Key takeaways
- The NFT market has experienced a significant decline, with prices dropping dramatically this year.
- Experts remain optimistic about the future of NFTs, anticipating substantial growth over the next decade.
- Despite the downturn, NFT sales have remained steady in the first half of the year.
- Bored Apes NFTs emerged as a leading force during the peak of the NFT craze.
The NFT or Non-Fungible Token market has taken a nosedive this year, mirroring the general negative sentiment in the crypto ecosystem. According to the blockchain analytics firm, Dune Analytics, NFT prices have fallen by a whopping 97%—from a high point of USD 17 billion early this year to USD 470 million by September. However, despite the sharp descent in the NFT market, experts remain optimistic.
A report published by Verified Market Research has projected that NFTs will increase in value to USD 231 billion by 2030. The firm also valued the global NFT space at USD 11.3 billion in 2021 and predicted growth for the sector at a compound annual growth rate of 33.7% over the next eight years. NFT sales have remained firm in the first-half of the year, with crypto users shelling out USD 2.7 billion on minting fresh NFTs. Let's take a look at the prices of the most popular NFTs right now!
Bored Ape Yacht Club
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is a collection of 10,000 art pieces of cartoon apes created by Yuga Labs LLC. The launch of Bored Apes NFTs coincided with the time when NFTs were at their hottest, due to which they have become a forerunner in the industry. It’s a collection of 9,999 randomly generated art pieces, created from 170 unique traits. Each Bored Ape Yacht Club receives access to members-only benefits such as merchandise, real-life meetups, and various rewards.
Owning a Bored Ape at one point had become such a selling point for NFTs that a bunch of celebrities including Timbaland, Eminem, Neymar Jr. and Jimmy Fallon changed their Twitter profile pictures to Bored Ape artworks.
In April, the entry for Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs were at USD 400,000 but have fallen since the crypto crash to around USD 150,000. On November 15th, the value for BAYC NFTs fell lower than Cryptopunks NFTs on the basis of floor values. The floor value for Bored Apes is currently at 58.50 ETH which equals to USD 73,039 in terms of current ethereum exchange rates.
CryptoPunks
CryptoPunks, one of the earliest entrants in the NFT world, was launched in 2017 and contains artwork featuring simple 8-bit pixelated images that are generated algorithmically and usually depict punk-style human characters. But there are rarer CryptoPunk art pieces that include zombies, aliens and apes.
CryptoPunk NFTs have been sold in the past for millions of dollars with CryptoPunk #5822 being sold for close to USD 23.7 million on Ethereum. CryptoPunk’s collection was eventually acquired by the owner of Bored Apes, Yuga Labs LLC.
Earlier, CryptoPunks had the highest floor price in the marketplace until Bored Apes crossed it in December 2021. However, numbers from the last ten days showed that the floor value of CryptoPunks stood above the 60 ether zone while the floor value for BAYC dropped below the 60 ether limit.
Azuki
Azuki’s NFT collection launched early this year and received attention initially because of a popular marketing campaign on Twitter. The collection features 10,000 in anime-style profile pictures and had an initial mint price of USD 3,400 for 8,700 art pieces, which sold out in the first four minutes. Azuki NFT owners are given access to their metaverse called ‘The Garden’.
Azuki’s artwork was also appreciated for its artistic value as one of the founders Arnold Tsang was an art director at ‘Overwatch’, a first-person shooter video game.
Azuki’s floor price is currently hovering around USD 11,005.18 with a 24-hour sales volume of 47.52 ETH. Until now, a total of 10,000 Azuki NFTs have been minted with a market cap of USD 110,051,760.
Azuki has continued to stay high in the OpenSea rankings for sales and floor price five months following its launch. The collection has made USD 300 million in trading volume after 30 days.
Moonbirds
Moonbirds is another new NFT collection released this year that has built a cult following of more than 200,000 Twitter followers because of a community-based movement and its profile picture imagery. Created by Proof Collective, Moonbirds has founders like Kevin Rose, a Web3 developer and founder of social site ‘Digg’. The collection’s artwork contains 2D imagery of birds.
Moonbirds’ collection includes 10,000 Free Profile Pictures of which 10,000 NFTs were minted and owned by 6,588 individuals with a total market cap of USD 88,963,855.
According to CoinGecko, Moonbirds has a floor price of USD 8,896 with a 24-hour sales volume of 32.11 ETH. Moonbird’s ownership offers additional benefits like private club membership for users who hold on to the NFTs longer.
VeeFriends
Author and serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, or Gary Vee, has had his own line of NFTs. Vaynerchuk got involved with crypto in 2017 and with NFTs much later in 2020. He has built a personal NFT collection that consists of 10, 225 NFT art pieces with artwork done by Vaynerchuk himself.
VeeFriends’ current price floor is USD 6,886 with a 24-hour sales volume of 17.36 ETH. Up until now, VeeFriends has a total of 10,255 NFTs minted that are held by 5,179 owners and a total market cap of USD 70,662,635.
Each NFT-holder has three years’ access to VeeCon, Vaynerchuk’s annual Web3 conference in Minneapolis which gives members a chance to socialise and participate in giveaways.
