The $ 3 Billion Monkey And The $ 2 Billion Stone. What’s Going On In The NFT Space?

In 2021, the popularity of non fungible tokens has grown exponentially. The rapid growth is also shown by the value of NFT. How the industry has developed in recent months and what to expect from it in the future.

August saw the second boom in the non fungible token (NFT) sector this year. This is indicated by the multiple growth of the monthly trading volume on the OpenSea NFT marketplace.

On August 30, the figure exceeded $ 3 billion, according to Dune Analytics. This is almost ten times more than in July ($ 325 million).

The first wave of popularity of the NFT sector came at the beginning of the year. In the first half of 2021, the humanoid robot Sophia, the singer of The Weeknd, the American football player Tom Brady, the Mumiy Troll group, the director Kevin Smith, the legendary football player Pele, the boxer Floyd Mayweather and many others issued their own NFT tokens. …

In the first six months of 2021, sales of non fungible tokens reached a record $ 2.5 billion. In 2020, NFT sales were $ 95 million – 26 times less.

CryptoPunk

One of the most popular collections in the NFT sector is CryptoPunk. The collection consists of 10 thousand digital avatars in the form of people, monkeys, aliens and other creatures.

The most expensive token from the collection is considered “Alien” # 7523 (“Alien”), which in June was sold for $ 11.8 million at Sotheby’s.

Moments ago in our #London saleroom, an extremely rare “Alien” CryptoPunk #7523 from the collection of @sillytuna sold for $11.8M as part of our #NativelyDigital NFT auction – setting a new world auction record for a single CryptoPunk. pic.twitter.com/PDVUSttI3o

— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) June 10, 2021

On August 23, it became known that Visa bought the CryptoPunk # 7610 NFT token for $ 150 thousand. The company used the services of the first US federal-level cryptocurrency bank Anchorage.

Visa did not interact with Ethereum to buy the token, but instead executed the transaction using fiat currency. CryptoPunk # 7610 is also stored by Anchorage.

Within an hour after the purchase of the NFT token by Visa, the authors of the CryptoPunk collection sold over 60 NFTs.

The cost of each token exceeded $ 200 thousand. According to CryptoSlam, on August 28, the daily trading volume of CryproPunks tokens exceeded $ 143.6 million.

EtherRock

In August, NFT tokens from the EtherRock collection, which was created in 2017 and consists of one hundred identical patterns of stones, gained popularity.

At the moment, NFT tokens from the collection are offered for resale on various marketplaces. Their cost ranges from $ 96 thousand to $ 1.9 billion.

The total trading volume of EtherRock tokens exceeded $ 15.5 million (4.9 ETH), according to the OpenSea marketplace.

On August 8, an unknown person purchased a non-fungible token from the EtherRock collection for $ 135,000 (45 Ethereum at the time of purchase).

On the same day, another NFT token EtherRock was purchased for $ 103.9 thousand (33 Ethereum at the time of purchase).

EtherRock #21 purchased for Ξ45 Ether ($135,240.03)

30 mins ago (Aug-08-2021 05:17:15 PM +UTC)

Txn: https://t.co/1zx7A3jkyS#EtherRock #EtherRocks pic.twitter.com/UNAUlhDWrW

— EtherRock Price (@etherrockprice) August 8, 2021

On August 22, TRON CEO Justin Sun announced the purchase of an NFT token from the EthereRock collection for $ 611,000 (187 ETH). The purchase was also confirmed by the APENFT service, to which Sun transferred the token for storage.

Bored ape yacht club

As of August 28, the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project raised $ 96 million in a public sale of 10 thousand tokens and gave a free distribution of a similar number of special “potions” to the owners of NFTs from the collection.

Potions provide an opportunity to create a new token from the collection. Thus, the number of tokens in the collection can double.

how it started how it's going pic.twitter.com/lTEqvknmoL

— medved (@mattmedved) August 29, 2021

Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 monkey drawings of NFT tokens issued on the Ethereum blockchain.

The non-fungible token from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection was bought by NBA player Stephen Curry for $ 180,000 (55 ETH).

The basketball player installed the purchased picture on the avatar of his profile on the social network Twitter.

The daily trading volume of Bored Ape Yacht Club tokens on August 28 exceeded $ 55.6 million. Since August 22, this figure has grown by 782%.

At the moment, the most expensive NFT token from the collection is sold for $ 3.1 billion (999.9 thousand ETH).

Why interest in NFT will increase?

In the near future, interest in the technology of non-fungible tokens will grow, says Mikhail Karkhalev, financial analyst at Currency.com crypto exchange.

According to Mikhail, the matter is not even in the cost of works of art and other items, but in what prospects the NFT direction opens up for various sectors of the economy: media, real estate, etc.

“This is, in a sense, a sandbox, in which they try and test something new for the development of certain sectors of the economy,” the analyst believes.

The reason for the popularity of the CryptoPunks project is that this is the first such collection created on the Ethereum blockchain, says Yuri Mazur, head of the data analysis department at CEX.IO Broker.

In his opinion, the secret to the success of the EtherRock and Bored Ape Yacht Club projects lies in marketing.

As the metauniverses continue to emerge in the form of virtual and augmented reality artifacts, as well as collecting digital assets such as artwork, various cards, and gaming goods, Mazur believes it is realistic to expect continued expansion in the market for non-fungible tokens. As a result, the industry will expand and attract new players.

Is it worth investing in NFT?

Karkhalev believes that investors, not art enthusiasts, should avoid NFT tokens . Non fungible tokens, in his opinion, are not suitable for traditional investment because it is often difficult to appraise the potential of art objects in the form of NFTs objectively.

“NFT will still make a revolution in many areas of our life, just talking about the direction in the context of investments, in my opinion, is still pointless,” the analyst added.