NFT buying volume and search volume drops in February

NFT buying volume

Welcome back to the Tribe! In this post we dive into the recent drop in NFT buying volume and search volume! Could a correction be due for the market?

Nothing should be considered investment or financial advice. Enjoy the ride!

NFT buying volume

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) became popular in the crypto space last year. There were huge sales and the buying volume increased by leaps and bounds ever since. Also, the interest shown by the number of online searches for NFTs increased steadily from then, but in the last month (February 2022), this interest seems to have dropped.

Drop In Volume

What could be the cause? Are we entering a period of disinterest? Or is it just like the 2018 bear market that followed the 2017 Bitcoin bull run?

Figures show that the unique number of NFT buyers dropped below 800,000 for the first time since October 2021. This means that fewer new buyers entered the NFT market in February for the first time since October last year. Data from CryptoSlam actually pegs the figure for February at 796,009.

This figure comes after a very impressive January market that saw around 904,013 unique NFT buyers. So, this drop could just be a healthy pullback after a massive bullish, or maybe the beginning of a season of disinterest. Only time will tell anyway.

The recent dip was not limited to the buying volume. A look at Google Trends shows that the global keyword search volume for NFTs also dropped significantly.

Andrew Steiwold, the managing partner of Sfermion an NFT investment fund tweeted that;

“Worldwide NFT search volume fell off a cliff. Reminds me A LOT of the crypto 2017 bull market and subsequent 2018 bear market. How long will the disinterest last until it starts to pick back up? Or will it?”

Worldwide NFT search volume fell off a cliff

Reminds me A LOT of the crypto 2017 bull market and subsequent 2018 bear market

How long will the disinterest last until it starts to pick back up? Or will it? 👀 pic.twitter.com/4iQxcpLuYP

— Andrew Steinwold (@AndrewSteinwold) March 2, 2022

Although there are no clear reasons for the drop in interest, the shift in focus to Ukraine and Russia crisis last month could be a contributing factor. Because the attention crypto community was on donations and aid to Ukraine towards the end of the month. Also bear in mind that Opensea, one of the top NFT platforms was hacked last month and lost $1.7 million to the hacker. Incidents like this could lead to fear and uncertainty among investors and potential investors.

In other news; Adult Film Star Lana Rhoades Pulls The Plug On Her Nft Project

The popular adult film star launched her NFT collection CryptoSis in January. The project was described as a well-crafted and developed collection with multiple drops planned. She leveraged her large online following to promote the project which she promised will be lucrative for holders. But things did not turn out as planned.

The first warning sign that all was not well came when she lowered the size of the collection to improve the project’s poor sales. But the move did not turn things around for the project that was already performing poorly.

The project’s fortune continued to dwindle and did not show any improvement, the floor price of the NFT plummeted from the original min price of 0.1 ETH to 0.01ETH. In the end, she admitted her inability to guarantee holders’ profit and eventually cashed out what was realized from the project. Many YouTubers and members of her community think this was a rug pull, but Rhoades still denies that she didn’t set out to scam anyone.