People Are Now Searching for NFT More than DeFi on Google

The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) mania is now outpacing decentralized finance (DeFi). The search interest for NFT gained traction in the middle of January 2021, and last week more people were busy learning about digital collectibles more than DeFi in the US, as per Google Trends.

In the US, interest in NFTs first gained more traction than DeFi briefly at the beginning of the month and then sustained this uptrend over the weekend of Feb. 13. On Feb. 19, while NFT had a reading of 100, on a 0-100 scale, the search interest in DeFi wasn’t even half of that, at 46. Qiao Wang of DeFi Alliance noted,

“A little bit surprised how fast this is happening but not really surprised either. As things *currently* stand, digital collectibles and gaming are much more appealing to the mainstream than permissionless casinos.”

Source: Google Trends

Worldwide, NFT phenomena still had some catching up to do with the interest in the search term DeFi having a reading of 100 while NFTs have about half of that at 56.

This interest has the trading volume on NFT marketplaces skyrocketing, going from mere less than $500k in mid-January to now beyond $50 million. The most popular marketplaces are NBA TopShot, CryptoPunks, OpenSea, and Rarible, as per DappRadar.

This makes sense given that NFT pieces are being sold for an exorbitant amount of money, in some instances more than a million dollars.

The average SuperRare piece is currently being sold for just over 3 ETH, which recently hit a new ATH above $2,000. Recently, the internet sensation Nyan Cat was sold for a whopping 300 ETH.

The primary benefit of these digital collectibles is that each NFT is unique and can be traced back to its original issuer. And because no two NFTs are identical, they cannot be exchanged with one another.

Ethereum is the popular platform for creating these NFTs, using its ERC-721 and ERC-1155 token standards. Other blockchains are now joining in, like Tron, BSC, and NEO, to capture this trend.

As we reported, major auction house Christie’s is also selling a completely digital artwork and accepting Ether for it as well.

NFTs are also gaining a lot of interest from celebrities and investors like Mark Cuban and Chamath Palihapitiya, who see them as the future and the next frontier of digital currencies.