NFT trading volume has fallen 97% since the beginning of the year
NFTs have been in steady decline for months, and new data shows just how bad it’s gotten: digital collectibles have largely lost all luster and trading volume has collapsed by 97% since the start of 2022.
ONE Bloomberg the report shows trading volume for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has gone from $17 billion in January to a paltry $466 million this month, a massive 97% drop in nine months, Gizmodo reports.
This collapse puts NFTs below the point they were at just before the NFT boom that took place in the summer of 2021, which saw the creation of NFTs explode in popularity. Gizmodo notes that OpenSea, which is the largest NFT trading platform by volume, saw sales drop 75% in September compared to just two months earlier. This despite the fact that the number of traders has not really fallen much, even though the number of traders has collapsed. There were over 42,000 total traders in September this year compared to a peak of just over 45,000 in March.
Since May, nearly $2 trillion has been lost in the crypto space. So while the core of the NFT trading market still exists, and is clearly hoping for a rebound, the actual value of these digital products has been almost completely erased.
NFTs have been nothing if not controversial. For about a year, several high-profile organizations, ranging from top-tier auction houses, to Twitter and Meta, and even Canon and the Associated Press tried to get in on the NFT hype. Even Samsung and LG launched NFT-specific marketplaces to try and sell NFT artwork to be displayed on their TVs.
Photography NFTs were particularly popular, with the highest value of a single NFT and 100 physical photos selling for $1.11 million.
So strong was this desire and hype for digital collectibles that one auction house sold historic glass plate images along with an NFT and instructed the top buyer to smash the originals, which is perhaps the perfect example of the absurdity of the fad. But even with these legitimate NFT pushes, the format was rife with exploitation. In January, it was revealed that over 80% of the NFTs minted for free on OpenSea were fake or stolen. The next month, the same NFT marketplace that famously sold Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.9 million halted trading due to widespread fraud. Stories like these certainly didn’t help keep the crypto hype alive with the average person.
Although Meta is still pushing for NFT support on its platforms, likely as a way to cash in on Mark Zuckerberg’s fever dream of a metaverse (pushed in that has seen the company lose billions), these digital collectibles are certainly not on the way right. direction in terms of value.
Image credit: Top image licensed via Depositphotos.
