On the back of the emergence of the metaverse and blockchain technology, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) are on the rise, both in terms of interest and price, although they are still a very niche concept in a highly speculative market. However, despite these characteristics, their behaviour has not failed to surprise analysts.
In a recent report by Statista, the leading German website for economic market trends and studies, they noted the “meteoric rise” of the NFT market in 2021, both in terms of traffic and number of users. It is still a “small fraction” of activity when considering cryptocurrency exchanges and neo-brokers, but the growth forecasts are not insignificant. Current estimates put the value of the market around $71.5 billion in 2025, which would represent annual growth of 21% between now and then.
According to the report’s author, the expert journalist Florian Zandt, the global adoption rate of both NFT and cryptocurrencies will be still minimal in 2025, which “could mean that cryptocurrency trading will continue a specialist market over the next few years, but the amount of money that is moved in exchanges like Binance and Coinbase or NFT markets like Opensea or Rarible is already striking”. For example, according to an analysis conducted by the financial services consultancy Optimas, the total revenue of these exchanges will have exceeded those of traditional stock exchanges like NYESE and Nasdaq in 2021.
In other words, by that time, it would still be a minority market but with some significant business figures. And all this in a market that is considered highly speculative, as shown by the data: it is estimated that only 2% of bitcoin wallets would account for almost three quarters (72%) of the total bitcoins mined to date.
Here at GDS Modellica, we have put together an infographic showing the key insights from this data. However, we always recommend consulting the original Statista report in full, under the title Digital Market Outlook, to get a complete picture.
