A Magic Eden executive compares NFT gaming to early mobile gaming, while Dune Analytics claims 58% of NFT trading volume this year has been wash trades.
After a sell-out launch that netted $4.45 million in primary sales, former US president Donald Trump’s NFT collection is already falling.
On Dec. 16, Trump released his bizarre self-themed 45,000 NFT trading cards for $99 each. The NFTs sold out within two hours, and the floor price rose to an all-time high of 0.83 Ether (ETH), or $1,006 on OpenSea, in two days.
Since then, the floor price has fluctuated, and some community members have suggested that the NFT artwork was copied.
OpenSea data shows the floor price at 0.2 ETH ($242), a 75% retracement.
24-hour trading volumes dropped from 1,541 ETH ($1.8 million) on Dec. 18 to 14.37 ETH ($17,402) on Dec. 21.
Another big celebrity joined NFT this week. Scottie Pippen’s NFproject sold out in 77 seconds.
The “Scottie Pippen SP33” drop sold 1,000 unique NFT Metaverse wearable sneakers for 0.2 ETH ($241). “Just about any ecosystem” supports Ethereum-based NFTs.
OpenSea data shows the floor price has risen to 0.42 ETH ($507), and the project has generated 211 ETH ($255,000) in trading volume since Dec. 21.
33 hodlers will receive sneakers, two will play golf with Pippen, and one will get a tour of his hometown and dinner.
Orange Comet, a Web3 entertainment company, developed the NFTs with Sir Anthony Hopkins. Its collection sold out in seven minutes.
Chris Akhavan, chief gaming officer of Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden, thinks NFT/blockchain gaming is like mobile gaming in its early days.
“I remember the attitude back then amongst traditional gaming companies was that mobile games were stupid,” he told TechCrunch on Dec. 21.
Mobile gaming has become the most popular gaming method worldwide despite initial scepticism. In June 2020, New Zoo reported 2.5 billion mobile gamers compared to 1.3 billion PC gamers and 800,000 million console gamers.
Akhavan expects Web3gaming to boom in the coming years despite its criticism.
He noted that billions of dollars have been invested in Web3 gaming studios to create a new gaming platform.
In a Dune Analytics blog post, pseudonymous NFT market analyst hildobby called Ethereum NFT trading volumes a “mirage.”
NFT trading volumes on Ethereum may have been skewed by significant NFT wash trading, which hildobby says made up around 80% of total trading activity in January this year duringnits
According to hildobby’s data, that figure is 58% for all of 2022, indicating that the issue is still widespread and that trading volumes may not be the best indicator of NFT marketplace usage.
“Trading your own NFTs between two wallets you control for the most ETH is the most common method. The goal is to accrue token rewards worth more than the gas fees you pay,” hildobby wrote. “The boom in wash trading really made life tough for us data analysts, since it skews basic statistics that we use to track marketplace usage.”
On Dec. 20, Limit Break CEO and Web3 game designer Gabriel Leydon tweeted that NFT marketplaces’ removal of royalty fees may have caused this issue.
Exchange-incentivized wash trading will destroy NFTs. He wrote that royalty fees had “tamed the exchanges and prevented washtrading on the scale we’re seeing now.”
In their post, hildobby explained how they are filtering potential wash trades from their analyses going forward. Data platforms like CryptoSlam have since developed their own methods.
