CryptoSlam: NFT trading volume fell from $24M on December 20 to $12.9M on December 25, compared to $80.8M on December 22, 2021, to $64.3M on December 25, 2021
- NFT sales volumes fell in the lead up to Christmas in both 2021 and 2022. — However, Yuga Labs's Bored Ape Yacht Club's … Tweets: @wublockchain Tweets: Wu Blockchain / @wublockchain : Forbes counted the top ten cryptocurrency projects with the highest financing in 2022: Yuga Labs $450m Led by a16z ConsenSys $450m Led byParaFi Polygon $450m Led by Sequoia FTX $400m FTX $400m Led by Paradigm and others Circle $400m Led by BlackRock Expand More For Next Unexpand More For Next
Context & Ripple Effects
By late December 2022, the NFT market was measuring seasonal dips against a collapsed baseline: CryptoSlam's figures show volume falling from $24M on December 20 to $12.9M on Christmas Day, against $80.8M-to-$64.3M over the same stretch in 2021 — a holiday lull both years, but on a base roughly one-fifth the size. That baseline was set months earlier, when DappRadar recorded OpenSea processing under $5M of daily transactions, down ~99% from its May peak, and Bored Ape Yacht Club's floor price had fallen 53%.
Coverage through December framed the question as whether anything besides speculation would hold up: Wired's pieces that same week pointed to gaming as the leading use case while monthly volume slid from $17B in January 2022 to $400M by November. The Christmas numbers matter because they show even the residual, utility-era market still breathes with the speculative calendar.
First-order effects
- Marketplaces like OpenSea and blue-chip issuers such as Yuga Labs' Bored Ape Yacht Club head into January with roughly half the pre-holiday liquidity, compounding a year in which OpenSea's daily volume had already fallen ~99% from its May high.
Second-order effects
- With trading fees shrinking, platforms and studios lean harder into the gaming-and-utility pitch Wired documented, since royalties and secondary-market revenue can no longer carry the business model alone.
Third-order effects
- The pattern held into 2023: CryptoSlam put full-year NFT sales at $8.7B, down 63%, and PitchBook counted crypto VC funding down 68% to $9.5B — pointing to an NFT sector consolidating around a much smaller, utility-driven core rather than returning to 2021-scale speculation, though CryptoSlam's own data showed a partial rebound when Ethereum NFT sales rose to $780.2M in January 2023, still far below the ~$5B of January 2022.
The trend: NFT trading is settling onto a much smaller post-speculative baseline where seasonal swings persist but the structural floor is set by utility demand rather than momentum buying.