According to Cointelegraph, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) recorded a monthly sales volume of $374 million in August 2024, marking the lowest monthly sales this year. This is the first time in 2024 that NFT sales have fallen below $400 million. Data from NFT tracker CryptoSlam highlights a significant drop from the highest monthly sales of $1.6 billion in March 2024, representing a 76% decline.
NFTs experienced a strong start in 2024, with a total sales volume of $4.1 billion in the first quarter. However, the momentum did not continue, as the volume dropped to $2.24 billion in the second quarter, a 45% quarter-on-quarter decline. Despite a surge in weekly sales at the end of August, NFTs have been unable to reverse the downward trend that began in April when sales fell to $1.2 billion. This decline continued with monthly volumes hitting $598 million in May.
In July, NFTs recorded a volume of $427 million, showing an 87% increase in transactions from 5.7 million in June to 10.7 million in July. However, August saw a 31% drop in transactions to 7.3 million. Despite the lower transaction count, the average value of NFT sales increased by 27%, rising from $39.93 to $50.74. As of early September, the average NFT sale value further increased to $86.04 per transaction.
Solo Ceesay, co-founder and CEO of social wallet Calaxy, noted that speculative capital has shifted from NFTs to memecoins. He believes that the market is transitioning from NFTs to memecoins. On August 19, a high-value CryptoPunk NFT was quietly transferred to a different wallet, which Ceesay interprets as the previous owner moving capital into memecoins.