NFT Sales Drop 44% As Crypto Crashes, Memecoins Steal ‘Mindshare’ In Q2
The recent flood of celebrity, political and animal-themed memecoins, along with the crypto market crash, contributed to a 44% fall in non-volatile tokens (NFTs) in Q2, according to Apollo Crypto's chief investment officer.
Data from CryptoSlam shows that NFT sales fell from $4.14 billion in Q1 to $2.32 billion in Q2 as part of a broader market downturn.
“Q2 was a difficult market with Bitcoin decreasing by 15% and it was a difficult market with many altcoins,” Henrik Andersson, chief investment officer at Apollo Crypto, told Cointelegraph.
“[But] Memecoins are taking some of the mind share away from NFTs.[s]” Anderson added.
Share of mind is a marketing term that refers to the amount of consumer awareness or popularity surrounding a particular product or idea.
While sales of NFTs have slowed, Memecoins continue to see high trading volume, including $3.4 billion in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
Much of this was fueled by the rise of PolitiFi memecoins in connection with the US presidential election, and several new celebrities emerged on Ethereum and Solana.
MAGA (TRUMP) and Pepe (PEPE) are among the memecoins that rose in value in the second quarter.
Ordinary articles to take more market share
Developments in Bitcoin-based ordinals could drive attention away from traditional NFTs in the coming months, Anderson noted.
“In the long term, we believe that Bitcoin ordinals will continue to hold market share in the NFT space, especially considering the many Bitcoin L2s coming to market.”
Related: Celebrity memecoins highlight crypto influencer problem
However, network activity on Ordinals and Runes has fallen off in recent weeks.
Runes transactions fell from 88% of their high point in June, both Ordinals texts and Runes contributed less than 2 Bitcoin (BTC) per day in mining payments over last week.
NFTs have bounced back before.
NFTs rebounded slightly in the last quarter of 2023, recording sales of more than $3 billion, which could spark hopes for an NFT resurgence in mid-2024.
In the year It included a $1.77 billion sales month in December 2023, the largest since the NFT summer began to decline in June 2022.
Top NFT collectors such as CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club still have large market caps at $994.9 million and $345.9 million, respectively, according to CoinGecko data.
By comparison, the two largest casual projects, NodeMonks and Bitcoin Puppets, have market capitalizations of $121.1 million and $94.2 million, respectively.
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