Punk’s Not Dead: NFT Trading Roars Back

With rising prices in major alternative cryptocurrencies, established
NFT projects are seeing a resurgence in interest, especially within the Ethereum and
Ethereum and
Solana ecosystems.

The NFT market, which has seen a considerable slowdown recently, experienced its most active day since February on Sunday. On that day, tokenized digital images worth $26 million were traded across the Ethereum network, according to a Dune
dashboard, created by Hildebert Moulié, a data scientist at Dragonfly. This momentum continued into Monday, with a trading volume of $24.9 million.

More than half of Sunday’s trading volume was generated by CryptoPunks.app, the dedicated marketplace for the widely recognized collection of 10,000 pixelated profile pictures. The collection has gained recognition from
museums,
auction houses, and even
luxury brands.

Over the past week, the collection’s floor price has risen by 20%, reaching 48 ETH, according to data from
NFT Price Floor. In U.S. dollar terms, the lowest price for a CryptoPunk has increased by 45% to $177,000, boosted in part by the increasing value of Ethereum. During this time, 174 NFTs from the collection were traded, representing a 460% increase from the previous week.

In May, The Infinite Node Foundation, a recently established non-profit organization,
acquired the IP rights to CryptoPunks from Yuga Labs, the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club. The foundation stated its focus on preserving the collection, fostering community engagement, and promoting the CryptoPunks brand.

Myriad Markets users generally predict that the CryptoPunks floor price will
remain above 44 ETH until the end of July 25, assigning an 85% probability to this outcome. (Disclosure: Myriad is a product of Decrypt‘s parent company, DASTAN.)

Other Ethereum-based collections have also witnessed increases in floor prices over the past week. Pudgy Penguins NFTs saw a 38% increase to $56,000, Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs rose by 26% to $6,300, and Fidenza NFTs from
generative artist Tyler Hobbs surged by 64%.

While some X users hope the increased trading volume over two days signals an NFT market revival, echoing the boom experienced during the pandemic-era crypto surge, Moulié told Decrypt that “there was some increased activity from December to February, but it wasn’t sustained.”

However, with NFT trading volume on OpenSea jumping by 44% to $9.5 million from Sunday to Monday, some traders appear to be capitalizing on the trend. Monday also saw a 120% increase in trading volume on the NFT marketplace Blur, reaching $12.8 million.

On Solana, Mad Lads NFTs have climbed 27% to a price of $6,800 in the last week. Other Solana-based NFTs have also seen a rise in floor price; Clarnosaurz NFTs increased by 47% to $2,100, and Solana Monkey Business Gen2 NFTs rose by 43% to a price of $4,000.

A total of $9.3 million in Solana-based NFT sales has occurred on secondary markets during the last seven days, an increase of 59%, according to
CryptoSlam. NFT sales on the Ethereum blockchain have reached $105 million, an increase of 50% over the same time period.

While trading volume decreased this past week, Bitcoin-based collectibles have seen floor prices tick up as well. Taproot Wizards, an Ordinals collection, has climbed 26% to $26,700, while Bitcoin Puppets has seen an increase of 10% to $4,800.

The NFT market may be experiencing a glimmer of hope as Ethereum and Solana prices rise, however, it is important to note that no NFT collection mentioned in the article is nearing its all-time high floor price. Furthermore, despite the robust trading volumes seen on Sunday and Monday, exceeding $50 million has occurred four times during the past year according to Moulié’s dashboard.