Ethereum NFTs will be collected with Etherrock and BAYC leading sales
4:30 PM UTC: Added comment from Ilan Rakhmanov, founder and CEO of ChainGPT.
Ethereum-native nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have started to bounce back this week, following growing NFT sales figures.
Wrapped Ether Rock #46 sold for $496,658 on Monday, while Bored Up Yacht Club (BAYC) sold #1726 for $668,297 four days later, according to NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam. These represent the second- and third-largest sales of the month, following CryptoPunk #5363's $1.53 million sales on January 31st.
According to Andy Lean, blockchain expert and author of the book “NFT: From Zero to Hero”, Encapsulated EtherRock and BAYC NFTs are not just NFTs, they represent a status symbol that gives respect to someone in the NFT community:
“The crypto market is expected to be more bullish. This will restore the damaged narrative of NFTs as a means of displaying social and cultural capital.
While the BAYC #1726 sale appears to be a strategic move, the wrap-up EtherRock NFT sale charts a different NFT trend, ChainGPT founder and CEO Ilan Rakhmanov told Cointelegraph:
“Ether Rock's sale appears to be a price pump by someone trying to get more attention for the stock, as the actual sale price is much higher than any other offer, averaging around $500.”
Ethereum's NFT sales volume rose 99.42% to $159.5 million over the past seven days, driven by a 25% increase in sales from the Nobody NFT stock, which generated $8.76 million in weekly sales for the network. Bitcoin NFT sales fell 25% to $47.5 million.
According to Yuhudah Petcher, NFT strategist at CryptoSlam, NFT traders are returning to Ethereum due to increased interest in Bitcoin Ordinals and Solana-native NFTs.
“We've only had cycles between assets like crypto, memecoins, NFT art and NFT PFPs. Now, we also have cycles between blockchains. Traders move to where the money is and see opportunities elsewhere.”
Contributing to Ethereum's surge in sales, the Pudgy Penguin NFT stock's floor price rose to a new all-time high of 21.5 ETH ($53,427) on Sunday before settling back to the current 20.28 ETH ($50.395). This is 13.1% away from the 22.94 ETH ($57,000) floor price of Bored Ape Yacht Club, the second largest Ethereum-based NFT pool, according to NFTPriceFloor data.
Pudgy Penguin's seven-day sales volume rose 143 percent to $6.8 million, making it the fourth-largest NFT pool by weekly sales volume, CryptoSlam reported.
Interest in the collection began to grow following the announcement of the alpha of Pudgy World, a blockchain-based open-world gaming experience set to release in Q1 2024.
The NFT market has been stagnating since May 2022. The floor prices of top blue-chip NFT clusters, CryptoPunks and BAYC, are down 48% and 82% from their all-time highs, respectively.
Related: Ethereum Gas Fees Hit 8-Month High Amid ERC-404 Craze
