The last year or so has been a witness of how various global brands and celebrities caught the NFT fever. There were even instances wherein teenagers earned millions from NFTs, with a 21-year-old Dutch student even listing his ‘soul’ for sale as NFT!

But amidst the crypto crash this year which has brought down the prices of numerous crypto coins like Bitcoin, ether, dogecoin etc, it seems that the bloodbath in the crypto market has hurt NFT sales as well. As per a report in The Guardian, NFT sales reached a 12-month low mark in June 2022.

Sales of NFTs reportedly totalled just over $1bn (£830m) in June 2022, according to the crypto research firm Chainalysis, which is NFTs’ worst performance since June 2021, when sales were $648m. NFT Sales had reportedly reached a peak of $12.6bn in January.

“This decline is definitely linked to the broader slowdown in crypto markets,” said Ethan McMahon, a Chainalysis economist, as per the report.

“Times like this inevitably lead to consolidation within the affected markets, and for NFTs we will likely see a pullback in terms of the collections and types of NFTs that reach prominence.”

The cryptocurrency market, worth about $3trillion last November, is now worth less than $1trillion, thus wiping away over $ 2 billion in this year’s crash.

According to the Chainalysis data, NFT sales peaked in January 2022. In April an attempt to sell on the Dorsey NFT was abandoned when bids topped out at $14,000, as per the report.

However, demand for so-called blue chip NFT collections has held up, according to DappRadar, a firm that tracks NFTs and blockchain-based video games.

The price of the cheapest NFT in the Bored Ape Yacht Club has declined by only 1%, to $90,00o, over the last month, according to DappRadar’s head of research, Pedro Herrera. “Blue chip collections are performing vastly better than the vast majority of NFTs,” he said, as per the report.

NFT sales had reportedly reached $40bn last year and the 2022 total has already exceeded that, at more than $42bn, according to Chainalysis. Sales in January and February accounted for more than half of the 2022 total so far.

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Also Read: How This Indian Couple Is Building ‘Food Metaverse’ Including NFTs & Gaming

At its peak, the NFT market was reportedly attracting vaulting sums including $2.9m for a token of the first tweet by Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey. A digital collage by the visual artist Beeple sold for $69m; the main token for the “play to earn” video game Axie Infinity hit a total value of $9.75bn, and Coca-Cola raised more than $575,000 from selling digital items such as a customized jacket to be worn in the metaverse.

The cryptocurrency market has come under pressure amid volatility in the wider stock markets, amid fears over rising inflation and higher interest rates, which have dampened appetite for riskier assets including tech stocks and digital assets.

Faith in crypto assets has also been shaken by the collapse of Terra, a so-called stablecoin whose value was supposed to be pegged to the US dollar, and troubles at crypto-related financial institutions such as the Celsius Network, a lender that has paused withdrawals, The Guardian report mentioned.

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