Christmas Break? Apparently Not for the NFT Market

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The NFT market appears to be picking up this Christmas. 

NFT Trading Booms Over Christmas 

Christmas hasn’t calmed the spirits of NFT traders. 

Some of the most sought after NFTs on the market have boomed over the last few days, with trading volumes on OpenSea soaring across the board. CrypToadz, for instance, has seen an increase of 2,120% of trading volume in the last 24 hours, while the Cool Cats volume is up 1,003%. 

Mutant Ape Yacht Club, a sister collection to the iconic Bored Ape Yacht Club series that launched this year, has fared particularly well from the pick-up: the entry price for a Mutant Ape has jumped to 11 ETH. On Sunday, a rare Mega Mutant Serum NFT used to turn a Bored Ape into a one-of-a-kind Mutant Ape sold for 888 ETH, around $3.6 million. 

Interestingly, the floor price for Ethereum’s most valuable collection, CryptoPunks, has also surged over the last few days. On Wednesday, Bored Ape Yacht Club temporarily “flipped” CryptoPunks in floor price terms. The cheapest ape on the secondary market was priced at 53.9 ETH, while the Punk floor was 52.69 ETH. Today, the cheapest Bored Apes cost 59 ETH, while floor Punks are trading at 68.45 ETH—the equivalent of around $277,670. 

The rise of the last few days comes after an extended lull period across the NFT market. The prices for many top tier NFTs on Ethereum, Solana, and other networks have been trending down since the summer when the market entered a period of mania that became known as “NFT summer.” The boom peaked in August following months of mainstream attention on the space, with notable events including Beeple’s $69 million Christie’s sale, pop artists like Grimes and The Weeknd releasing their own NFTs, and early signs of corporate adoption from the likes of Visa and Coca-Cola. While NFTs and the Metaverse have been a hot topic since Facebook’s rebrand to Meta in October, most collections have struggled to top their all-time high prices recorded over the summer. 

While the increase in trading volumes and floor prices is notable for NFT collectors and holders, the biggest development of the festive period centers on a token airdrop that took place on Christmas Eve. OpenDAO launched its SOS token Friday, with 50% of the 100 trillion supply distributed to OpenSea users. Allocations were calculated depending on the amount the recipient had spent and the number of transactions they’d made, which meant the most active traders were rewarded the biggest supply of the tokens. SOS surged throughout Christmas Day and its market cap briefly topped $300 million, though the token has since retraced. 

OpenDAO says that SOS is “the token for the largest NFT community, to pay tribute, to protect, to promote,” and its launch followed intense criticisms of OpenSea’s apparent plans to go public (the company’s new CFO Brian Roberts suggested that the firm may launch an IPO in the future in a Bloomberg interview). If OpenSea ever did go public, it would potentially rule out a token airdrop for the community that helped the project succeed. Roberts has since posted an update backtracking on the proposal. 

Per the OpenDAO website, the treasury will be used to launch a developer grant and support the NFT community in a variety of ways. Etherscan data shows that there are currently 206,213 SOS holders. Following the successful launch, a similar project called OpenSolDAO has emerged. OpenSolDAO will focus on the Solana NFT community, and it says it’s dropping its HELP token to the community imminently. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies. They were also eligible for OpenDAO’s SOS airdrop. 

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