According to Apollo Crypto’s investment chief, the recent memecoin hype and market decline may have contributed to a 44% drop in NFT sales in the second quarter. Data from CryptoSlam shows that NFT sales fell from $4.14 billion in the first quarter to $2.32 billion in the second quarter as part of a broader market decline.
What Is Happening in the NFT Market?
Apollo Crypto’s chief investment officer Henrik Andersson explained that we are experiencing a difficult market process in the second quarter, with Bitcoin falling by 15% and many altcoins performing much worse.
According to CoinGecko data, although NFT sales have slowed, memecoins continue to see massive trade volumes, including $3.4 billion in the last 24 hours alone. Much of this was due to the rise in PolitiFi memecoin projects linked to the United States presidential elections, and several new popular tokens emerged on Ethereum and Solana. MAGA (TRUMP) and Pepe are among the memecoins that saw price increases in the second quarter.
Details on the Matter
Andersson stated that developments on the Bitcoin-based Ordinals front could also divert attention from traditional NFTs in the coming months:
“In the long run, especially considering the large number of Bitcoin Layer-2 projects coming to the market, we believe Bitcoin ordinals will continue to gain market share in the NFT space.”
However, network activity on Ordinals and Runs has also declined in recent weeks. Runes transactions fell by 88% from their peak in June, and both Ordinal inscriptions and Runes contributed less than 2 Bitcoins per day to miner fees last week.
NFTs made a small comeback in the last quarter of 2023, reaching sales figures exceeding $3 billion, which could spark hopes for a revival of NFTs in the second half of 2024. This included a $1.77 billion sales month in December 2023, the largest figure since NFT sales began to decline in June 2022.
According to CoinGecko data, top NFT collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Clubs still have large market values of $994.9 million and $345.9 million, respectively. In comparison, the two largest Ordinals projects, NodeMonkes and Bitcoin Puppets, have market values of $121.1 million and $94.2 million.
