After a record-breaking year in 2021, the market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is still not showing any signs of slowing, with NFT marketplace OpenSea seeing one of its best days on record on Monday, and sales of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club collection crossing the USD 1bn mark.
With a total of USD 255.9m changing hands on OpenSea on January 3, the day marks the highest volume for a single day since August, when the NFT mania reached its peak and gave way for a slowdown in activity during the fall, according to data compiled by the user rchen8 on Dune Analytics.
The high figure on January 3 marks a jump from USD 243m on January 2 and close to USD 170m on January 1, the data showed.
USD volume on OpenSea:
Meanwhile, cumulative sales of digital art pieces from the 10,000-piece Bored Ape Yacht Club collection reached the USD 1bn milestone during the first few days of 2022. The USD 1bn mark was crossed after sales of the NFTs on January 1 and 2 reached levels not seen since November, according to data from CryptoSlam.
So far in January, sales of NFTs from the collection have brought in USD 56.4m, compared with USD 154.8m for the entire month of December, which illustrates just how strong the NFT market has been in the new year.
The boom for the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection has come as a number of celebrities recently have purchased items from the collection. Among them is rapper Eminem, who on January 3 spent USD 462,000 on a piece, while NBA star Stephen Curry and TV comedian Jimmy Fallon have also bought it.
OpenSea still dominates
With the increasing amount of trading volume seen on OpenSea in January, it has also become clear that marketplace has manifested its position as the dominant marketplace for NFT trading.
According to DappRadar, OpenSea had by far the largest trading volume for Ethereum (ETH)-based NFTs over the past 30 days, with USD 2.73bn transacted during the period. The second-ranked platform, CryptoPunks – which deals exclusively with digital art pieces from the popular CryptoPunks collection – saw a volume of USD 162m, while the community-owned marketplace Rarible came in fourth with a 30-day volume of USD 20.
Ranking of NFT marketplaces by 30-day volume:
Despite the rising popularity, however, OpenSea has come under increasing scrutiny from the community, with some users criticizing the platform for its 2.5% commission fee, and others for its plans to take the company public.
“When you have a company growing as fast as this one, you’d be foolish not to think about it going public,” OpenSea’s new chief financial officer Brian Roberts told Bloomberg in an interview in December.
However, members of the community didn’t like what they heard, with some indicating on Twitter that they were “disappointed” by the platform not giving more back to its community.
Degenerate Ape Academy raises eyebrows in Hong Kong
Meanwhile, the Degenerate Ape Academy NFT collection has been getting attention in Hong Kong in recent days after a group of collectors put up a 90-second advertisement for the collection on a giant screen in the city’s popular Lan Kwai Fong area.
According to the South China Morning Post, the latest ad is just one out of many that have been shown on billboards around Hong Kong, with other featured collections carrying names such as Bunny Warriors and LuckyKittens.
In addition, an NFT project known as Delirious Mind Travelers raised eyebrows among commuters in the city when large banners that read “NFTs going mainstream is inevitable. Load your bags,” covered large sections of a busy underground passageway, the South China Morning Post article said.
Source: Cryptonews
