Time.news – Non-fungible token sales (better known as NFTs) are decreased by 60% in the third quartergoing from $ 8.4 billion in the previous quarter to $ 3.4 billion (the first quarter of the year had marked $ 12.5 billion in sales).
This is what emerges from the data of DappRadar, an analysis and monitoring platform for decentralized applications (DApp) and non-fungible tokens (an NFT is a blockchain-based digital asset that represents the ownership of a digital file, such as an image, a video or an element in a digital game).
The numbers are also confirmed in the analysis of the sales made on OpenSea: on the largest NFT market sales declined in September for the fifth consecutive month. According to numbers from the NonFungible.com platform, the number of weekly NFT shoppers has more than halved since the peak at the end of January.
The data of Art Market Research on the art market then speak for themselves: the combined NFT sales of Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Phillips and Bonhams, since the beginning of the year, are steady at $ 9.41 million. Last year in the same period we were at 144 million.
The NFT sales crisis is to be traced back to the cryptocurrency crisis, of which non-fungible tokens are part of the market. Crisis also known as the “winter of cryptocurrencies”, a periphrase that indicates a prolonged period (therefore beyond the normal fluctuation of the main digital currencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum in the lead) of the decline in the value of cryptocurrencies.
A phase in which, according to analysts, we entered at the beginning of 2022 (first “winter” 2013/2014, second winter 2018) and that it will last a long time. In 2021, the nascent NFT market benefited from rising cryptocurrency prices and high risk appetite among investors. These conditions have changed in 2022: the increase in central bank rates has pushed investors to abandon risky assets. On 4 October 2021 a bitcoin was trading at 41,535.25 euros, today at 20,213.26.