NFT trade: The price of cryptocurrencies has been rising over the last several weeks, showing a favorable development.
There are indications that the NFT market is recovering at the same time as rising cryptocurrency prices.
The top NFT marketplace, OpenSea, had monthly Ethereum NFT sale increases back-to-back for the first time in a very long time.
There is still one week until February, but the January sales total is already exceeding the December total.
The road so far
According to blockchain data made available to the public by the analytics platform Dune, this month, OpenSea completed Ethereum NFT trades totaling nearly $320 million.
In contrast, the total for December brought in almost $283.5 million.
Additionally, OpenSea reported higher revenues last month for the first time since April 2022, up from $235 million in value in November.
The increase is due to Ethereum’s increasing value, which has increased by 33% over the last 30 days and reached a price of $1,620 on Monday.
However, when represented in ETH, January’s OpenSea sales only slightly surpass December’s 227,000 ETH.
In contrast, only about 191,000 ETH worth of Ethereum NFT were sold by OpenSea in November.
OpenSea
Despite months of dropping sales, the increase in OpenSea is good for the NFT trade.
However, the numbers also show how badly the market worsened in 2022.
OpenSea experienced its best-ever month in January 2022, with Ethereum NFT sales totaling over $4.86 billion.
In the first five months of 2022, the NFT market saw NFT trading volume totaling more than $2 billion.
However, it also went through erratic fluctuations throughout that time.
Previously, between December 2021 and January 2022, OpenSea had two consecutive months of sales volume increase.
Other signs
There are other signals of development in the NFT sector in addition to those from OpenSea.
For instance, the cost of highly regarded collections has increased.
In the last 30 days, the cheapest Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT increased from $84,500 in ETH to $108,000.
Additionally, CryptoPunks increased from $76,500 in ETH to $108,000.
According to CryptoSlam, sales of Bored Ape have increased from 45% during the last 30 days.
Sales of Art Blocks increased by 62%, while Azuki NFTs saw an 89% increase.
Beyond OpenSea, the amount of NFT trade has risen.
In that time, the amount of Ethereum NFT sales increased broadly by 33%, whereas Solana NFT sales increased dramatically by 95%, according to CryptoSlam.
Read also: Cryptocurrency rally is good, but people are wary
Additional notes
DappRadar reports that as compared to November, the amount of organic market sales generally slightly increased in December.
From $662 million, it increased to $684 million.
The secondary market trade was boosted last week by the introduction of Sewer Pass NFT for BAYC members.
There have been secondary deals totaling more than $35 million thus far.
Due to Yuga Labs’ restriction of Blur and LooksRare, secondary NFT trades have primarily been conducted on marketplaces like OpenSea and X2Y2.
The issue with creator royalties is what caused the block.
Creator royalties issues
Marketplaces made an attempt to stop creator royalties on NFT sales in late 2022.
But when they expressed their disapproval, Yuga Labs made it plain where they stood.
Yuga Labs acted fast to stop secondary NFT trade on particular platforms when Sewer Pass NFT launched.
A positive year
NFT trading volumes have lately been driven by the Bored Ape Yacht Club and associated collections.
Yuga’s initiatives were mentioned as accounting for half of the whole Ethereum NFT trading volume in the previous week by Pseudonymous Proof Director of Research Punk9059.
In addition, early-year activity in 2022 was mostly driven by the BAYC NFTs.
No significant changes have occurred thus far.
It is still to be seen if the most recent signs would materialize into a full-fledged NFT market recovery.
There has never been any question that the market will lose impetus in 2022, but after several months of dwindling activity, any upward movement is welcomed by traders.