Weekly NFT sales jump 20% to $246 million. These were the 5 best-selling digital collections.

[Markets Insider, CryptoPunks/Rokas Tenys]

• NFT sales had a breakthrough year in 2021, and over the past 12 months, volume has hit $25 billion.
• But after nearing $1 billion in a single week in January, NFT sales have slowed amid an ongoing bear market in cryptocurrencies.

The cryptocurrency boom over the past few years has helped propel a newer market to record heights: digital collectibles known as NFTs. 

The craze has pushed total NFT sales volume to $25 billion over the past year as artists, investors, and entrepreneurs descend upon the nascent Web3 space. 

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique, irreplaceable, mostly digital items that users buy and sell online.

NFTs use blockchain technology to keep a digital record of ownership, similar to cryptocurrencies. They were first launched on ethereum, the same blockchain that supports the cryptocurrency ether, and most NFTs can still only be purchased using ether.https://51fc11cfe09835e3e70e20c170d64075.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0

But a months-long sell-off in cryptocurrencies has taken a bite out of NFT sales more recently. Weekly NFT sales have been more than cut in half from its early January peak of nearly $1 billion, according to data from NonFungible.com.

But the past week has seen weekly NFT sales jump 18% to $246 million from $207 million in the prior week. The Bored Ape Yacht Club maintained its dominance as the most popular NFTs to own, while Cool Cats NFTs knocked CryptoPunks out of the second spot. 

These were the five best-selling collections over the past week, according to NonFungible.

5. The Sandbox

7-Day Sales Volume: $5.3 million
Number of Sales: 859
Highest Sale Price: $25,000

Explainer: “The Sandbox is a community-driven UGC-voxel platform where users own their LAND and host their creative magic.”

4. Doodles

7-Day Sales Volume: $7.0 million
Number of Sales: 156
Highest Sale Price: $100,000

Explainer: “Doodles come in a joyful range of colors, traits, and sizes with a collection size of 10,000. Doodles are a funky bunch that like to role play or transmogrify themselves into delicious treats. Holding a Doodle allows you to participate in coordinating the Doodles Community Treasury.”

3. CryptoPunks

7-Day Sales Volume: $17.1 million
Number of Sales: 66
Highest Sale Price: $757,000

Explainer: “10,000 unique collectible characters with proof of ownership stored on the Ethereum blockchain. The project that inspired the modern CryptoArt movement.”

2. Cool Cats

7-Day Sales Volume: $17.7 million
Number Sales: 360
Highest Sale Price: $57,000

Explainer: “Cool Cats are a collection of programmatically, randomly generated NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. The 1st generation consists of 10,000 randomly assembled cats from over 300k total options. Cool Cats that have a variety of outfits, faces and colors – all cats are cool, but completed outfit cats are the coolest.”

1. Bored Ape Yacht Club

7-Day Sales Volume: $47.4 million
Number of Sales: 507
Highest Sale Price: $559,000

Explainer: “BAYC is a collection of 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs — unique digital collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain. Your Bored Ape doubles as your Yacht Club membership card, and grants access to members-only benefits.”

By Matthew Fox