NFT Trading Volume Has Dropped by 97 percent since the start of the year
NFTs have been steadily declining for months, and new data highlights how bad things have gotten: trading volume has fallen by 97% since the start of 2022, and digital collectibles have essentially lost all of their appeal.
According to a Bloomberg study, trading activity for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has fallen dramatically over the past nine months, from $17 billion in January to a meagre 466 million this month.
NFTs are now below the level they were at just before the summer of 2021 NFT boom, which caused the creation of NFTs to soar in popularity.
According to Gizmodo, sales at OpenSea, the leading NFT online marketplace by volume, fell by 75% in September when compared to the same period last year. This is true even when there are fewer traders overall despite a decline in the volume of trades. In September of this year, there were more than 42,000 traders overall, down from a peak of slightly above 45,000 in March.
Almost $2 trillion has already been squandered in the cryptocurrency market since May. The actual worth of these digital items has therefore almost all been lost, despite the fact that the base of the NFT trading industry is still active and obviously expecting for a recovery.
NFTs have always generated controversy. Numerous well-known companies tried to capitalise on the NFT hype for about a year, including top-tier auction houses, Twitter, Meta, Canon, and even the Associated Press. In an effort to try to sell NFT artwork to be exhibited on their televisions, even Samsung and LG developed NFT-specific markets.
The greatest value of an individual NFT and 100 actual images trading for $1.11 million indicates how popular NFTs of photography were.
One auction firm auctioned historical glass plate images alongside an NFT and told the top buyer to destroy the original versions, possibly the best illustration of the folly of the trend. This shows how intense the need for and hype around digital collectibles was. However, the NFT format was replete with abuse even with these legal attempts.
Almost 80% of the NFTs that have been generated for free on OpenSea were found to be false or stolen in January, it was discovered. The same NFT marketplace that gained notoriety for selling Jack Dorsey’s initial tweet for $2.9 million suspended trading the following month due to extensive fraud. Stories like this undoubtedly did not contribute to maintaining cryptocurrency enthusiasm among the general public.
These digital collectibles are definitely not moving in the right direction in terms of value, even though Meta is still pushing for NFT support on its platforms, probably as a way to cash in on Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of a metaverse (the push into which has caused the company to lose billions).
