SVB collapse chilled NFT trading volumes: DappRadar

Nonfungible token (NFT) trading volumes took a massive beating following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last week as traders fled the markets fearing the repercussions of a major United States bank going under.

According to a March 16 report from data aggregation platform DappRadar, NFT trading volumes were hovering between $68 million to $74 million in the lead-up to SVB’s collapse on March 10, then fell to $36 million on March 12.

The dip was accompanied by a 27.9% drop in daily NFT sales count between March 9 to March 11.

11,440 NFT traders were “active” on March 11 also, the lowest figure recorded since November 2021 according to DappRadar.

The report explained the depeg of USD Coin (USDC) which hit as low as $0.88 moved trader attention away from the NFT market:

As a result “NFT traders became less active,” Dappradar explained.

Despite the trading chills the market value of “blue chip” NFTs was not materially impacted, with the floor prices of collections such as the Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks only slightly falling.

“The recovery was quick, showing the resilience of these top-tier NFTs,” DappRadar said. “Blue-Chip NFTs remain a steady investment in a disrupted market.”

The steady floor prices of the BAYC and CryptoPunks may be attributed to the firm behind the collections, Yuga Labs, confirming it only had a “super limited exposure” to SVB, according to co-founder Greg Solano.

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However, the floor price of the Moonbirds collection fell a significant 35.3% from 6.18 ETH to 4 ETH on OpenSea, following the news that PROOF — the team behind the NFTs — had considerable exposure to SVB.

This was partially triggered by one Ethereum address selling off almost 500 Moonbirds NFTs for losses ranging between 9% to 33%, DappRadar explained.

The sell-offs on the NFT marketplace Blur totaled a loss of 700 Ether (ETH).