NFTs, Crypto Winters, and Bored Apes Oh My!

While the crypto-verse is setting new records for most lunches vomited up by 3 PM, due to unparalleled volatility and record losses, NFTs are comparatively a much tamer venture.

Both are reliant upon the Ethereum blockchain, the lifeblood of so many crypto-related causes. However, while ETH is cast about through peaks and valleys with wild abandon, NFTs brands like Bored Ape and Crypto Punks are seeing decidedly flatter movement in price and volume.

According to nonfungible.com’s quarterly NFT market report, the flattening of price volatility and general stabilization of the NFT landscape is due to a decrease in public interest in NFTs and a shrinking sales volume.

Their first-quarter report published on their website, “With nearly $8 billion traded in the first quarter of 2022, the market cannot really be considered to have collapsed. We are seeing more of a form of stabilization, in line with the last quarter of 2021.

Conversely, the sales volume fell by nearly 50%, with a very marked slowdown in the volume of buyers and sellers.”

But with pro sports edging their way onto the virtual landscape, and big-name stars like Maddona selling everything from music to art to a 3-dimensional version of her vagina, NFTs will likely find new life in the remaining quarters of 2022.

Eyeing the success NBA Top shot has achieved in their NFT release, Major league baseball announced this week that it would launch an NFT-based baseball game with NFT producer, Sorare. In April, MLB entered the NFT realm when it announced a partnership with Topps Baseball cards, branching out from gum and bicycle spokes to a new line of NFT images of players sold on ToppsNFTs.com.

News of big music makers and major league record-breakers entering the NFT market didn’t do much for the flattening curve just yet, though. CryptoSlam, an NFT reporting website that tracks the trading of thousands of NFT collections, reported a 61% drop in sales for the last 30 days and a 25% drop in just the last 7.

Analysts blame the cooling of the NFT market, which saw record highs in 2021, on the emerging crypto winter that has sent Crypto markets reeling. Last week, hedge fund Three Arrows Capital declared bankruptcy, with intimately related brokerage Voyager following suit this week. The unexpected failings caused the price of Bitcoin and ETH, the top two traded cryptocurrencies, to plunge to a level not seen since the darkest days of the Pandemic in December 2020.

NFT expert and founder of Apocalyptic Apes, Bill Starkov, however, says a crash like this one offers an opportunity. He was quoted on Yahoo Finance saying, “I use this as my Black Friday to go shopping, one down market day in the NFT space is like a year in real life. These corrections are super healthy. It’s good for the economy for people to take profits. What happens is that people panic, but then there are huge recoveries instantly.”

If Stark’s optimism and hopes for a huge recovery inspire you to hop into the Cryptoverse, or your creative juices start to flow at the idea that you can make a bundle from creating the next Bored Ape, then tune in to The Crypto Nightly News, featured weekly only at The Current Affairs Times.

Image and Thumbnail Credits: Christopher German and Venture Beat