NFT Trading Volume Continues to Drop Sharply Since Hitting an ATH in August

Non-fungible token (NFT) mania seems to now be losing its heat as the floor price of digital art starts to fall.

Also, on Google, the trend for the search term “NFT” has topped out earlier this year. During the August 24 – Sept. 4 time period, the interest in NFTs on Google reached a reading of 100 and since then has fallen to 83.

However, back in mid-March, this reading was 82, only to tumble to 21 in late June, but then it, of course, started climbing from there.

The floor price of CryptoPunks fell below 80 ETH. pic.twitter.com/aD3Cwbl0IK

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 14, 2021

But more importantly, volumes are dropping in the digital art space.

In the last week, NFT sales started the week just above 31k ETH, to nearly halving by the end of the week to under 18k ETH before making it back to 26,500 ETH the next day.

NFT trading volume has dropped precipitously since August all-time highs… 30d chart below👀📉 pic.twitter.com/kWaxUZukWB

— Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) September 13, 2021

Daily volume on NFT marketplace OpenSea also topped at nearly $323 million on August 29, and ever since then, it has been on a continuous decline, recording $25 million on Sept 14, according to Dune Analytics.

As for monthly volume, OpenSea hit a record of $3.42 billion in August, up from $326 million the previous month. In the first half of September, we have roughly $1.53 billion. As for monthly active traders, after surging from 62,756 in July to about 218k in August, it is currently just above 175k.

Despite this, for now, OpenSea is the biggest gas guzzler still on the Ethereum Network.

Still, several NFT projects such as Cool Cats and CyberKongz NFTs have been doing well on the back of utility token implementations.

According to William Quigley, the co-founder of stablecoin Tether (USDT) and Worldwide Asset eXchange (WAX), the metaverse is a huge economic force, and he is “betting” on NFTs to be the revenue model for the metaverse.

Talking about the NFT growth, Quigley said, the whole market was driven by the value of Ethereum, and it is “not a mass-market phenomenon” as not many traditional art buyers have switched from Rembrandt to CryptoPunk.

“From a consumer-product standpoint, what's interesting to me is not one NFT selling for $1 million, but a million NFTs being sold at $1 each. A brand-new business for digital collectibles. That seems to me to have longer legs and overall a bigger market.”

Meanwhile, the NFT company Recur reached a $333 million valuation after it raised $50 million in its series A funding round led by a metaverse investment platform backed by the family office of billionaire Steven Cohen, the owner of Point72 Asset Management.

Cohen will also be joining Recur’s board as Digital’s initial designated director. Other backers in Recur included Delhi Ventures, CMT Digital, and Gary Vaynerchuk.