Global NFT sales slumped 76% YoY to $638M in December

The once-booming NFT market is down by nearly every trackable metric as nonfungible tokens continue struggling amid a crypto winter. The trading volume for NFTs across all sectors, from art to gaming, has plunged almost 90% year-over-year, pushing the global NFT sales value deep below peaks seen in 2021.

According to data presented by Crypto Presales, global NFT sales value slumped 76% year-over-year, reaching $638 million in December.

The Number of Transactions Down by 38% Year-over-Year
Since the crypto market crash, investors’ confidence in NFTs has been fading, with the lack of clarity, theft, and scams as additional drawbacks. The monthly NFT sales value hit nearly $2.8bn in December last year, according to the NFT aggregation site CryptoSlam.

A month later, in January, this figure hit an all-time high of $4.77bn. However, the entire market slowed down significantly in the following months, with the sales value falling to $2.5bn in March.

After a jump to $3.8bn in April, NFT sales value declined for six straight months. In October, global NFT sales failed to break $500 million for the first time since July 2021. Statistics show sales value hit $460 million that month, a steep drop for a market that recorded several $1 billion trading weeks in the last few years. After recovering to $534.2 million in November, NFT sales value increased to $638.4 million in December.

The CryptoSlam data show average sales value has moved to $144.9 in December, down from $384.4 in the same month a year ago, showing a 62% drop YoY. Statistics show the monthly number of transactions dropped by 38% in this period, reaching 4.4 million last month.

The Number of Active Wallets Plunged by 80%
Besides a huge drop in total sales value, the NFT market has also witnessed a downturn in the number of active wallets. Last week, the NFT space counted around 13,000 active wallets, 80% less than in the same month a year ago.

The number of unique buyers also plunged, falling from more than one million in December 2021 to 469,000 in December. At the same time, the number of unique sellers dropped by 46% YoY to around 453,700. BCS Bureau