The Ethereum (ETH) floor price of the five biggest non-fungible token (NFT) collections has slumped in the last 30 days, according to data aggregator NFT Price Floor. The NFTs from Bored Ape Yacht Club collection took the hardest hit, with a 26.6% pullback on ETH price.
Pudgy Penguins, which dominated the traded volume within the Top 5 collections, fell 10.3% in the same period. Meanwhile, CryptoPunks was the most successful collection at holding ground in ETH, limiting the pullback to less than 7%. Autoglyphs and Chromie Squiggle, the remaining two of the five largest NFT collections by market cap, fell 8% and 9.5%, respectively.
The losses in ETH-denominated price happened at the same time the traded volume of Ethereum-based NFT collections rose by over 50% in traded volume, reaching $660 million.
Despite the fall in ETH value, the dollar-denominated price of all five collections went up. Nicolás Lallement, NFT Price Floor co-founder, explains that this is a common market dynamic.
When it comes to NFT prices, investors usually debate the price of collections considered blue chips in ETH, and their correlation with the altcoin. “As some have suggested ‘1 ETH ≠ 1 ETH,’ meaning the investor decision process is the following: 1) Check the current ETH price of the NFT; 2) Check the current USD price of the NFT; 3) Check ETH/USD price history of the NFT; 4) Decide based on USD current price of the NFT,” says Lallement.
Over the past 30 days, ETH surged 62.6%, fueled by Bitcoin’s price growth and by expectations over the approval of a spot ETH exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US. Lallement highlights that the Dencun upgrade, which is set to happen on March 13th and promises to lower the gas fees for Ethereum layer-2 blockchains, is also playing an important role in ETH price jump.
“That means if ETH goes higher in USD terms, NFTs go higher in USD terms too, and ETH-denominated prices will have to lower to reach equilibrium again. The NFT bull in ETH terms will have to wait, in my opinion. We are still in a speculative phase where most of the attention is on low-value Solana-based NFTs and Ordinals,” Lallement concludes.