The global NFT markets are showing signs of a rebound with rising sales and trading volumes witnessed in the past few weeks. Last week, single Ethereum NFT from the popular CryptoPunks and BAYC collections were each sold for more than US $1 million worth of ETH.
CryptoPunks #5066 was sold last week for 857 ETH, which was equivalent to US $1.4 million at that time.
It was sold by Kevin Rose, the co-founder of Moonbirds as well as a venture capitalist, serial entrepreneur and noted NFT collector. The BAYC #7990 was sold for 800 ETH or equivalent to US $1.3 million.
In an additional sign of revival of investor sentiments, around 348,426 buyers of NFT hit the market in one week in January, which was higher by 41 per cent from the corresponding figure during the previous week.
The NFT sales volume also rose during that period, with more than US $244 million in sales, thereby representing an increase of 5.4 per cent. The NFT sales volume has already surpassed that of December.on the world’s largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea. Incidentally, this is the first time in a year that Ethereum NFT monthly sales have increased back-to-back.
According to the publicly accessible blockchain data on analytics platform, Dune, OpenSea has handled more Ethereum NFT trades than US $320 million in January, surpassing the amount processed in December, which was roughly US $283.5 million. In addition to that, OpenSea achieved sales growth in December for the first time since April 2022, increasing from US $253 million in November.
The increase in NFT sales volume and also of buyers rose in line with the increase with the prices of crypto currencies such as Bitcoin in January. The price of Bitcoin rose considerably in January and its value soared 35 per cent over the first two weeks in January. According to the NFT data platform, CryptoSlam, there have been more than 419,000 unique buyers till date.
Simultaneously, the global sales volume of NFT has seen an increase of 5.4 per cent during the period. The total NFT sales for the month stood at 623,439, 866 for the month, while the total transactions was nearly 4.2 million. In December, the figure was 4.7 million.
According to some industry experts, the rally in NFT is influenced by the increasing price of Ethereum, which has risen by a third in January. However, in terms of ETH, the January sales of OpenSea barely surpassed the total for December with more than 228,000 ETH this month, as opposed to 227,000 ETH in December. Around 191,000 ETH worth of Ethereum NFT were sold by OpenSea in November.
Although the recent growth is a sign of revival and raises hope for the sector following months of declining sales, the numbers also point out the extent to which the market has declined over the previous year, OpenSea recorded its best ever month in January 2022, mainly due to sales of US 4.86 billion in Ethereum NFT.
Meanwhile there are other data points outside OpenSea that also indicate a potential rally in the NFT market. Some of the top NFT collections are seeing increases in their respective prices, as mentioned earlier. In fact, the cheapest Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT has seen its ETH value increase to US $108,000 in January from US $84,500 over the previous 30 days.
Similarly, the ETH value of CryptoPunks has increased from US 76,500 to US $108,000 during the same period. Moreover, sales of BAYC NFT have increased by 45 per cent over the past month, while sales of Azuki NFT and Art Blocks have increased by 89 per cent and 62 per cent respectively. The BAYC and related collections are currently driving NFT trading volumes, with the Yuga Labs initiatives accounting for nearly half of all Ethereum NFT trading volume in one January week.
Besides, CryptoSlam data reveals a 33 per cent increase in Ethereum NFT sales volume and a whopping 95 per cent increase in Solana NFT during that time.
