Is Opensea threatened when GameStop launches NFT marketplace in the middle of NFT winter?

• Over the past couple of months, NFT sales have been falling lower and lower every day.
• Opensea’s daily trades have reduced from 217,000 to 20,800 in just five months.
• GameStop, in partnership with ImmutableX, launched its new NFT marketplace.

The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market has been called a bubble for its entire existence, with many expecting the same to burst soon. Although NFTs are becoming an important means of marketing in the mainstream media, the actual market is consistently losing money. On top of that, new competition is emerging in the form of GameStop.

Opensea and NFTs

Despite 2022 being one of the worst years for the crypto market, NFTs seemed to have lured traders during the first half of the year. The first month of the first quarter, January, recorded the highest volume of NFT sales for Opensea, exceeding $5.86 billion. This was followed by April, when total monthly sales again exceeded $5 billion.

But the months after April recorded the worst figures for NFT sales. While Opensea only sold $3.1 billion worth of NFTs in May, volume fell below $1 billion in June to settle at $826 million.

With the end of October today, the total NFT sales recorded over the past 30 months barely passed $300 million.

Opensea’s monthly trading volume

While the price of NFTs may not have been affected, the lack of crypto market mining kept NFT traders away for a while. This is also visible on Opensea’s daily trade count, where the total has fallen from 217,000 in May to 20,895 on Monday.

Opensea daily trades

The condition of other NFT marketplaces is no better. Being the largest marketplace in existence, Opensea represents more than 66% of all NFT sales volume. The combined sales of all marketplaces, including Opensea, barely exceeded 450 million dollars.

Despite this, GameStop launched its own NFT marketplace on Monday.

GameStop enters the arena

The 38-year-old video game retailer set foot in the NFT space with the Ethereum-based tier-two solution ImmutableX. Through this partnership, ImmutableX intends to onboard millions of GameStop players and GameStop Powerup Pro loyalty customers across the US

NFT sale of all marketplaces

The marketplace is also built with environmental conservation in mind, enabling 100% gas-free and carbon-neutral coining and trading. However, with the launch at a time when NFT sales are suffering, GameStop may not be able to attract many traders immediately.

But if it succeeds, Opensea and other legacy NFT marketplaces could be threatened.