The market of NFT has been proven to be cyclical multiple times now. We did our own little research on how to notice the next cycle is coming and are ready to share it with you in this article.
We will use the June-Now timeline to divide the market into cycles and predict what will happen in the next couple months.
Pre hype
From the early spring of 2021 till June people only started noticing the potential of NFTs and the market was only gaining momentum by that time. Daily trade volume didn’t go over 1000 ETH per day and the hype was still on its way.
The time they could see something big was coming was when Beeple released his own NFT in the march of 2021 and had it sold on Christie’s auction for 69M$. “Everydays - the first 5000 days” work sale could be named as the starting line of NFT hype. Beeple himself clearly understood what would happen next.
“I do view this as the next chapter of art history”, he said.
Cycle 1
Starting from June people were becoming mad about NFTs, making the technology one of the most discussed topics of the year.
Art NFTs were a treasure for collectors with everyday sales of over a 1000ETH. Fidenza pictures became a holy grail with floor reaching 200ETH, but then..
PFPs started an even more massive wave. The war between cryptopunks and BAYC is still on, though do you remember how hard of a competition that was in early August. BAYC silently came out of nowhere and overtook the hyped up cryptopunks by its community idea and founders feedback. That rivalry produced even more PFP collections, which led to…
The dump
The end of the first cycle for NFTs was meant to happen in the mid autumn, according to experts’ predictions. And indeed, the market got overwhelmed with low-quality NFTs making it a trash can full of useless JPEGs. Cryptopunks started losing their prices because of the dead community. While BAYC was preparing for the dump, creating a comfortable private environment for their tokens’ holders cryptopunks founders were only relying on people’s FOMO and the overall hype around the project. That let BAYC win.
Cycle 2
After taking a month of rest and recovery creators are back on their grind making new collections and, most importantly, selling them.
Who were the buyers - would you ask?
People, who lost their opportunity to make profit from NFTs during the first cycle and the ones who have gained enough knowledge in flipping tokens that time.
Previously hyped cryptopunks get outdated by Doodles and Azuki, while BAYC still stays on top because of how good their marketing was.
Another reason why the NFTs made a comeback were metaverses, leaving the habitual environment of crypto and heading into the real world. Facebook renaming into Meta, BAYC collaborating with Adidas, P2E on its peak - all that made NFTs valuable again starting the second, bigger and longer cycle.
We’re really sorry to say that, but if the previous paragraph made you shine, while imagining how much money you could make, it’s already too late.
Cycle 3
By the beginning of march the second cycle has ended leaving room for new projects coming soon.
As we could tell from the first two cycles, rarely projects overcome their trade volume during the next cycle - the only example we can think of is still BAYC. That means Azuki and other market leading collections probably won’t jump over their heads and show some stunning trade volumes. The next generation of collection will have its trends set by 2-3 projects, while others will try to copy their ideas as it was in the second cycle.
That’s why be patient, frens - the hype is yet to come.
