NFT sales reached $27 billion this year - Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech
▻https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/nft-sales-2021
As the NFT craze took over this year, people poured $26.9 billion into the digital ownership tokens in the first ten months of 2021, a report by blockchain analysis service Chainalysis found.
The report, which tracked transactions sent to the two types of Ethereum smart contracts typically associated with NFTs between January and October, notes that the average transaction value and total of all sales rose toward the end of the year. One noticeable spike in sales occurred at the end of August, driven by NFT group Bored Ape Yacht Club’s release of its latest collection, which raked in $96 million.
Marketplace OpenSea took the crown as the most popular NFT buying destination, making up $16 billion, or nearly 60%, of all NFT transactions in the 10-month period. CryptoPunks, an NFT collection established in 2017, came in as the most popular collection with a transaction volume of $3 billion between March and October.
Large NFT transactions have also become more common. Collector-sized transactions, or those the report defines as worth between $10,000 and $100,000, accounted for 63% of transaction volume between March and October. Institutional transactions, or those worth more than $100,000, made up 26% of activity in that time period.