In 2021, one of the most surprising crypto market trends was non-fungible tokens.
As a quick recap, NFTs are rare and irreplaceable digital assets that are limited in quantity. While they can represent anything from art and memorabilia to in-game items and digital identity, non-fungibles can be easily authenticated on the blockchain, offering holders real ownership over their collections.
While NFTs have been around for some years, they only became popular last year. In addition to numerous retail investors, traders, and collectors, many well-known artists, celebrities, athletes, and billionaires have launched their non-fungible tokens.
Interestingly, critics called NFTs a fad, expecting last year's boom to disappear with the hype. However, taking a quick look at the market data, it's definitely not the case.
According to NonFungible, while weekly NFT sales are far from their massive all-time highs of nearly $1.8 billion in late August, the market is getting closer to November's highs ($935 million), after surging from $230 million on December 24 to $639 million by January 8.
Furthermore, while the number of transactions is increasing, non-fungible tokens have reached an all-time high on January 4, when the 7-day average asset USD value hit $5,215. For comparison, the highest 7-day average in the first half of 2021 was only $3,608.
Interestingly, these numbers only apply to NFT sales on Ethereum. While the latter blockchain continues to dominate the non-fungible token market, NFT-related activity is surging rapidly on competing chains, such as Solana and Terra.
Meanwhile, centralized NFT marketplaces are set to gain traction in 2022. While exchange giants like Binance and FTX already feature operational products, Coinbase's upcoming non-fungible token solution has already attracted over 1.1 million waitlist participants.
At the same time, GameStop, the video game retailer highly targeted by the meme stock mania, reportedly hired over 20 new employees to build a hub for buying and selling NFTs, indicating that an increasing number of traditional firms are also seeking to enter the sector.
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