In the last week of May, the average daily sales of NFT were $33 million, while in the same period in April, the figure exceeded $ 150 million. In general, sales have fallen back to the level of mid-2021.
The correction in the cryptocurrency market has not spared the NFT sector, which is considered by many participants as an investment opportunity. When new collections from famous brands are released, they actively buy tokens with the expectation of future resale.
This was clearly manifested in early May with the release of the NFT collection from Yuga Labs, responsible for the popular bored monkeys (Bored Ape Yacht Club or BAYC). BAYC ranks sixth in the overall NFT standings with a turnover of $2 billion, and on May 10, one of the monkeys was bought for 250 ETH ($450 thousand).
In the new collection from Yuga Labs, tokens represent land plots in the metaverse “Otherside”.
The first 55 thousand plots were sold out in a few hours.
Due to the low bandwidth of Ethereum in the wake of the hype, buyers inflated tips for miners so that their transaction was processed as soon as possible. As a result, miners earned a record $ 231 million per day, as the commission at its peak exceeded $ 1 thousand.
However, this surge did not lead to significant results for the NFT market, which has declined by 65% over the past 30 days. It also did not have a positive impact on Ethereum, since the subsequent collapse of Terra (LUNA) and the flight of investors from DeFi hit the capitalization of altcoin.
The drop in interest in NFT is also recorded by search engines. So, the query “NFT” in Google Trends has decreased from a maximum of 100 points in mid-January to the current 22 points. The decline in interest in this area leads to the natural weakness of Ethereum against Bitcoin, since the support of smart contracts is the trump card that significantly distinguishes altcoin.