NFTs Soared in 2021. Now They’re Sinking

The NFT market seems to be affected by the bearish sentiment prevailing within the broader crypto and conventional markets. Buying and selling volumes on the biggest NFT market OpenSea are trending down, whereas flooring costs of many so-called blue-chip NFTs hold falling. 

Blue Chip NFTs Endure in Market Drawdown

After a mainstream explosion all through early 2021 and the start of this yr, the NFT market is bleeding within the newest crypto downtrend. The ground costs of many high-value NFTs have dipped since hitting all-time highs across the finish of January.

Regardless of a robust begin at first of the yr, the ground costs for a lot of the high blue chip NFT initiatives fell all through everything of February. Bored Ape Yacht Membership, arguably probably the most sought-after NFT mission of all, is among the many hardest hit, tanking roughly 40% in Ethereum-denominated phrases for the reason that starting of February.

In dollar-denominated phrases, the latest worth motion for Bored Ape Yacht Membership NFTs is even worse. On the all-time excessive costs reached on the finish of January, the most affordable JPEG from the cartoon monkey assortment would’ve set consumers again 118 Ethereum value round $436,000 on the time. The ground worth for the gathering as we speak is round 72 Ethereum, or $182,000. That’s a 58% decline in greenback phrases. 

CryptoPunks, the second most beneficial NFT mission by market capitalization, hasn’t fared any higher. The Larva Labs assortment hit an all-time excessive flooring worth of round 123 Ethereum in October and is at present buying and selling at round 66.5 Ethereum. As Ethereum can be down since October, CryptoPunks have misplaced round 60% of their greenback worth. 

Different in-demand, albeit newer and less-established initiatives like Doodles, Azuki, and Invisible Pals additionally skilled worth drops during the last 30 days. Doodles is all the way down to 10.35 Ethereum after hitting a excessive of 16.25 Ethereum, whereas Azuki and Invisible Pals have each additionally tumbled. 

The plunge in flooring costs for blue-chip NFTs additionally coincides with an identical discount in buying and selling volumes. Per Dune Analytics information, the biggest NFT market, OpenSea, hit a peak of $4.95 billion in quantity in January, however exercise slowed in February with the overall quantity hitting $3.5 billion. 

day by day volumes, the chart exhibits a constant downtrend. Yesterday, for instance, OpenSea noticed its slowest day of buying and selling exercise during the last 100 days, with quantity at round $48 million. For comparability, on Jan. 31, the perfect day for {the marketplace} over the identical interval, OpenSea noticed virtually $360 million in buying and selling quantity for the day.

The second-largest NFT market and direct OpenSea competitor, LooksRare, additionally noticed its buying and selling quantity sink within the second half of February, regardless of orchestrating an aggressive liquidity mining occasion to draw as many NFT merchants to its platform as attainable. The platform’s buying and selling exercise has subsided from staying persistently above $400 million in day by day quantity within the first half of January to a median day by day quantity of round $70 million during the last ten days.

Disclosure: On the time of writing, the writer of this piece owned ETH and several other different cryptocurrencies.