Market Defies Crypto Slowdown
I was looking at the numbers this morning and honestly, they surprised me. As Bitcoin fell back to around $89,000 and Ethereum fell below $3,000, the NFT market went in the opposite direction. Sales volume reached $122.5 million over the past week, more than double what we saw the week before. This is an increase of 101%, which seems significant given overall market conditions.
What’s interesting is that participation has also increased. Buyers rose nearly 39% to 187,288, while sellers jumped 47% to 164,685. Trading volume increased by approximately 8% to over 700,000 transactions. The global crypto market cap actually increased from $3.22 trillion to $3.02 trillion over the same period, so NFT strength appears somewhat disconnected from the overall crypto trend.
Ethereum dominates blockchain activity
Ethereum has really led the charge here. The network recorded $77.57 million in NFT sales, representing a massive 179% week-over-week increase. This represents more than half of the total NFT sales volume across all blockchains. Ethereum attracted nearly 24,000 buyers, up 38% from the previous week. There was some fictitious trading activity – worth about $4.63 million – but it’s relatively small compared to the legitimate volume.
Bitcoin took second place with $21.66 million in sales, which remains impressive with 126% growth. The Bitcoin network attracted 8,333 buyers, an increase of 60%. BNB Chain comes in third with $7.52 million, although this actually represents a slight decline of 3% despite buyer activity increasing 68% to almost 25,000 people.
Immutable and Base follow with $3.70 million and $3.55 million respectively, while Solana rounds out the top six with $3.32 million in sales and attracts over 30,000 buyers, an 85% increase in buyers.
Collections show mixed performance
The classification of the collections tells an interesting story. Flying Tulip PUT on Ethereum dominated with $51.57 million in sales, although its performance remained flat compared to the previous week. The collection processed 2,103 transactions from 1,516 buyers.
What caught my eye were the $X@AI BRC-20 NFTs on Bitcoin. They took second place with $15.71 million in sales, an incredible 687% increase over the week. The weird part? They only completed nine transactions from seven buyers. This suggests very high value individual sales.
YES BOND on BNB Chain took third place with $4.18 million, up 28%. CryptoPunks returned to fourth place with $4.01 million in sales, rebounding 47% after last week’s 24% drop. This is a modest revival, but perhaps a positive sign for one of the first-rate original collections.
Record individual sales
The week was marked by some truly massive individual transactions. A $X@AI BRC-20 NFT on Bitcoin sold for $13.73 million, or 153.5837 BTC, just a day ago. This unique sale shattered previous records and accounted for a large portion of the week’s total volume.
Two more $X@AI coins followed with sales of $1.01 million and $895,348. CryptoPunks also earned two spots among the top five individual sellers, which I believe shows a renewed interest in established collections alongside these newer, high-value Bitcoin-based NFTs.
Looking at this data, I’m struck by how the NFT market appears to be developing its own pace, somewhat independent of broader cryptocurrency price movements. The increase in buyers and sellers suggests real growth in participation, not just price appreciation driving the numbers. Whether this trend will continue as crypto markets potentially stabilize remains to be seen, but for now, the NFT business appears surprisingly resilient.
