The world’s largest Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplace, OpenSea, is set to break its own trading volume record as the platform is on track to exceed $6 billion by the end of the month if the trend continues on Ethereum as its daily trading volume surges.
So far, in just 10 days in 2022, OpenSea’s trading volume for NFTs currently seats at $2.1 billion. This is more than half the total trading volume for the entirety of August 2021, the month where the platform created its first record.
According to Dune Analytics, in August 2021, the trading volume reached nearly $3.5 billion in that month. Should this trend continue, the marketplace is currently on pace to exceed $6 billion in trading volume for January 2022.
What you should know
The uptick in the trading volume of OpenSea has been driven by the new ‘PhantaBear’ collection, which recorded 17,124.79 ETH ($53 million) in sales over the past seven days. ‘Bored Ape Yacht Club’ collection is a close second place with 16,657.78 ($51.5 million).
Aggregated data from CryptoSlam reveals the ‘Doodles’ collection as the leader in sales across all NFT marketplaces, with nearly $56 million in sales over the past seven days. It currently ranks third in trading volume on OpenSea.
According to Dune Analytics, other key factors contributing to the record pace for OpenSea include the number of active users, which at 260,369 is rapidly approaching the all-time high of 362,679 tallied last month.
OpenSea has shown that there is still a tremendous amount of room to fill for NFT marketplaces, as trading volumes have remained high for over six months straight and surpassed $4 billion globally over the past 30 days.
Due to OpenSea’s success, alternative marketplaces such as the new LooksRare (LOOKS) and Solana’s Magic Eden are positioning themselves to be top competitors against OpenSea so as to siphon off at least a portion of OpenSea’s volume.
The NFT markets are off to a good start in 2022. Volumes across all platforms tracked by NFT market data source ‘NonFungible’ reveal a steady increase since the first day of the year when total daily sales reached nearly 15,671 items. Between the 7th and 8th of January, sales spiked up from 13,189 to 36,041 NFTs. Daily sales also hit a monthly high of 29,921 NFTs yesterday, the 10th of January 2022.
Bottomline
OpenSea, which has over 1.3 million traders and an all-time volume of $14.68 billion, has seen its valuation increase to $13.3 billion from a valuation of 1.5 billion in July 2021. The new valuation comes as the number one NFT marketplace was looking to raise $300 million in a new funding round in which was led by Paradigm and Coatue.
This cements OpenSea as one of the most valuable private firms in the cryptocurrency industry and makes the platform more valuable than the likes of AMC Entertainment, Santander Consumer USA Holdings, American Airlines Group and GameStop.
