Are wondering how big the NFT market size was in 2021?
Or perhaps you’re looking to invest and would like to know how much the NFT market is forecasted to grow by 2025?
Well, we’ve got good news for you because we’ve done the work of scouring the internet for the answers to your questions.
In this guide, you’ll learn about some of the different types of NFTs as well as what is driving most of the growth in this hot new market.
And of course, we also share specific numbers on the NFT market’s size in 2021, 2022 and beyond.
Let’s dive right in.
Key Points (tl;dr)
- The NFT market size was nearly $25 billion in 2021.
- In 2022 the NFT market is expected reach as much as $35 billion in net sales volume.
- Based on its current growth rate, reputable sources forecast the NFT market to grow to about $80 billion by 2025.
- Most NFTs fall into 1 of 6 different categories: art, collectibles, gaming, metaverse, utlity and proof of ownership.
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Shocking Numbers: The NFT Market Size in 2023
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Here’s the answer. Great article by @ChrisHeidorn right here: https://tokenizedhq.com/nft-market-size/
What Was the NFT Market Size in 2021?
Total net sales volume from NFTs was nearly $25 billion in 2021 and about 28.6 million different wallets traded NFTs in 2021. The overall market grew by more than 26,000% versus 2020.
Technically, NFTs have already been around for quite some time.
That’s right, the very first NFTs date back as far as the year 2017 when the crypto market took the world by storm.
It was also around that time when the original ERC-721 token standard was first proposed for Ethereum.
ERC-721 tokens are the foundation on top of which the majority of the recent growth in the NFT market is built.
However, it wasn’t really until the year 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, that the world started caring about NFTs.
And even then it still wasn’t really going the mainstream yet.
Then came 2021 and that was the year that NFTs experienced a massive influx of money from Q3 onwards.
So how big is the NFT market now?
After “only” $94.9 million in NFT sales volume in 2020, the market closed out with nearly $25 billion in sales volume in 2021.
That’s right: Not millions, but billions!
Most of that sales volume happened in the third and fourth quarter and is concentrated on a single major NFT website: OpenSea
The dominant marketplace for NFTs has had its fair share of problems though, including users calling for OpenSea refunds after a series of exploits.
What Is the NFT Market Size Forecast for 2025?
The NFT market size is expected to grow by at least 33% year over year and is forecasted to reach approximately $80 billion in net sales volume by 2025 and nearly $350 billion by 2030. Though this may seem like a big number, we are very confident that the actual growth of the market will far exceed these estimates by the investment Jefferies.
As the digital and physical world continue to converge, NFTs seem to be playing a key role in enabling much of the innovation in this space.
Many large brands are already experimenting with NFTs to create new customer experiences.
Some of the companies include Adidas, Nike, Budweiser, Pepsi and even Lamborghini.
In many cases, their activities are stretching as far as buying virtual land plots within metaverse platforms such as The Sandbox and Decentraland.
So it isn’t really a surprise that the NFT market size has been ballooning so much.
The Ethereum blockchain still remains the most popular choice for NFTs and metaverse experiences, despite gas fees hitting record highs last year and effective pricing out a majority of the population.
That’s why a lot of people are asking: How much is the NFT market worth in 2025?
However, this process of “pricing out” many people is likely to accelerate migration to other, more efficient blockchains within the crypto ecosystem.
According to a recent market-cap forecast by the investment bank Jefferies, the NFT market is forecasted to grow to $35 billion in 2022 and well over $80 billion in 2025.
While these numbers may be big already, we wouldn’t be surprised if the actual figure ends up being quite a bit higher than that.
What Are Different Types of NFT?
Most NFTs and projects currently fall into 1 of 6 different categories, with the lion’s share falling to collectibles and utility:
- Art
- Collectibles
- Gaming
- Metaverse
- Utility
- Proof of Ownership
Technically there are endless potential applications for the NFTs, both in the digital as well as in the real world.
However, at this point in time, you can roughly classify nearly every NFT within 1 of 6 different categories.
- Art: Actual pieces of art by real life artists (both digital native as well as traditional artists)
- Collectibles: These mostly include many of the profile-pic (PFP) projects that you see and which come with different degrees of rarity.
- Gaming: These can be NFTs used within a separate game or the NFTs may be the foundation of the game itself.
- Metaverse: Similar to gaming, although these relate to digital worlds that don’t necessarily apply gaming mechanics.
- Utility: Any NFT that provide current or future utility, such as services, membership or access to content.
- Proof of Ownership: This is still a relatively new category, but we’ve seen car manufacturers and fashion companies introduce these as proofs of ownership in limited series.
To be fair, there is some overlap and many projects will fall into multiple categories, depending on what stage they are at in their roadmap (assuming they have one).
There is a lot of innovation happening in this space, so expect more and more different categories to pop up in the next months and years.
Conclusion
NFTs have taken the world by storm and the sheer amount of money that has been pumped into it is simply staggering.
Nevertheless, it looks like NFTs are more than just a passing fad, given that many large corporations are getting involved early and in a big way.
Based on estimates released by the investment Jefferies in early 2022, the NFT market size is expected to hit $35 billion in 2022 already.
If growth can be sustained at similar levels, we’d already be talking about an $80 billion by 2025.
Needless to say that the public is quite divided when it comes to NFTs.
However, the numbers rarely lie and if choose to believe them, it’s rather clear that NFTs are here to stay.
Here at Tokenized, we want to help you learn as much as possible about the coming NFT revolution. We help you navigate this fascinating new world of non-fungible tokens and show you how you can integrate tokenization into your own business.
