An analysis of 19.3M NFTs across ~8,400 collections: one in three have little or no trading activity, and another third trade below their original minting cost
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg : Source: Nansen .
Context & Ripple Effects
Nansen's sweep of 19.3M NFTs across ~8,400 collections puts hard numbers on a problem Bloomberg had already flagged in September 2021, when the majority of assets sold on OpenSea in the prior 90 days had never traded again (most OpenSea sales saw no second deal). What changed by March 2022 is the framing: this is no longer just thin turnover at the margins, but a market where a third of all NFTs barely trade and another third sit below their original minting cost.
The finding cuts against the headline totals from late 2021, when users had spent $26.9B+ on NFTs and CryptoPunks alone accounted for $3B in sales ($26.9B spent in 2021). Messari's February estimate put the whole NFT sector at just $16B — 1% of the crypto ecosystem — and the Nansen data explains why: most of that value, and nearly all the trading activity, lives in a handful of collections.
First-order effects
- Holders of the roughly two-thirds of NFTs that are illiquid or underwater are effectively locked in — their resale options are a discount to mint price or no bid at all, while minters who priced launches off 2021 froth are selling into a market that won't clear.
- Marketplaces like OpenSea see their volumes concentrate further into blue-chip collections such as CryptoPunks, since the long tail generates listings but not transactions.
Second-order effects
- Creators launching new collections face pressure to cut mint prices or add utility, because the Nansen data shows the secondary market routinely valuing mints below cost — undermining the 'mint low, flip high' pitch that drove 2021's launch wave.
- Royalty-dependent business models built on high-frequency secondary trading look shakier when a third of supply never trades; revenue shifts toward the few collections with genuine turnover.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the NFT market structurally bifurcates into a liquid blue-chip tier and a dormant long tail — consistent with what came after: Dune Analytics measured volumes collapsing 97% from January 2022's record $17.2B to $466.9M by September (volumes down 97%), and DappRadar found monthly volume still down 81% versus January 2022 by mid-2023 as traders rotated back to cryptocurrencies (volume down 81% through July 2023).
- Analytics firms — Nansen, Dune, DappRadar, Chainalysis — become the de facto rating agencies of the space, with collection-level liquidity data replacing hype as the basis for pricing and entry decisions.
The trend: NFT liquidity is consolidating into a small set of blue-chip collections while the long tail of thousands of mints goes permanently dormant, turning the market from a broad speculation field into a narrow one.