I opened up X this afternoon and I saw a photographer tweet that he hadn't sold a single NFT in the last four months. His conclusion: The NFT market is dying, if not already dead. There are no collectors left. Damn.

I'm sure it probably feels this way to most. But the reality is that there are a lot of asset classes that feel this exact same way today. (I know that many of you will contest whether NFTs are actually an asset class.) There aren't a lot of buyers out there right now.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that the NFT market, in particular, is done with. In fact, if you look around, there are countless signs that point to the opposite.

I, for example, find it interesting that if you're an architect or a city planner in the US, and looking to check off some continuing education units, you can now register for a course at Harvard called From Crypto to the Metaverse: Blockchain Applications in Real Estate.

And if you look at the learning objectives, it includes things like demystifying how Blockchain technologies work, how they might impact real estate businesses in the future, and what opportunities they may create. This suggests we're still early.

Right now just feels like that time in the cycle that tests both your conviction and your discipline. It's easy to believe in something when everyone else does. But what about when most people don't?

Here in Canada, there is often a belief that Americans tend to be more mobile than Canadians. Don't like the cold weather? Just move south. Taxes too high? Just move south. Housing too expensive? Just move south.

But just how mobile is mobile? A new study by the US Census Bureau and Harvard University found that by age 26, more than 2/3 of young adults in the US actually just live where they grew up, with 80% living within 100 miles, and 90% living within 500 miles.

Migration distances were also found to be impacted by both race and parental income (though these two things likely exhibit a relationship on their own). If you are a young white or Asian adult, the "radius of economic opportunity" tends to grow and you're more likely to live further away from where you grew up.

The most popular destinations overall are New York, Los Angeles, Washington, and Denver (in this order). And while New York and Los Angeles remain at the top regardless of who you are, San Antonio and Phoenix are top destinations for Hispanics, and San Francisco is a top destination for Asians.

Regardless, home appears to be a pretty sticky place.

But what about Canadians? Are we less mobile? Looking at net domestic migration rates, Canada saw 254,143 interprovincial migrants between 2018-2019, whereas the US saw just over a million between 2020-2021. So on a per capita basis, Canada's rate is actually higher.

Statistics Canada also estimated earlier this year that as of July 1, 2016, somewhere around 4 million Canadians were living abroad -- or about 11% of citizens. This is a much higher percentage compared to Americans.

Of those living abroad, roughly half are believed to have received their citizenship through descent, meaning they were born abroad to Canadian parents. About 1/3 are Canadian citizens by birth. And about 15% are naturalized citizens.

So it turns out that Canadians are in fact pretty mobile. We also seem to like going further afield.

Harvard economist Ed Glaeser and former New York City Health Commissioner Mary Bassett were recently interviewed on national radio about COVID-19 and the future of our cities. What both of them touch on is the long history that cities and pandemics have had together, which is something that Glaeser also wrote about over here in City Journal. This pandemic isn't the first and it won't be the last.

Using history as an example, Glaeser makes the argument all of this can go one of two ways. After the influenza epidemic of 1919, cities rebounded quickly. The roaring twenties were one of "the great city-building decades in American history." But on the other hand, there's the Justinian Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE), which is thought to have played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire. Glaeser argues that this plague, which took over 200 years to extinguish, is responsible for 800 years of de-urbanization across the Mediterranean. Is that so?

A quick search reveals that the impacts of the Justinian Plague are, of course, greatly contested. Some scholars have questioned whether it was actually an "inconsequential pandemic." Whatever the case may be, it doesn't change the fact that the modern world has been built around density and proximity. We are social beings and we are smarter and more productive when we are able to cluster together. That was the case in 750 CE and it remains the case today.