The floor price of the NFT Azuki collection, famous for its profile images used by the crypto-community, has risen 47% in the past month. Specifically, the price has risen from 3.7 ETH thirty days ago to the current 5.3 ETH. 

NFT Azuki and the 47% increase in floor price over the past thirty days

According to CoinGecko‘s platform, it appears that the floor price of the Azuki collection has increased by 47% in the past thirty days. Specifically, the price has increased from 3.7 ETH to 5.3 ETH. 

Azuki is an NFT collection with a total market cap of more than $90 million and currently priced at 5.3 ETH, the equivalent of $9,039. 

The collection, launched in early 2022, represents 10,000 unique NFTs, in the pfp format, and that is commonly used as a profile image by the crypto-community. The unique Azuki prices are generative NFT avatars inspired by anime-style artwork, with a distinct artistic style. 

All 8,700 Azuki NFTs, available for mint, were sold for 1 ETH, in a Dutch auction that sold out in 4 minutes. In addition, an unspecified number of the remaining NFTs were minted through a private whitelist sale, which sold for 0.5 ETH each.

NFT Azuki: the price trend of the collection since launch

At the time of writing, there are as many as 4,219 unique owners of the NFT Azuki collection, but viewing the total graph of its floor price, the story is quite different than it seems. 

And in fact, after launch, the floor price of the NFT collection of Azuki’s pfp profile images peaked at 31.8 ETH on 3 April 2022. 

Then from 11 May 2022, the price dropped to as low as 8.3 ETH. From there, the price fluctuated, always remaining above that floor price. 

At the beginning of July 2023, however, the floor price fell below the threshold, initially touching 6.43 ETH, down to 3.55 ETH in August. In this past month alone, the price of the NFT collection has been pumping. 

The launch of Elementals 

Last June 2023, Azuki launched its new Elementals collection, consisting of 20,000 NFTs, also on Ethereum. 

Again, the Dutch auction mode was chosen for the initial sale, with a starting price of 2 ETH per NFT, the equivalent of $3,750 each at that time. 

The idea expressed by Chiru Labs, the Web3 startup behind Azuki, is to expand the original anime-themed project with additional profile images. 

The previous owners of NFT Azuki received one of the Elementals, leaving half of the supply for public sale. 

In this regard, in July 2023, the decline in Azuki’s floor price was associated precisely with the NFT Elementals collection, which was accused of mismanagement by the team.

Not only that, critics also accused the team of holding 20,000 ETH with no progress in the past year.

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NFT sales recorded another decline this week, dropping 9.91 per cent from the previous week, despite a rise in the price of crypto. 

Specifically, according to the data, in the period from 24 September to 1 October 2023, NFT sales totalling around $72,767,450 were transacted, representing the last week of available data. See below for full details.

The disconnect between the crypto and NFT markets: an in-depth price analysis 

As expected, despite an overall growth in the crypto economy last week, NFT sales recorded their sixth consecutive decline. 

Specifically, in the period between 24 September and 1 October 2023, total NFT sales reached $72.76 million, a decrease of 9.91% compared to the previous week. 

Meanwhile, the number of NFT buyers increased by 17.77% to 569,407 and the number of NFT sellers increased by 15.82% to 714,889 last week.

Among the twenty-two blockchain networks tracked for NFT sales, Ethereum maintained its lead with sales of $37.27 million, accounting for 51.22% of the total. However, ETH-based NFT sales fell slightly by 1.16% compared to the previous week. 

Mythos NFT was in second place with $7.83 million in sales, up 13.12% from last week. Polygon was third with $7.12 million, while Solana was fourth with $5.86 million. 

Finally, Immutable X came in fifth with $5.47 million in sales.

In the top performing NFT collections segment, Mythos subsidiary Dmarket took the top spot with $7.76 million in sales, followed by Immutable X with Gods Unchained at $5.22 million.

Battle for the purchase of high value NFTs: Draftkings, Bored Ape Yacht Club and more in the running

Other top contenders in the weekly sales competition include Draftkings, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Sorare. In addition, the most notable NFT purchase this week was BAYC #591, which sold for a remarkable total of $177,710 on Opensea just five days ago. 

Meanwhile, on the Bitcoin blockchain, an NFT known as Ordinal Maxi Biz reached a value of $44,217 on Magic Eden’s NFT marketplace. In addition, Solana saw the interesting sale of Boogle #066, which fetched $40,503, followed by Starcraft Planets on BNB, which fetched $32,544. 

The race for high value sales ended with Earth Node #268 on Cardano, which was bought for $32,100. These figures highlight the enthusiasm and diversity of NFT purchases on different blockchains.

PayPal files patent to create state-of-the-art NFT marketplace

PayPal, the NASDAQ-listed financial services company (symbol PYPL), has announced its interest in the non-fungible token (NFT) space by filing a new patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

The document reveals that PayPal intends to develop an NFT marketplace that will allow users to buy and sell digital collectibles. PayPal’s proposed platform will allow users to list digital goods such as images, videos, music, event tickets, personal property deeds and artwork.

The document, filed on 21 September, provides detailed descriptions of both on-chain and off-chain NFT transactions using third-party service providers to facilitate exchanges. 

Specifically, settlement and custody services will be provided by an intermediary, while off-chain transactions will use an ‘omnibus wallet’ containing the address details of the parties involved. 

This means that transactions will not be recorded on the blockchain, and there will be no gas costs associated with on-chain transactions.

Although the document does not specify the nature of the service, it refers to the Ethereum network (ETH), suggesting involvement in tokenization and the potential for NFTs on PayPal’s marketplace to earn royalties from secondary purchases.

In addition, the proposed NFT marketplace will support fractionalisation, allowing users to own parts of a digital collectible. This move is intended to improve the liquidity of digital assets and make investment more accessible.

In order to address the issue of liquidity, the document foresees the creation of a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) to ensure an adequate level of liquidity through a dedicated platform.

It should be noted that PayPal has committed to exploring Web 3 as early as 2020, allowing users to buy, hold and sell digital currencies. It has also recently launched the PayPal USD (PYUSD) as part of its payment services.

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According to data from on-chain analysis platform Nansen, the NFT market, including blue chip collections, have experienced heavy price declines over the past 30 days.

In most cases, the floor price of these non-fungible tokens has declined by more than 25%.

Solana’s blue chips are also following a heavily negative trend.

Ordinals on Bitcoin’s blockchain were no exception scoring one of the lowest trading volumes since their inception.

See all the details below.

Price drop of more than 25% for many blue chip NFT collections

The bear market in cryptocurrencies has also significantly affected the world of NFTs, not to mention blue chip collections that have experienced particularly negative price declines over the past 30 days.

Most NFT projects with the most trading volumes on the Ethereum blockchain have totaled a floor price depreciation of more than 25%.

In detail, the collections with the most negative performance are those of Azuki Elementals and DeGods, which recorded -48% and -55% on their purchase price, respectively.

Despite the poor performance Degods still increased the number of sales in the last month by 30.25% to 42,163 ETH in trading volume.

On the other hand, Azuki Elementals saw a 73.83% drop in sales over the past 30 days with a trading volume of 2,625 ETH, confirming the decline in investor interest.

Famous blue chip collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Azuki, The Captainz, Opepen Editions, CloneX, and Moonbirds do not skip the call of the NFT sector’s price slaughter with declines ranging from -20% to -39%.

The famous Crypto Punks, on the other hand, have held their own better, registering only -4.26% in the last month of trading.

Surprisingly, the Milady collection went against trend compared to the other non-fungible tokens recording an incredible +66% floor price and increasing the number of sales by 84% with a volume of 7,828 ETH.

The blue chip NFT market on Solana: falling prices since mid-August

Even on the Solana blockchain, the blue chip NFT market has been performing poorly as a whole with declines in both trading volumes and the price of major collections.

In total, sales on layer-1 for the past 30 days amounted to $34.8 million, a figure 52% lower than the previous month.

Mad Lads, The Heist, SolCasino.io, Famous Fox Federation and Claynosaurz, Solana Monkey Business, SMB Gen3, and AssetDash Vanta lead the blue chip list with larger declines in sales.

Only the Okay Bear collection stood out for increased hype on the non-fungible tokens market selling volume increase of 3.65%.

Unfortunately, the overall situation is not the brightest, with investors preferring to shift to less speculative asset classes throughout the summer of 2023.

According to data from the “Solana NFT Floor Index,” which weighs a whole range of different data from each other such as prices, volumes, transactions, and social trends, blue chips have seen decidedly low activity during the past 30 days with only one increase in the metric on 9 August.

From 10 August until 21 August, the blue chip index saw a sharp drop in numbers from 91.6 SOL to 78 SOL and then stabilized in the last few days.

Calculating the index in dollars, the descent was more violent and completely wiped out the strong pump of 9 August.

On Solana, market volumes remain significantly lower than those marked on the Ethereum blockchain, where activity is configured 8 times more prosperous according to CryptoSlam data

Sharp drop in volumes for Ordinals on Bitcoin

While not a true NFT collection, the case of Ordinals digital artifacts belonging to Bitcoin’s blockchain also resumed the trend of blue chips on Solana and Ethereum.

Ordinals market volumes have declined by about 90% in the past 30 days going to a total value of $3.9 million in trades.

Analyzing DomoData’s dashboard on Dune Analytics, inventor of the BRC-20 protocol, the recent volumes marked on major marketplaces such as Unisat, Magic Eden, and Okx have hit record lows not seen since before the May 2023 uptrend broke out.

Just think that on Unisat on 7 May 2023 volumes were 2.5 times higher than in the last 30 days-this is a very sharp drop in interest just 3 months later.

It seems that the Ordinals fad has ended its heyday and is flattening out towards lower and lower prices and less and less frequent transactions: a bit what happened with the general NFT market during 2022, which after a glorious 2021 of wild speculation has returned to pre-bubble values.

Because of this reduction, Bitcoin miners no longer saw transaction fees as high as they did in May 2023, where fees accounted for about 10% of the total revenue for mining a block.

However, while miners regret the pre-summer period, users of the decentralized network can rejoice by seeing a much better user experience with a less clogged mempool and lower fees.

How does the price of NFTs increase, and what determines their value over time? A descriptive guide to the Non-Fungible Token market. 

The price of NFTs over time: between the mint and resale price

The Non-Fungible Token market peaked in 2021, when many referred to it as a “bubble,” remaining at $9 billion in total NFT sales at the time of writing. 

Staggering figures may raise questions about how such a market works. And indeed, to understand the performance of NFTs, one would need to analyze what their price and value over time are based on. 

Among the various market factors that determine the price and value of an NFT are the mint price and the resale price. 

First of all, NFTs are tokens minted on Blockchains such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana, where the initial creators of NFTs faced different mint fees based on the blockchain they used and also based on the value of the reference cryptocurrency, which is well known to fluctuate over time.   

Not only that but once an NFT has been minted and sold for its first time, it can then be resold on a marketplace at a price determined by the seller. The seller’s first price in question is called the minimum price (or floor price). 

Most NFT marketplaces list the floor price, so you know the minimum investment to enter that collection. 

How the price of NFTs increases: the law of the market.

Just as the law of the market teaches, for NFTs, the increase in price comes from the rise in market demand and the decrease in supply. 

In practice, NFTs gain value when buyers can sell their NFTs at a higher price than they paid. 

Not only that, just as with cryptocurrencies, a collection of Non-Fungible Tokens increases in value when market demand increases and the overall supply of NFTs available for sale decreases. 

To give an example, the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection, when they were first mined, they were selling for not even 1 ETH, compared to the current floor price of over 83 ETH on OpenSea. 

There is an increase/decrease in the value and price of NFTs precisely because there is a market for them, namely, a buyer willing to pay a higher/lower price for the NFT in question. Put another way: an NFT is worth what a buyer is willing to pay for it. 

DappRadar’s NFT market statistics

By following the aggregate statistics on DappRadar, we can obtain other valuable data to understand the price and value of the NFT or NFT collection we are interested in.

First, DappRadar presents a list of Blockchains most commonly used to develop NFTs beyond the three mentioned above, such as WAX, BNB Chain, Flow, Tron, Tezos, Avalanche, Zilliqa, and many others. 

Not only that, by selecting filters, you can also find out which are currently the top 3 collections in terms of market cap, trading volume, number of traders, and number of sales:

• Axie Infinity on Ethereum and Ronin;
• CryptoPunks on Ethereum;
• BAYC on Ethereum.

You can do the same thing by filtering the marketplaces and finding that OpenSea, Axie Marketplace, and CryptoPunks are the top 3 NFT marketplaces by exchange volume and number of traders. 

The Hype on Non-Fungible Tokens

Another not insignificant indicator is the hype created around a particular NFT, creating additional value based on increased interest that can then justify raising its price. 

Some hype can be considered speculation games, while others are based on true one-of-a-kind digital works without going into specifics. 

For example, when it was launched, Logan Paul’s collection of NFTs attracted so much interest that it sold $1 million worth of NFTs in 30 minutes and $3.4 million on the first day. 

The project was soon accused of copying Adobe’s stock photos and has been the subject of controversy ever since.

Other striking events in this niche market have been sales of digital artwork, such as the record $69 million sale of the NFT mint by artist Beeple. 

In this regard, just this week, the global auction house Christie’s, which hosted the record sale, launched its Christie’s 3.0 platform specifically to devote itself entirely to NFT sales. 

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Metaverses are virtual spaces characterized by “land” that is sold and bought. The prices of such land in each metaverse are usually decided by the market, but are affected by some specific factors. 

Factors determining land prices in the metaverse

These are somewhat technical, metaverse-related factors that affect supply and demand, and thus price. 

These factors were described by Joel John, an expert in fintech and DeFi. 

Metaverse real-estate has been all the rage lately but they command less than 10% of NFT trade volumes. I broke down what it is, why they matter and what drives value to them today.

Take a lookhttps://t.co/Ixx3xJqtPO

— Joel John ( , ) (@joel_john95) February 22, 2022

John points out that real estate trading in the metaverse has been all the rage lately, but by volume is worth less than 10% of total NFT trading. 

The main factors affecting prices are overall affluence, memetic proximity, geospatial context, financialization and art. 

Overall turnout

The same principle applies to physical locations e.g. within cities: the amount of people who frequent them. In other words, the more people who spend time on these grounds, the greater their value. 

However, this factor varies over time, so the owner of a piece of land must make an effort to attract people to its space in order to increase its value. 

Memetic proximity

When a piece of land is close to another valuable piece of land, its value increases. In fact, this makes it easier to attract people to one’s space if the neighbouring spaces are already highly frequented. 

John also says that, according to him, the value varies depending on the concentration of footfall/eyeballs in the metaverse. That is, buying land dilutes the amount of attention they can bring to the individual land, so it does not pay to buy too much land. 

Geospatial Context

The geospatial context indicates the proximity of land in the metaverse to commercial entities. Indeed, there is more money circulating where businesses are located, and proximity therefore increases the possibility of extracting value from one’s land.  

This is also similar to what happens in traditional real estate, where many brands often try to merge in order to concentrate customers. 

In the future therefore, the metaverse could also see collective groups coordinating to purchase large plots of land. 

Financialization 

Financialization is likely to be a crucial factor in the metaverse’s activities and land prices. 

These are real financial acquisition strategies, both with the aim of holding and of generating returns, such as rents or sales of fractions of land at higher prices. 

Art

This factor has mainly to do with games. In the gaming sector, graphics play a role that can be decisive, so the creativity and artistic level associated with land that is part of a game can have an impact on the price. 

Conclusions

John argues that real estate in the metaverse will not trade in the same way as tokens in crypto markets because it has a high barrier to entry, and owners often have an incentive to develop it rather than resell it in the short term. 

So for retail users, prices could eventually be exorbitant, unless land is split up, or buying groups are formed. 

Indeed, he believes that an important role will be played by collectives. 

He concludes by saying: 

“In my eyes, present-day metaverse lands governed through DAOs are symbolic of where the internet may trend in parts and pieces—decentralised, user-owned and slightly crazy”.

 

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With the US inflation rate at more than 6%, most economists believe the time has come for the financial authorities to intervene to control the rise in prices that threatens to undermine the economic recovery.

The White House will finance $1 billion

The US is experiencing some of its worst inflation in forty years and the Federal Reserve and the White House are considering countermeasures to deal with what, along with the emergence of the Omicron variant, is expected to be one of the worst threats to the economic recovery.

The White House considers the monopolistic policies of big companies to be the main culprits of the price increase and is trying to take action to help the worst affected sectors. Last week it announced that it will provide $1 billion to fund an aid programme for independent meat and poultry producers, with the aim of reducing the four powerful meat producers that the Biden administration has held responsible for rising consumer prices.

Big monopolies cause inflation

Biden, during an event at the White House, said:

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation. That’s what we’re seeing in meat and poultry and those industries now. Small, independent farmers and ranchers are being driven out of business — sometimes businesses that have been around for generations. It strikes at their dignity, the respect and the family legacy so many of them carried for generations”.

In November, President Biden asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether oil and gas companies were improperly raising energy prices.

The Federal Reserve has already hinted that it is prepared to raise interest rates to try to cool rising prices. But many economists believe that these measures are merely palliatives to deal with a situation that is becoming increasingly explosive.

Price controls against inflation?

Some economists believe it is time to think about more drastic solutions such as price controls, as Marion Nestle of New York University told the New York Times in recent days. 

But her colleague Isabella Weber of the University of Massachusetts, in an editorial in The Guardian was even clearer:

“We have a powerful weapon to fight inflation: price controls. It’s time we consider it”.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who tweeted that Weber’s ideas were nonsense. Democratic economist Larry Summers, Treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001, said on Twitter that the idea that antitrust policy could be used to reduce prices amounted to “scientific denial”.

But Weber notes how price controls on certain goods, such as pharmaceuticals or rents, are in fact already applied in some states and have had positive effects on inflation. In her article, Weber cites the example of the Roosevelt administration during World War II, which set up the Office of Price Administration to enforce strict price controls.

 

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