Key Takeaways:
- The NFT market is in decline by around 50%, following the Fed’s monetary policy shift.
- Otherdeed, BAYC, and MAYC from Yuga Labs continue to serve as NFT safe haven.
- Terraforms is once again the most likely focus of wash sales.
The Federal Reserve’s quantitative tightening (QT), which is a reversal of its quantitative easing (QE), has had negative pressure on all markets for the last few months. As the cost of capital increases, investors are reshuffling their portfolios and exiting some assets more than others.
Although both Bitcoin and Ethereum outperformed S&P 500 for the last week by ~2%, the same cannot be said of the NFT market. Weekly NFT buyers and sellers sank to the July level of 2021.
Likewise, because NFT market liquidity has fallen into fewer hands, under 15k of traders, the median NFT price has reflected this, falling under the $200 price range.
By the same falling token, the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, saw a decrease in trading volume by 50%, in which the average NFT price went down by -43%, at present $306. Just behind OpenSea is LooksRare with equally decreased trading volume at 49%, while its more expensive NFTs suffered even greater depreciation, at -70%, to a $4.74k average price.
In this market downturn, NFT traders are relying on the classics while also preparing for new upcoming projects.
Week’s Top 4 NFT Performers
Terraforms by Mathcastles
Terraforms by Mathcastles is the week’s top performer, but with a big caveat. The average floor price for this dynamically generated on-chain 3D world increased by 125%, to $983.7, raising the market cap to $10.2 million.
However, it may be the case that Terraforms could be subject to wash trading because the majority of sales occurred on LooksRare. After all, this January, Larva Lab’s Meebits saw enormous wash trading at $4.4 billion, followed by Terraforms at $2.9 billion.
Wash trading happens when traders want to create an illusion of market liquidity by shuffling transactions from one wallet to the other, without any actual sales happening. This then serves as a hook for other traders to get in to provide real traffic.
With that said, Terraforms is somewhat innovative. Unlike Minecraft-based NFT Worlds, which serves as a network of virtual lands, Terraforms is a dynamic art project in which each piece creates a 3D hypercastle.
Otherdeed for Otherside
The true week’s performer is to be expected, even with the market downturn. There has been a -93.50% decline in Otherdeed land NFTs sales for the upcoming Otherside metaverse blockchain game. Yet, because Yuga Labs Bored Ape Yacht Club holds such market dominance, at $2.13 billion in total sales, it can afford the dump and still remain top-ranked.
Many have jumped into this opportunity, as Otherdeed active wallets increased by 19%, while new claim lands increased by 213%, at 163 for the week. Overall, the Otherdeed’s weekly average price was at Ξ8.6 with Ξ15k trading volume ($30,841,800).
BAYC & MAYC
The premiere Apes and their Mutants are churning profits. Apes increased their wins by 38% while trade losers decreased by -61%. Despite the decline in weekly sales by -10%, at 20.8 million, the number of total owners increased by 3.3%, to a total of 6,449 BAYC owners. Overall, BAYC floor price increased by 1.72%, at present Ξ94.4.
However, Mutants have a different story to tell. MAYC floor price decreased by -8.35%, to Ξ18.1. This is yet to be shown in the graph below, but the declining trend is already visible.
Moreover, MAYC sales decreased by a massive -60% from a week prior, to $11.4 million. Despite this, the number of MAYC mints increased by 468.8%, to 273.
Notable Mention: Town Star
This farming game comes from one of the co-founders of Zynga, which developed the mega-popular Farmville competitive game. The foundation for this play-to-earn (P2E) game is TOWN coin, which saw a 21% appreciation last week, from $0.033 to $0.04 per TOWN.
The Town Star’s NFTs, as playable items similar to Axie Infinity, sold like hotcakes last week, generating $1.02 million for 2,246 sold NFTs at an average price of $454.
Week’s Recap
Lastly, Chimpers and Karafuru Gachapon made the week’s ranks at $14.9m and $11.4m in sales respectively. However, they don’t bring anything new to the NFT table. Chimpers is another pixelated collection, trying to ape Ape stardom, while Karafurus serve as access tickets to 3D Karafuru collection, presented as floating 3D egg-like containers.
With that said, both Karafuru classic 2D and Karafuru 3D appear to be high-quality NFT pieces, although a bit infantilized.
It remains to be seen if this tightened audience focus will yield the same level of success as Apes.
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