Despite the recent surge in digital asset prices, the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market has maintained its bearish stance. Over the past week, flagship cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin witnessed a remarkable 22% price jump, reaching a high of $35,000 on Monday, up from $28,000. This rally spurred much of the crypto industry, with only two assets—Huobi’s HT and Trust Wallet’s TWT—among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ending the week in the red, according to CoinGecko.
In stark contrast, the NFT sector has struggled to follow suit. Data from Nansen reveals that floor prices, representing the lowest price at which a single NFT from a specific collection can be acquired, have dipped on a 7-day basis for major NFT projects like CryptoPunks and Pudgy Penguins, marking a 4% and 5% decrease, respectively.
The Nansen NFT-500 index continues to face downward pressure, currently standing at a value of 308, a stark contrast to its yearly high of 1,700 set in October. On October 24, both the total number of buyer addresses (7,200) and first-time buyers (920) reached yearly lows.
Nonetheless, certain metrics suggest a silver lining for the NFT sector. Overall trading volumes seem to have hit a floor. For the week ending on October 9, mainnet Ethereum trading volumes reached a yearly low of 29,742 ETH, equivalent to under $50 million. Since then, trading volumes have rebounded, with the week ending on October 23 witnessing the exchange of 47,369 ETH in NFTs, valued at over $85 million.
Additionally, there has been a surge in the number of “active projects”—collections with sales that have surpassed benchmarks like 10, 100, and 1,000 ETH. On October 8, active projects hit a low of 41 collections, a figure that has now grown to 80. This suggests a potential resurgence in interest and activity within the NFT space, even as the broader cryptocurrency market experiences substantial growth.
