May 23, 2022 04:30AM ET
By: AnalysisWatch
Tokens are tokenized versions of unique assets such as artwork, music, trading cards, real estate, and more that can be traded on a blockchain, the digital ledger technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens that offer a unique, indestructible proof of ownership.
The recent surge in popularity of non-fungible tokens has led to an explosion in the NFT market. A recent study found that NFT transactions skyrocketed from $40.96 million in 2018 to $338.04 million in 2020.
That's an increase of more than eight times in two years. In 2020, the NFT market was estimated at $100 million. By the end of 2021, that value would have increased 220-fold to $22 billion. Today, the NFT market is estimated to be worth more than $35 billion and is expected to grow to more than $80 billion by 2025.
The excitement around non-fungible tokens began with blockchain-based NFTs like Beeple artwork that sold for millions, CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks, and Axie Infinity, a P2E video game from Vietnam. It took the stunning sale of Everydays for $69.3 million: The First 5000 Days by Beeple in the first quarter of 2021 for NFTs to become globally popular. In Q4 2021, the CryptoPunk NFTs created by Larvalabs became really popular as they turned out to be one of the biggest NFT sales-Cryptopunk # 9998 was sold for a staggering $532 million. This NFT has piqued the interest of everyone in the crypto world, causing an increasing demand for them. This has led to a rapid explosion of NFTs in the world of music, games, art, sports, and so on.