Metaverse, NFT tokens have fallen more than 20% this week

Gaming and NFT-related cryptocurrencies, including Flow (FLOW), Stepn (GMT), Axie Infinity (AXS), Decentraland (MANA), and Gala (GALA), have seen heavy losses in the past week.

FLOW, the token that powers all things on the layer-1 blockchain flow, has fallen more than 23% in the past week, according to data from CoinMarketCap. FLOW has been bullish since Instagram’s integration earlier this month.

After a week of bearish action, FLOW is now trading at $2.09, up 0.02% in the last 24 hours. Despite today’s modest recovery, FLOW is still down 95.50% from its April 2021 high of $46.16, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Interestingly, FLOW-based NFT trading volumes increased by 52.64% in the last week, data from CryptoSlam.

Meanwhile, the token price of Solana-based move-to-earn play STEPN governance token has fallen 31% in the past week, making it the worst performer among NFT-related tokens, data from CoinMarketCap.

Despite STEPN’s collaboration with the football club Athletico de Madrid last week GMT ended deep in the red.

Today, GMT is up a meager 0.3% and trading at around $0.76, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Over 454.11,000 GMT trades have been liquidated in the past 24 hours, data from Coinglass. Of these liquidations, 86.46% were long positions.

Not only GMT and FLOW, other widespread metaverse and NFT-related tokens also posted severe losses last week.

Axie Infinity’s AXS governance token fell nearly 22% last week, Ethereum metaverse game Decentraland’s MANA token also lost 20%, and play-to-earn platform Gala’s GALA token has fallen more than 22% in the past week.

What is it that moves the metaverse?

The primary reason behind last week’s bearish price action across the market is likely to be due to further calls for further rate hikes in September.

As of this writing, nearly $134 million in positions have been liquidated in the past 24 hours as crypto prices continue to rise, according to data from Coinglass.

A closer look at overall NFT sales also paints a bearish picture. Total volume has fallen by 15.71% in the past week, as reported by the NFT data platform CryptoSlam.

Weekly metaverse sales on Decentraland and Sandbox hit a new all-time low last week, according to data from Dune Analytics.

Decentraland sales were down almost 90% from $78,897 just two weeks ago to $7,613 last week.

When it comes to market leaders within Bitcoin and Ethereum, they too have lost significant value in the past week. Bitcoin fell 10.5% in the past week, and Ethereum fell 14.3% over the same period.