The sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have increased to record highs in the first half of 2021. There has been $2.5 billion in NFT sales in the first six months of the year according to DappRadar data. DappRadar reported a massive increase over the $13.7 million in sales for the same period in 2021.
NFT sales in June alone have exceeded those for the whole first six months of 2021 for the OpenSea marketplace. While citing statistics from Dune Analytics, Reuters reported that last month has been a record month for the OpenSea NFT marketplace with nearly $150 million in sales.
These sales numbers are nearly 1,000$ higher than the sales figure of all markets in the first half of 2021. NFT enthusiasts and buyers view the tokens as unique digital collectibles with intrinsic value due to their cultural significance. The others just treat them as investments as they speculate on rising prices.
Based on NonFungible.com that aggregates Ethereum-based NFT transactions, there have been 10,000 to 20,000 buyers per week since early March. The NFT tracking and discovery platform reported that there had been about $1.3 billion in sales for that period, but excluded nearly $8 billion in decentralized finance-based non-fungible tokens.
The most notable and prolific NFT sale so far is the famous artist Beeple with his “Everydays: The First 500 Days”. It fetched around $69 million in March after a Christie’s auction.
Sales figures acquired from analytics platforms like DappRadar just track on-chain transactions which means that the NFTs sold at auctions might have a part of the transaction happen off-chain. Hence, they have to be manually added to the data, according to Reuters.
Sports-themed and collectible NFTs are now the most popular according to data received from Non-fungible with digital art coming in third place. Nearly 300,000 sports-related tokens have now been sold in the first half of the year compared to 124,000 for art. Its most recent figures for June 6 reported nearly 140,000 total NFT sales on the day for Ethereum-based tokens.
Based on reports that emerged in June, the NFT transaction volume has increased by over 25 times since December 2021 as they aim to usher in a new paradigm of interacting with the media, sports, culture, and music.
