NFT market report: February 2023
The crypto market enjoyed some positive price actions in February, with its market cap rising to surpass the $1.1 trillion mark. The world of NFTs also took a similar course, recording immense surges through the month. Here is an analysis of the NFT market for February 2023.
Overall NFT market analysis
The NFT market, in general, has been facing uncertainty, especially concerning its performance throughout the month. At the start of the month, on Feb. 1, there was over $15 million worth of NFT sales across the entire landscape. The average daily sales peaked at 13.85k.
However, the USD sales values of the tokens began to increase as the month progressed. On Feb. 3, the USD sales value was slightly over $20.03 million. At this point, the daily sales volume was just at a low of 11.5k.
Later, sales diminished until a low of 5.2k on Feb. 7. After hitting the monthly low, the NFT market began recovering. On Feb. 15, the number of sales in the NFT market was 9.5, with the complementing USD value at $33.58 million. These numbers continue to go even higher, with the sales volume reaching a February high of $33.9 million.
On the contrary, the USD sales volumes were diminishing towards the end of the month. On Feb. 27, the USD sales were just about $22.7 million, dropping to about $22.5 on the 28th.
Unlike the sales number and USD volume parameters, the average price per NFT sold increased for most of the month. On Feb. 1, the average value was only $1088. This increased to about $4029 on Feb. 24, but later slightly dropped to $2619 on the last day of the month.
The number of active wallets in the NFT landscape started the month at 11022. It dropped to about 5400 but later increased to about 8.7k.
It’s also vital to look at the number of unique buyers and sellers of NFTs in the month. The charts indicate that the number of unique buyers and sellers took a similar pattern in the past few weeks. It started the month at a high of 6.4k and 5.8k for unique buyers and sellers, respectively. At the end of the month, the numbers stood at $4.0k and 3.7k, respectively.
Segmental NFT Market Performance
Collectibles
The largest segment of NFTs is collectibles, which have existed for a few years. In February, the sales volumes and the number of sales of collectibles were mostly increasing.
For instance, on Feb. 1, the number of collectibles sold was about 3.4k, with the complementing USD value hitting $9.8 million. On the 15th, sales had increased to 5.1k, with the complementing USD value hitting $23.6 million.
The number of sales peaked at 5.9k on the 19th when the complementing value stood at $25 million. However, at the end of the month, the number of sales and USD value were way lower than February’s high, recording 5.1k and $16.8 million, respectively.
The collectibles segment of NFT has seemingly continued to attract more new investors despite depleting values on some days of the month. For instance, at the start of the month, the numbers of unique buyers and sellers stood at $1.8k and 2.1k, respectively.
On the 15th, the numbers increased to 2.6k and 3.1k for unique buyers and sellers. However, at the end of the month, the number of unique buyers and sellers remained at 2.2k and 2.5k, respectively. The dynamism noted in the segment indicates that many people are still interested in entering the NFT market.
Art segment
Second, on our segmental analysis list is Art NFT — digital assets explicitly designed for the art industry. Based on the charts, it’s clear that the art NFT space took an uncertain direction.
On the 1st, there were around 438 sales, with the complementing USD value at about $979k. On the 8th, sales had reduced to 347, with a USD value of $1.4k.
Later on the 18th, the Art NFT segment reached a peak of $1.5 million in sales, with numbers of sales standing at 350. This indicates that the average price per art NFT on the 18th was at a month’s high of $4.4k.
Simply put, the total number of sales, USD value, and unit price per art NFT changed vastly and never seemed to go in any particular direction for longer durations.
Unlike most other metrics, the unique buyers and sellers metric headed in an increasing direction as the month progressed. However, the differences are minimal.
Game NFTs
Third on our list is game NFTs, a group of digital assets created specifically for the gaming industry. The highest number of game NFT sales was recorded on Feb. 1. On that day, the number of sales was 7.5k when the USD value was about $2.6 million.
However, after recording the high numbers of sales, these numbers later dropped vastly. On the 5th, the number of sales stood at just about 427, a substantial decline compared to the 7.5k recorded on the 1st. All through the month, the number of Game NFT sales remained very low.
As the number of sales declined, so did the total USD sales volumes. From a peak of $4.2 million on Feb. 4, the total USD volumes plunged to just about $2.2 million.
Metaverse NFTs
Metaverse NFTs are those digital assets mainly focused on the digital universe. The sales and sales volumes started at lows of 336 and $904k, respectively.
On Feb. 16, sales hit 1771, complementing USD values of $6.2 million. On the 17th, the numbers dropped vastly to 1011, with the US dollar value at $4.07 million. At the end of the month, the sales were just about 471, with a complementing USD value of $1.9 million.
The number of unique buyers and sellers in the month also continually increased. For instance, on Feb. 1, the number of unique buyers and sellers was 202 and 230, respectively. On the 15th, the number was 497 and 733. This suggests that there are still many investors looking to join the metaverse.
Utility NFTs
Utility NFTs are among the oldest segments of the NFT landscape. The number of sales on Feb. 1 was about 2017, with the sales volumes at $349.8k.
On Feb. 11, the number of sales peaked at 3090, with the sales in USD at about $1.02 million. At the end of the month, there were about 2748 sales, with the complementing USD value standing at $2.0 million.
The number of unique buyers and sellers of utility NFTs also seemed to increase in the month. On the 1st, there were about 1199 buyers and 389 sellers. On the 28th, the number of buyers of 1465, and the sellers was about 824.
Best performing collections
The NFT space is made up of many collections. But which of the collections performed excellently in the month? Here are the top 5 NFT collections in February:
- Mutant Ape Yacht Club — MAYC was the top-performing NFT collection garnering a volume of $170 million, a 120% increase from Jan. However, the number of traders dropped by about 11% to 1838.
- Otherdeeds and Otherside – Otherdeeds, the native NFTs of the Otherside metaverse, also amassed massive volumes hitting $150 million, a 265% increase from the preceding month.
- Bored Ape Yacht Club — For a long time, BAYC has remained the best-performing NFT collection. However, it was thrown to position 3 in February but still recorded immense volume increases. For instance, BAYC had sales volumes of $143 million and a 98% monthly increase.
- Azuki — NFT collection Azuki takes the 4th spot with a $106.4 million trading volume, a surge of 149% from the preceding month.
- Moonbirds — Moonbirds closes our top performers list with a trading volume of $79 million while recording a 597% volume increase.
Interesting NFT stories in February
Ordinals NFTs
The concept of Ordinal NFTs has been capturing the attention of many in the crypto industry in recent weeks. Ordinals were first invented on the Bitcoin blockchain in January 2023, after the introduction of inscriptions on Bitcoin’s mainnet.
Ordinals are some Non-fungible assets created and based on the Bitcoin blockchain. This project immediately captured the attention of NFT lovers with trends all over social networking platforms.
However, Ordinals got much more praise in February as more people continued to discover this new gem.
When writing this report, there were already over a dozen NFT ordinal collections, including Ordinal punks, Taproot wizards, Bitcoin rocks, Timechain collectibles, Ordinal Loops, The Shadow Hats, Bitcoin Shrooms, The Dan Files, Toruses, and Ripcaches’s Power Source.
The birth of ordinals was seen by many as a simple rejuvenation of the entire NFT ecosystem, but it also seemed to mean a new use case for Bitcoin. The latest twist to this story was the recent discovery of Litecoin ordinals. According to reports, a developer recently forked the Bitcoin ordinals protocol and created the first Litecoin NFT. However, there are many questions on whether Litecoin ordinals will have the same impact as Bitcoin’s.
NFT marketplaces Blur and Opensea in war
There was a fierce war in the NFT industry in February, especially between marketplaces. The NFT marketplace war began after it became clear that Blur was challenging Opensea for the top spot.
According to reports, Blur has been beating Opensea’s sales volumes from time to time since December. However, Blur has recently been overtaking Opensea in different NFT market-related parameters. For instance, on many occasions, Blur beat Opensea’s trading volumes.
The issue forced Opensea to remove its sales fee to accommodate everyone and attract NFT traders with zero-cost trading. While this could have a short-term benefit, in the long term, Opensea’s quality of services will plunge since the network will not have enough money to pay developers.
Final word
This guide looked into the performance of NFTs in February. Like the crypto space, the NFT section also recorded some good gains, signaling better times ahead. Also, developing new inventions like Ordinals NFTs will bring more value to NFT.
