NFT markets show new record week

Markets for digital collectibles known as non-fungible tokens (NFT) have climbed to record highs in trading volume and average prices in the past week, particularly over the weekend. NFT marketplace OpenSea saw record trading volume on Saturday and Sunday as CryptoPunks, ArtBlocks, and Bored Ape Yacht Club prices soared.

While traditional crypto assets have seen market sentiment drop to a level of uncertainty, non-fungible token (NFT) assets have continued to sell in the millions.

One project developed by Larva Labs called Cryptopunks has seen some of its NFTs sell for millions and on May 11, a collection of nine Cryptopunks sold for $16.9 million at Christie’s.

The volume of trading for CryptoPunks reached $78.4 million over the weekend, OKLink, an OK Group market intelligence subsidiary, told CoinDesk. Today, the average price for CryptoPunks reached a record-high 66.919 ETH ($175,520) on OpenSea.

Now the owner of a rare Cryptopunk (3100) wants to get around 35,000 Ethereum (ETH) for the unique NFT. That’s around $91.64 million in value if the owner sold it for the desired amount and it would surpass the recent Christie’s auction which sold nine Cryptopunks for $16.9 million.

The Larva Labs issued Cryptopunk 3100 was sold for $7.6 million on March 11, 2021. A few years ago on July 6, 2017, Cryptopunk 3100 sold for 8 ETH or $2,127 at the time of sale. If sold, it would be top the most expensive NFT sold to date, while current record Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” was sold for 26,508.809 ETH or $69.3 million.

The total trading volume of NFTs on Ethereum last week reached $171 million, up 338% from the equivalent week in the previous month, OKLink said.

Another collection, ArtBlocks Curated, also saw a record average price of 8.1216 ETH ($20,990) on July 31, according to OpenSea data.

OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, saw record-breaking trading volume in the past two days. Volume reached $35 million on July 31 and $49 million on Aug. 1, according to on-chain activity monitoring platform DappRadar. Excluding July 31, OpenSea had an average daily trading volume of $8.3 million in July, with a high of $14.4. million on July 17.

Average prices for Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) digital collectibles hit an all-time high on OpenSea on Sunday. The average price for one of the 10,000 Bored Ape collectibles was 11.2614 ETH ($29,200), according to platform data.

Nonfungible.com also indicates that the NFT collection of 10,000 different punks is currently the top NFT project this week out of ten different NFT projects. Cryptopunks has surpassed Art Blocks, Meebits, Superrare, The Sandbox, Decentraland, and Hashmasks. In fact, Cryptopunks has done two times the sales that Art Blocks saw last week, and Cryptopunks’ seven-day stats outpace the latter eight NFT project’s sales combined.