NFT sales in December rose for the first time since August this year

The number of unique sellers has decreased this month, but the average price of one purchased token has increased

NFT sales in December rose for the first time since August of this year: $616 million worth of tokens were sold in the incomplete current month, while this figure did not reach $600 million in any autumn month. Such  data  is provided by the CryptoSlam platform, which tracks information about NFT markets.

The peak of sales of non-fungible tokens this year was in January – NFTs were sold for $4.9 billion. In June, sales of tokens began to fall, they decreased three times compared to May: from $3 billion to $924 million. In October, sales were the lowest for the year – $ 460 million, but in November they began to grow again. In total, since the beginning of the year, sales amounted to more than $21.8 billion. For the whole of 2021, about $19.8 billion.

In December, the number of unique NFT buyers decreased to 456,000. In November, there were 522,000 of them, a month earlier – 545,000. However, sales in December increased due to an increase in the average purchase price of tokens to $146. During the three months of autumn, the average price ranged from $71 in September to $134 in November.

Despite sales volumes that are incomparable with the beginning of the year, buyers show considerable interest in individual collections. The Pudgy Penguins NFT trade volume over the past 7 days has amounted to more than 1.5 thousand ETH, having increased by almost 600% over the week, according to Nansen. The minimum price (floor price) of a token from the collection, rare copies of which were sold at Sothby’s, increased by 55% over the week from 5 ETH to 7.8 ETH.

In general, the NFT market has suffered this year, as well as the cryptocurrency one. The fall in the rates of leading coins and bankruptcies in the industry led to a decrease in demand, and, consequently, prices for tokens. At the same time, the CEO of the largest NFT marketplace OpenSea, Devin Finser, tried to separate the NFT and cryptocurrency spheres – he told the Financial Times about this .

According to Finzer, it is important to understand that the NFT space is not the same as the entire crypto industry, where there is a lot of focus on financial use cases. It is not necessary that NFTs will always be bought and sold for cryptocurrencies, Finser believes.

“There are many reasons why this (selling for cryptocurrency) makes sense in the current ecosystem, but as the NFT market becomes wider and more accessible, there is no reason why NFTs could not be priced in USD,” said the head opensea.

China has already taken this path. From January 1, 2023, a national NFT marketplace will be launched  there, which will act as a secondary market for trading digital tokens and copyrights for digital assets. Buying NFTs with cryptocurrencies is prohibited in China.

China will launch its first regulated NFT trading platform on January 1, 2023, news outlet Sina News reported . The “China Digital Asset Trading Platform” will become a secondary market for non-fungible tokens. It was created with the joint participation of the state-owned companies China Technology Exchange and Art Exhibitions China, as well as the private company Huban Digital Copyrights Ltd.

The new trading platform will focus on the national culture digitization strategy, the article says. It will use blockchain and NFT as the basis for technical support for the innovative development of the cultural industry and the preservation of cultural heritage.

About CryptoSlam

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