OpenSea continues to shatter its previous records, with monthly volume already reaching $3.6 billion as of January 18. This is proof that the non-fungible token (NFT) sector is experiencing unprecedented demand.
New monthly volume record for OpenSea
It’s only January 18th, and already OpenSea has reached a record volume. For comparison, for the entire month of December 2021, NFT’s exchange platform had a volume of $3.2 billion. Its previous monthly record was set in August of this year at $3.4 billion.
Looking at the monthly trend, the explosion in OpenSea’s trading volume is particularly telling:
OpenSea trading volume evolution (in dollars) (Source: DuneAnalytics)
Every day, more than $169 million in ETH are traded on the platform. Just over a week ago, the platform had its best day ever, with a record high of $261 million.
The NFT industry is booming
In a rare move for the industry, the NFT boom comes at a time when the prices of the major crypto-currencies – including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) – have been in a slump in recent weeks. This shows that non-fungible tokens have made a place for themselves beyond the assets they use to be traded.
And OpenSea is not the only platform to benefit from this. LooksRare is a new kid on the block this month, posting higher transaction volumes than its rival – a first for an NFT platform.
LooksRare’s daily volume currently still exceeds OpenSea’s by a wide margin. But several analyses indicate that users are engaging in wash trading to take advantage of the platform’s reward system. Several NFTs are traded between the same two portfolios, which artificially increases the volume.
However, the NFT sector is booming, so much so that many centralised platforms – including the American Coinbase – have started to focus on this sector. Will this be sustainable? The breakthrough of the metaverse and virtual worlds seems to indicate that the market is not about to run out of steam…
Jan 2022 is on course to set a new record for @OpenSea trading volume… by a lot pic.twitter.com/SmMTJafzgL
– P≡nguin NFT Curator (@penguin_curator) January 15, 2022
