According to a new survey by DEXterlab, 64.3% of NFT traders are in the industry just to flip jpegs and make money.
This revelation is important because for a long time, there has been an ongoing debate whether the massive growth of the NFT market in recent years can be attributed to the underlying technology, or the surge is driven by a ‘make-quick-money’ scheme.
Most NFT enthusiasts put up a facade that they are in the space due to the revolutionary art technology, but the result of the poll proves otherwise.
The survey
The survey was conducted on Twitter and it had over one thousand respondents.
According to the results published on June 10 by DEXterlab, 64.3% of the 1,318 people polled said that the primary reason they purchase NFTs is ‘to make money.’
Per the poll, the second most popular reason why people buy NFTs, “is to become a part of some community and flex”.
For 14.7% of people who responded in the survey, this is the main reason for purchasing certain digital artworks .
The third reason why people buy NFTs is for the purpose of ‘collecting’. This section is made up of digital art collectors and they constitute 12.4% of all survey participants.
According to the DEXterlab survey, another reason people purchase non-fungible tokens is to gain access to games and tools. A form of membership rights that provide them access to artists’ projects, perks, tools and so on. 8.6% of people buy artworks for this reason.
However, in as much as the predominant reason most people are in the market is to make money, the survey reveals that the venture has not been quite profitable for a number of them.
The majority of non-fungible token holders (58.3%) who participated in the poll said that their NFTs haven’t been that profitable so far. While 41.7% of respondents were able to make a profit from the digital artworks they’ve bought.
NFT market
The NFT market has been suffering with the broader crypto bear market since the beginning of the year. Now, the latest crypto market selloff was accompanied by a significant drop in floor prices for some of the biggest collections in the market.
The floor prices (a popular metric for determining the value of NFT collections) for many of the most valuable collections have tanked along with Bitcoin and Ethereum, with the entry price for some collections dropping by more than 20%.
According to data from NFTGo at press time, the floor price for Bored Ape Yacht Club is down 22.04% in the last seven days, falling from around 97 ETH to 75 ETH. Mutant Ape Yacht Club floor price is also down 29.36% and 8.21% the last 7 days and 24 hours respectively.
Meanwhile the floor price for Moonbirds, one of the standout collections of the year, has plummeted to 14.88 ETH, down 11.95% in the last 24 hours.
Furthermore, NFT specialist Punk9059 pointed out on Twitter yesterday that NFT marketplace OpenSea has seen its wrapped ETH (wETH) trading volume hit a yearly record of 0.2%.
An increase in wETH trades on OpenSea suggests owners of dominant NFT collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club may have sold their assets in panic. Which means due to the tension and instability in the market, sellers have accepted low bids on their assets.