Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) grabbed the world by storm in 2021, but their popularity has since dropped as their sales volumes continue to decline. They are now experiencing a rough moment with the rest of the cryptocurrency market.
Indeed, during the third quarter of 2022, sales of NFTs on OpenSea, the biggest marketplace for digital collectables, fell by 60% compared to the second quarter, according to statistics released on October 5 by market analytics platform Cryptounfolded.
As seen by the chart, the NFT monthly sales peaked in January 2022, when they crossed $4 billion, before plummeting significantly in June and continuing their steady slide since then.
Late in September, Finbold reported that NFT monthly trading volume had decreased for the seventh consecutive month, falling 97% from its January high and settling at at $466 million in September, according to data from Dunn Analytics.
Earlier in August, statistics indicated that the volume of NFT trades in the second quarter had already decreased by 40 percent due to waning interest in digital collectables as a result of substantial issues facing the crypto business. Similarly, it was reported at the end of August that the amount of NFT trading on OpenSea had decreased to a one-year low.
As shown by a June poll, the declining popularity of NFTs might be largely related to the fact that the great majority of individuals, or more than 64%, only acquired digital collectables in order to resell them for a profit.
Others (14.7%) bought them to “join a community and flex,” while just 12.4% of NFT customers bought them to collect digital art and a very small number (8.6%) bought them to get access to games and tools.
Katie Haun, the founder of a $1.5 billion Web3 venture capital (VC) company Haun Ventures, who had predicted that NFTs will make a return, is among the crypto community members who are still enthusiastic about non-fungible tokens.
According to her, this resurgence would be largely driven by the overall transition towards a digital world, which, if the infrastructure is improved, “more efficient and user-friendly,” would enable a multitude of new use cases.
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