CryptoPunks floor price slips below 80 ETH as NFT trading volume deflates by 50%

The minimum cost to buy a CryptoPunks nonfungible token (NFT) from secondary marketplaces dropped below 80 Ether (ETH) on Sept. 14.

Larva Labs reported that the so-called "CryptoPunk 1417," a pixelated avatar of one of 3840 women created by digital artists Matt Hall and John Watkinson, is listed for sale at 79.99 ETH (almost $266,168).

The floor price of CryptoPunks fell below 80 ETH. pic.twitter.com/aD3Cwbl0IK

A quick look into the history of transactions involving #1417 showed that its owner sold it for as low as 0.9 ETH (~$159) in January 2020. The new possessors kept raising their ask price for the NFT in the later months. As of Aug. 31, its floor rates had topped near 118.99 ETH (~$407,165).

But no bids came for #1417, forcing the auctioneer to reduce the NFT's floor price to 93.99 ETH ($368,539) by Sept. 7. A flurry of bargains later, the owner listed the digital collectible for 79.99 ETH and received an offer for 70 ETH ($230,089).

But the bidder later withdrew their offer, raising possibilities that the #1417's owner might drop their floor price further.

The price trajectory of one of the CryptoPunks' 10,000 NFT artworks came as a part of a recent decline in floor rates across the digital collectibles space. At one point this week, the average price floor for all NFTs had dropped to 0.37 ETH from the top of 1.02 ETH, as per Ethereum ecosystem tracker Dune Analytics.

Nonetheless, on Sept. 14, the average price shot up to a new record high of 1.10 ETH. It is worth noting that price floors could rise due to new NFT projects debuting with higher ask rates. But for top players in the space, such as CryptoPunks, the price floor remained lower.

Meanwhile, many of the high-priced CryptoPunks NFT sales in the past seven days also occurred. For instance, on Sept. 12, Zombie "CryptoPunk 8857" received a 2,000 ETH bid worth $6.62 million. Similarly, last week, a Clown-nosed "CryptoPunk 5169" got sold for 205 ETH (around $755,935).

Payment processing giant Visa also bought a CryptoPunk for nearly $150,000 in Ether.

NFT sales volumes plunge

At the same time, the high-priced CryptoPunk purchases have done little in maintaining its record-breaking August sales volumes.

In detail, the NFT marketplaces witnessed $86.55 million worth of transactions after peaking toward the end of August, all involving the sales of CryptoPunks avatars. The trend sustained further through the first two days of September, only to witness a sharp decline in the next sessions.

CryptoSlam reported a 53.3% decline in the CryptoPunks sales volumes in the past seven days via only 66 transactions involving 55 buyers. Similarly, other top NFT projects, including Axie Infinity, Art Blocks, and Bored Ape Yacht Club, also reported double-digit percentage drops. 

Nonfungible reported similar drops in trading volumes across leading NFT marketplaces after Aug. 29. On that day, the NFT projects had raked in $1.02 billion. But as of Sept. 14, the sales had dropped to $151.31 million.

Meanwhile, the number of active NFT wallets fell from 59,255 to 21,908 in the same period. Additionally, the total number of NFT sales dropped to 36,014 from 138,109, signaling a declining interest in the digital collectibles space.

Related: NFT sales and floor prices plummet as demand wanes and gas prices soar

The drop largely matched steps with bearish price moves across the cryptocurrency market last week as top coins Bitcoin and Ethereum suffered a large correction. On the whole, the crypto market cap declined by 15.52% after topping out near $2.43 trillion on Sept. 7.

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