, they were a real economic phenomenon.

Axie Infinity: when 2.5 billion dollars entered the game

But the real turning point was Axie Infinity. This GameFi game made everyone turn their attention to blockchain games. Users bought three Axies (NFT creatures) to fight, earn AXS tokens, and monetize within the game.

The result was brutal: over $1.5 billion in revenue for Sky Mavis at its peak. And here’s the crazy part: while the crypto market fell by 70% in 2022, blockchain games grew by 2,000% since Q1 2021. NFT video games accounted for 52% of all blockchain activity.

The twist: from expensive art to real utility

In 2022, the market cleaned itself. Million-dollar NFTs turned into trash, just like Logan Paul's Bumblebee NFT.

But here comes the interesting part: after the “brainwashing” of the boom, institutions and artists began to discover REAL uses:

In gaming: Players finally understand that truly owning their assets on-chain is different from renting them on a centralized server.

In real estate: Michael Arrington ( founder of TechCrunch ) sold his tokenized apartment in Kiev. Jared Kenna ( Traderhill ) split his apartment in SF into tokens and rented it for 75 years at $1/month.

In charity: Beeple sold Ocean Front for $6 million and donated it to Open Earth Foundation. During the Russia-Ukraine war, crypto influencers donated NFT that the government sold to fund its army.

The number that changes everything

Analysts estimate that the NFT market will reach $211 billion by 2030. It's not just digital art—it's asset tokenization, community governance (DAO), and reduction of intermediaries.

What seemed like a meme in 2021 was actually the first act of a larger revolution: the tokenization of everything.