The latest market analysis confirmed that the monthly figures of non-fungible tokens (NFT) buyers in February have extensively dropped to levels below 800,000 for the first time since October 2021. The total search volumes for NFTs also plummeted significantly over the same period.
Since the start of 2021, the NFT market experienced massive growth that attracted many investors to the nascent sector which pushed it relatively mainstream. In that context, the sector has grown leaps and bounds in the past 14 months as more investors keep coming in. But, February registered a slowdown in the uptake of the nonfungible tokens.
Data acquired from CryptoSlam indicates that the secondary markets had 796,009 NFT buyers in February, which represents a 12% decrease from January and 40% compared to December 2021, respectively. Unfortunately, this is the first time since October 2021 that the figure has dropped below 800,000.
Nonetheless, it is worth noting that January was an impressive month for non-fungible tokens, suggesting that the deceases in February were simply healthy pullbacks. According to OpenSea NFT marketplace, January recorded 904,135 buyers with NFT players accounting for $5 billion before pulling back to around $3 billion last month.
In a relatively related contrast, the global keyword search volume for “NFT” on Google Trends, also dropped significantly over the same month. In February, the search interest dropped roughly 60-70% from the previous heights of late January (from January 23 to January 29).
According to Google, the United States continues representing the most interest globally. Japan shows the lowest interest in NFTs out of 61 crypto-friendly nations, despite giant tech firm Rakuten launching an NFT marketplace late last month.
In a recent short interview, Andrew Steinwold, an NFT proponent and managing partner of NFT Investment Fund “Sfermion,” compared the current interest pull back to the bull market and subsequent market crash in 2017 and 2018. However, Steinwold believes the NFT interest will pick again soon.
In the meantime, specific reasons that may have attracted the dramatic reduction of NFT interest are not yet clear. However, the $1.7 million hack event on OpenSea in February may be one of the factors, among other things.
But interestingly, the ongoing geopolitics between Russia and Ukraine may help restore the focus to cryptocurrencies as the global attention now appears shifting to more use cases of digital assets in fundraising and storing value amid uncertain times. In this case, UkraineDAO is a perfect example, having raised $6.7 million via NFT sales to help Ukrainian citizens.
NFT Market Health This Month So Far
According to CryptoSlam, 10 out of the top 12 non-fungible tokens (NFT) supporting blockchains have recorded a decrease in sale volumes over the past 48 hours. These include the two leading protocols, Ethereum and Solana, which have recorded 4.24% and 11%, decrease each respectively, while Avalanche and Panini are the biggest losers, with 27.79% and 36.20%, respectively.
On the other hand, the third-ranked “Flow” and the sixth-ranked “Arbitrum” have recorded notable gains of 20.89% and a staggering 539%, respectively.
