Author: Oke Kay Snyder
The marketplace of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) appears to have lost some weight lately, shedding a few numbers here and there. However, it’s vital to remember, much like the delusion of ‘January gym memberships’ leading to instant abs, no market is entirely dead until it stops moving (or sweating, in the case of our fitness-frenzied analogy).
Despite the pervasive societal habit to hold a digital wake for anything once ‘trending,’ the NFT market has seen transactions north of $480 million in the past 30 days. But don’t get too excited; we’re not talking GameStop numbers here, folks.
In an environment that often resembles a Picasso painting itself (ever tried to explain NFTs to your grandmother?), liquidity has been the thorn in the side of NFTs since they boomed onto the scene faster than a popstar’s vanity cryptocurrency. Simply put, assessing the ‘value’ of an asset that one can’t part with quicker than last season’s fashion disaster has been a bit of a dampener.
Nevertheless, the marketplace Blur (no, not the Britpop band from the 90s) is trying to spin that around faster than a fidget spinner at a 2017 office party. With an aspiration to be the pied piper of NFT day traders, Blur has been stirring the pot of the NFT marketplace with an interesting proposition.
It’s championing the concept of ‘sweeping the floor’, which, unlike your chore list, entails buying or selling an abundance of NFTs from a single collection. This is equivalent to grabbing 20 Picasso paintings without even checking if they are all just blue squiggles before he really hit it big.
In an ideal world where traders ‘sweep the floor’ like overzealous janitors, the theory is that the chance of even low-cost NFTs being sold increases, thereby making the value of all NFTs more tangible. It’s like saying, “the more you eat, the bigger your appetite gets” – a logic I applied to my quarantine snacking, although that’s not quite the same thing.
The underdog Blur, which debuted last October, is stealing the limelight by offering an all-you-can-eat buffet approach to NFTs, nabbing about 40% of the retail NFT market. With a cheeky $11 million raise a year ago, Blur is currently sitting pretty at a rumored billion-dollar valuation.
The market’s reigning champ, OpenSea, however, still holds the heavyweight belt, acting as the Google homepage for NFTs.
While the NFT market may not be throwing the wild, billionaire-making parties of yesteryears, the young, restless, and risk-taking investors are keen to note the market’s resilience. The stage might have been downsized, but the play goes on – now billions have been replaced with hundreds of millions, but hey, what’s a few zeros amongst friends?
So, before we place the ‘RIP NFTs’ wreath, remember, this is a market that is, at the very least, showing promise, change, and yes, it is still a whole lot of money!
Catch the latest on NFTs and much more from the quirk-filled universe of Oke Kay Snyder. Follow him on Twitter @PubCoInsight. Stay tuned, stay updated, and most importantly, stay amused!
