The Current State of the NFT Market
Based on data from the NFT Scan and CoinMarketCap groups, a study by cryptocurrency organization dappGambl shows that a little over 95% of NFTs which the study’s proponents analyzed had a market cap of zero ETH.
In cryptocurrency parlance, market capitalization or market cap refers to the total value of all the coins that have been “mined” for a given cryptocurrency (in this case Ethereum or ETH).
It is calculated by multiplying the number of coins in circulation by the current market price of a single coin. The researchers looked into the records and data of 73,257 NFT collections which, by their estimates, is owned by around 23 million individuals.
They found that out of the top 8,850 collections based on market cap rankings, only 41% are priced between $5 to $100, and less than 1% are priced over $6,000.
They also found that around 79% of NFT collections remain unsold, which has resulted to a weak buyer’s market due to a surplus of supply over demand.
“It becomes clear that a significant portion of the NFT market is characterized by speculative and hopeful pricing strategies that are far removed from the actual trading history of these assets,” the study’s proponents report.
“Additionally, this apparent disconnect between listed prices and actual sales could suggest that many sellers are waiting for another massive surge in NFT interest akin to the boom witnessed in 2021, which may not ever occur again,” they further share.
The First NFT Exhibit in Cebu
In November of 2021, a group of digital artists banded together and opened what can be referred to as the first NFT exhibit in Cebu, or more appropriately, the first Cebuano-initiated NFT exhibit that was aimed for the Cebuano audience.
Titled “Saha: A Genesis Bisaya NFT Show”, it featured works by artists Sagedvice, Xlvrbk, Budoy, Polet, Binsoy, Nitro.fux and luyo_space. It was launched as a highlight of the 2021 edition of the Tubo Cebu Art Fair, which ran from November 13 to 20 that year, and it largely espoused the fair’s online-anchored holding owing to movement/gathering restrictions that were in place at the time.
Though several Cebuano artists were already minting their works as NFTs prior to the show’s opening, the exhibit could categorically be used as a marker that pins when interest in NFTs in Cebu surged in 2021.
The creative arts landscape at the time, after all, was heavily dependent on virtual shows and exhibits owing to the pandemic, and its staging serves as a marker of how the local arts scene embraced the NFT marketplace at the time.