Crypto rush: NFT market hits new record high
The non-fungible token market broke records this week with 7-day sales volume hitting an all time high of $219.4 million (£157.9 million) on Tuesday.
Sales volume peaked at $49 million in a single day on Sunday on OpenSea, the world’s biggest non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, making it the biggest day of trading since the platform’s launch.
Investment was largely driven by CryptoPunks, a digital art project consisting of 10,000 collectible characters, which has attracted $122 million in sales volume over the past seven days.
On July 30 a single CryptoPunks avatar sporting a beanie hat and gold chain fetched 2,250 ETH ($3.9m at the time of sale) making it the site’s third most expensive artwork to date.
Interest in NFTs has been boosted by a flurry of media coverage this week. On Friday, The New Yorker covered the rise of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a website where digital avatars double up as membership cards for an exclusive club, causing the average price of ape avatars to surge to highs of 11.3 ETH (£20,000).
Coca-Cola ran the first of four planned NFT auctions over the weekend as part of a campaign to raise money for Special Olympics International, selling a digital artwork featuring a branded vending machine for just shy of half a million.
With major brands entering the digital art space and exciting new projects attracting investors a secondary market for NFTs is flourishing. Data from NonFungible shows that just $33 million of this week’s NFT sales volume, approximately 15%, came from the primary market.
Read more: The unforeseen reputational risks of NFTs and how to avoid them