After a peak of $248M in February, daily trading volumes of NFTs on OpenSea fell 80% to ~$50M in March; average price of a Bored Ape NFT fell 44% since Feb. 24
Internet collectibles ranging from cartoon apes to artsy doodles have plunged in value as real-world conflict … Tweets: @germanotes , @muradahmed , @jeffnolan , @adamsamson , @carnage4life , @_inpractise , @grady_booch , @josephmdurso , @fd , and @smdiehl Tweets: Sara Germano / @germanotes : March 11, 2021 https://www.ft.com/... March 11, 2022 https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/... Murad Ahmed / @muradahmed : The great NFT sell off! $41bn spent on digital assets from cartoon apes to artsy doodles by end of last year. Now they've dropped almost 50 per cent in value. It's a sign the hype has worn off. Great report in @FT by @MilesKruppa @CristinaCriddle and @Tim https://www.ft.com/... Jeff Nolan / @jeffnolan : the Pet Rock Half Life index never ceases to amaze me https://twitter.com/... Adam Samson / @adamsamson : The ‘spec wreck’ has claimed its latest victim: NFTs. https://www.ft.com/... @MilesKruppa @CristinaCriddle @tim @carnage4life : What goes up must come down. https://www.ft.com/... @_inpractise : This quote is incredible: “there was a general sense that there was saturation in certain parts of the market, particularly in primate-themed profile pictures” https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/... Grady Booch / @grady_booch : Thoughts and prayers. https://www.ft.com/... Joey D'Urso / @josephmdurso : Eek. Things go down as well as up, people have predicted the death of Bitcoin many times and been proved wrong. This *feels* different but let's see. Certainly a huge reputational risk to tie your brand to NFTs, as the Premier League appears about to.. https://www.ft.com/... Dan McCrum / @fd : Remember when NFT's were a thing? Good times https://twitter.com/... Stephen Diehl / @smdiehl : Because it was all nothing more than people selling hot air ... quite literally in the case of NFT farts. https://twitter.com/... Expand More For Next Unexpand More For Next
Context & Ripple Effects
The March slide lands on top of warnings that were already in the coverage: back in September, most assets sold on OpenSea had never seen a second trade, meaning the market's liquidity was always thinner than its headline volume suggested. Weeks before this drop, marketplace Cent halted transactions over unauthorized minting, an early sign that quality-control problems were surfacing even at peak prices.
What changed is the bid itself. After users put nearly $41B into NFTs in 2021 — with a small pool of wallets holding most of the value — OpenSea's daily volume collapsed from $248M in February to roughly $50M, and the flagship Bored Ape collection lost 44% of its price in about two weeks.
First-order effects
- OpenSea's take-rate revenue tracks volume directly, so an 80% daily-volume contraction hits the marketplace's economics immediately, while Bored Ape holders face mark-to-market losses on the collection that defined the boom.
- Sellers who bought near the February peak are now trying to exit into a market where, as the earlier reporting showed, most assets already had no secondary buyer.
Second-order effects
- Marketplaces competing for shrinking volume are pushed toward fee and royalty cuts to retain traders — the dynamic that later drove OpenSea and Blur to slash royalties and collapse creator payouts by 98% from their January 2022 peak.
- With fewer marginal buyers, price discovery concentrates in the few liquid blue-chip collections like Bored Ape, widening the gap between tradeable assets and the long tail of illiquid mints.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the NFT market structurally reprices from a broad speculative asset class into a narrow collectibles niche: DappRadar's later data shows monthly volume ultimately falling 81% from January 2022 to July 2023 as traders rotated back to cryptocurrencies.
- A market where a small wallet base holds most of the value and most assets never resell is exposed to cascading liquidations in downturns — the kind of fragility that invites scrutiny of whether certain NFTs function like unregistered securities, the concern behind Cent's halt.
The trend: NFT trading is proving to be a concentrated, liquidity-thin speculation whose volumes deflate faster than they inflated, dragging platform royalty economics down with it.