Evolution of the NFTs Market and Future Prospects
Non-fungible Tokens, or NFTs, derive from an early experiment in the Bitcoin environment called “Colored Coins”. Colored Coins showcased a new potential for cryptocurrency when they assigned intangible value to the smallest subdivisible unit of a Bitcoin. They could be traded tagged with metadata representing a real-world asset.
However, the Bitcoin network was never meant for this sort of business. The project was flawed, and a newly upgraded platform for Colored Coins was created in 2014, still using Bitcoin. It was only after the Ethereum network was released in 2015 that the community saw a real opportunity for non-fungible tokens.
In 2017, NFTs boomed in popularity with the creation of collectibles and the ERC-721 protocol. Sales volume went very high during that first year, with up to 50,000 sales per week, spiking again in the transition from 2019 to 2020 at a maximum of 80,000 sales per week.
Increased demand for NFTs is usually observed during cryptocurrencies bull markets, and 2021 has been no different. In the first quarter, sales went up and peaked higher than 40,000 per week average in March. These numbers weren’t sustained during the following months but began rising again in the middle of May. This month (August), sales are as high as they have ever been in 2021, peaking above 65,000 sales per week.
The NFTs Market caught mainstream attention in 2021. Celebrities and influencers are both purchasing and launching NFT products and collectibles, and artists are selling more of their pieces via blockchain markets. This year, on March 11th, Beeple sold his piece “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” for the highest price ever recorded for an NFT: USD 69.3 million.
Expectations are high. We are about to enter a new era, with three main factors favoring the NFTs Market:
- We are about to leave the period of Covid-19 pandemics, lockdowns having changed people’s habits. By spending more time at home, people started spending more money online, a habit that is likely to prevail due to its convenience.
- Cryptocurrencies are experiencing record highs. Even though they have rallied and fallen in the past, many financial advisors point to the strength of the current trend. It could be pointing to the maturity of the cryptocurrencies market — and thus the maturity of the NFTs market.
- Ethereum is being upgraded to Ethereum 2.0, currently under the London hard fork. Cardano is also being hard forked and will be able to run smart contracts in a few weeks. These platforms — among others — are increasing in value and creating even more potential for the growth of the NFTs market.
Our team from NFTFY is paying attention to these signs, and we make sure that our platform stays one step ahead of any changes or upgrades. In this rapidly growing market, we know that the utility of token fractionalization will be more and more sought after. We are already writing the history of NFTs — and so are you, simply by using our tool to share tokens.
