Bitcoin leads charge as weekly NFT sales skyrocket to over $423m

The Bitcoin (BTC) network registered the most non-fungible token (NFT) sales in the past week, as overall transactions totaled a staggering $423,004,860.

The sales mark an increase of more than 32% compared to the preceding week and signifies the third consecutive week of robust growth in the NFT market.

According to data compiled by Cryptoslam.io, Bitcoin emerged as the dominant force in NFT transactions, leading the charge with $160.37 million in sales, representing a remarkable surge of 80.45%. 

Ethereum (ETH) closely trailed behind, with $159.64 million in transactions, marking a respectable 14.41% uptick in ETH-based NFT sales. 

Other notable blockchains, including Solana (SOL), BNB Chain (BNB), and Mythos Chain (MYTH), also experienced substantial growth in NFT sales during this period. 

Cryptoslam’s data shows Solana raked in about $65.129 million in weekly sales, with BNB Chain and Mythos ending the seven days with $9.019 million and $7.7 million in sales, respectively. 

Of the chains, Bitcoin also registered the highest uptick in wash trading, with the $465k made through the practice representing a nearly 2600% increase from the previous week. 

The week’s top-grossing NFT collections were led by Bitcoin’s Uncategorized Ordinals, raking in an impressive $41,210,717 in sales, marking a substantial 157.74% increase from the previous week. 

Following closely was the NodeMonkes collection, which achieved $35,128,917 in transactions. These leading collections were trailed by Pandora, Creepz, and $NATCATS, rounding out the top five NFT collections by sales volume.

The surge in NFT sales also saw some remarkable individual transactions across various blockchains. On the Bitcoin blockchain, the NFT “Burgie” fetched an astonishing $1.44 million, while a Solana-based NFT titled “Composable Restaking Position” changed hands for $1.1 million. 

Ethereum’s “Lif3 v3 Position” NFT commanded $597,800, and a BNB Chain “Lockdeal” NFT was acquired for $416,504. Additionally, a Polygon “Dfyn” NFT was sold for $100,000, reflecting the diversity and value of NFTs across different platforms.

Over the last week, the number of NFT buyers also increased, with Cryptoslam’s data showing a 40.5% increase, juxtaposed with a 2.47% drop in the total number of NFT transactions in the period.

However, amidst this surge in NFT sales, popular marketplace Opensea faced a significant downturn in February. 

Data from the analytics platform Dune show that sales on OpenSea decreased substantially, with only 33% of the total NFT sales in February, the lowest figure since May last year. Active users on the platform also declined, with only 103,000 users making at least one sale in February.