Did anyone actually buy NFTs or was it just a bunch of people saying "this is worth X"?

It was the perfecting money laundering vehicle. "I made a picture of an ape and 'some random anonymous person' bought it for $1M!"

I always assume it was that, speculators and ridiculously rich folks making impulse buys.

How is that money laundering? You'd have to buy ethereum with cash, but at that point why bother with the NFT? Just sell the Ethereum on coinbase and you've laundered the money.

Coinbase has KYC ("Know your customer") policies explicitly to comply with anti-money laundering.

https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/managing-my-account/up...

Edit: besides that, the point of 'laundering' money is basically to get it into a form where it is officially yours, in the light, with taxes paid. The NFT is a conceivably 'legitimate' transfer of value. I made a thing and sold it for money, and declared and paid tax on the capital gain - boom, legitimate.

well coinbase was an example. You can simply 'sell' yourself the ethereum. I just don't see the need to involve NFTs after you already own the crypto.

What standard of proof are you willing to accept?

Both the primary and secondary market were very active with distinct identities. The primary market (buying collections directly from a new issuer) is still okay right now. The issuers are still making a lot of money.

The secondary market’s “floor price” concept is manipulated by the crowd, as with all collections outside of the NFT space as most individual pieces never got a bid to begin with. You hear one piece sold and you try to sell yours at the same price, so does everyone else.

As an example, Stonetoss' NFT sale had 1500 buyers across 5000 flurks.