Axie Infinity Leads Metaverse, NFT Token Rally as Trading Volume Increases

Metaverse and NFT-focused cryptocurrencies, including Axie Infinity (AXS),Flow (FLOW), Apecoin (APE) and Sandbox (SAND) have made significant gains in the last 24 hours.

Play-to-earn (P2E) gaming platform Axie Infinity’s AXS governance token surged 25.6% in the past 24 hours, making it the biggest gainer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies, as of Coingecko.

At the time of writing, AXS is trading at around $8.54 and is the 46th largest cryptocurrency with a market cap just north of $970 million.

Despite today’s heroics, AXS has had a rocky 2022. AXS lost nearly 94.8% of its value from its all-time high of $164.90 in November 2021.

According to NFT’s data platform CryptoSlamtrading volume for Axie Infinity has ranged between approximately $18,000 and as high as $48,000 in recent weeks.

Given today’s bullish price action, approximately $20,000 in AXS short trades were liquidated in the last 24 hours, according to Coinglass.

Meanwhile, the token that powers the Flow blockchain has risen more than 5.5% in the past 24 hours and is trading at around $1.15, per data from Coingecko.

In August 2022, Instagram integrated Flow-based NFTs pumped the token’s price to $3. Since then, however, FLOW has been on a downward trend.

At the time of writing, FLOW has lost 97.3% of its value since its all-time high of $42.40 in April 2021.

Apecoin (APE), the Ethereum-based token created for the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) ecosystem, has also gained nearly 4% in the last 24 hours and is trading at around $4.12 per share. Coingecko.

The 34th largest cryptocurrency APE’s daily trading volume increased by 66% to $192 million in the last day.

SAND, the token that powers the virtual real estate project The Sandbox, is up 6.7% to $0.62 in the last 24 hours, joining the broadly driven NFT-based token rally.

In accordance Coingecko, SAND gained nearly 9% in the past week. But the bullish week has not been strong enough to reverse its annual losses. In November 2021, SAND rose as high as $8.40.

What is pumping the metaverse?

The main reason for the bullish price action of metaverse and NFT-related tokens is the increasing volume of sales in the last 24 hours.

According to data from CryptoSlamincreased total NFT sales volume 20.75% in the last 24 hours to just over $16.5 million.

Ethereum-based NFTs in particular saw a 31.36% increase in daily trading volumes, followed by Flow at 16.28%, likely contributing to the token’s recent rally.

Yuga Lab’s NFT collections Otherdeed, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) combined accounted for roughly 40% of the Ethereum-based NFT’s trading volume, helping APE ride its fortunes.

Beyond NFT and metaverse tokens, cryptocurrencies are making inroads Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) has also risen 1.6% and 2.7% in the last 24 hours. The total cryptocurrency market is also up 2%, amounting to more than $906 billion at press time.