SNEAK PEEK
- The NFT market has fallen significantly, the year concluded about on par with 2021.
- In 2022, the NFT industry generated around $24.7 billion.
- About 101 million NFT trades happened in 2022, compared to 58.6 million in 2021.
Despite months of sliding sales and costs, total NFT sales last year nearly reached their high of 2021. A brisk start to the NFT marketplace in 2022 boosted the year-end total and helped compensate for the many poorer months. The NFT business produced around $24.7 billion in natural transaction volume across blockchain networks and markets in 2022. This is a minor decrease from the $25.1 billion recorded in 2021.
Wash trading arises when dealers swap their own NFTs at obscene prices back and forth among their personal wallets, frequently in an attempt to rig a token reward mechanism on a marketplace.
The data business reported over 101 million NFT deals in 2022, compared to approximately 58.6 million NFT transactions in 2021. In other words, when crypto and NFT prices fell, more NFTs were exchanged at lower USD rates.
The crypto market has lost substantial value this year, with losses escalating in May due to the failure of Terra’s LUNA and UST. Throughout the entire year, the NFT marketplace followed a similar pattern. Sales increased in January as the enthusiasm from 2021 continued into the new year, with major exchange OpenSea alone recording a new month with $5 billion in trade volume.
Trading activity fell in the weeks that followed, but the big late April sale of NFT landholdings for Yuga Labs’ Otherside—a Bored Ape Yacht Club-themed metaverse game—boosted the market and propelled OpenSea to a single-day trading value record. At the time, it appeared that the 2022 NFT sales volume would easily surpass that of 2021.
As crypto prices fell in May, so did NFT trading momentum, causing prices to plummet drastically. According to DappRadar, monthly volume plummeted from about $3.3 billion in May to slightly over $1 billion in June, but the marketplace hasn’t risen above $1 billion in the following months.
OpenSea remained the biggest platform for organic NFT deals in December, with over $297 million in value. This is an increase from around $259 million in November.
Blur, a younger competitor that has rewarded NFT transactions with the prospect of future token payments, increased its market capitalization from around $115 million in November to around $177 million in December.
