NFT Market Hits $2.5B In Six Months

The sales volume for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) hit $2.5 billion in the first six months of this year, up from a total of $13.7 million in all of 2020, Fox News reported, citing data from the NFT marketplace OpenSea and other marketplace data.

OpenSea’s NFT sales hit a record high in June, with volume reaching almost $125 million, the data show.

Some 10,000 to 20,000 buys have purchased NFTs on the ethereum blockchain every week since March, outnumbering sellers, according to data aggregator NonFungible.com, which culls information exclusively on the ethereum blockchain. Transactions totaled $1.3 billion, minus roughly $8 billion of decentralized finance (DeFi) NFTs, the news outlet reported.

Trading volume hit just under $2.5 billion for the first half of 2021, according to DappRadar, which aggregates sales figures across multiple blockchains, Fox reported.

Both DappRadar and NonFungible.com monitor sales that happen on the blockchain. Sales from other avenues, such as auction houses, are added to the total separately. In March, for example, Christie’s auction house sold a digital image as an NFT for a historic $69.3 million. Sotheby’s sold the second-highest NFT — CryptoPunk — for $11.8 million.

The National Basketball Association Top Shot is an NFT trading site for fans that has seen a decline in volume as the number of buyers dropped to 246,000 in June from 403,000 in March. Sales of the Top Shot “moment” hit a high of $182 in February but decreased to 246,000 last month.

Earlier last month, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (formerly New England Patriots) tight-end Rob Gronkowski said he was looking to sell more than 300 NFTs spotlighting moments from the four Super Bowls of his career.

Beeple, the artist behind Christie’s near $70 million sales, said that before NFTs there wasn’t a legitimate way for people to collect digital art.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told PYMNTS in a March interview that blockchains open up possibilities as a model for creators and artists to “monetize their work in a patronage form.”