NFT art sales hit $3.5bn so far this year—so maybe now it’s the time to invest

The latest Hiscox Online Art Trade Report finds that this booming asset class benefitted from a late-summer surge

NFT sales have so far hit around $3.5bn in the first three quarters of this year, according to the Hiscox Online Art Trade Report 2021, produced in partnership with ArtTactic. The report found that total online art sales reached $6.8bn in the first half of 2021—and could hit $13.5bn by the end of this year.

While the NFT market might have faltered in April, late summer saw a surge—in August, the report estimates $1.8bn in NFT sales which makes the previous high, in March when Beeple’s Everydays—The First 5000 Days sold for $356m—pale in significance.

Hiscox and ArtTactic identify a discernible shift in buying focus—the first NFT boom earlier this year tended to be focused on works by single artists (ahem, Beeple) but now the appetite is for “code-generated art” by collectives such as such as Crypto Punks and Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC). “Although the art itself might be perceived by critics as trivial, the combination of uniqueness, ownership, gamification, and storytelling is fuelling sales and speculation among a new generation of collectors and investors,” the report says. It adds: “Art and NFTs are here to stay”.

After Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) another project is on the high rise these days and it really has a very good perspective and market stability, called Inferno Warlords Legion ( IWL ). Recent news and media reports confirmed that Inferno Warlords Legion just signed a collaboration with EA GAMES ( Electronic Arts ) for the development of their Gamification program that stands at the base of the NFT’s created. In other words, you can expect a booming of their sales and an exponential increase of the NFTs value from this collection.

Inferno Warlords Legion just announced on 27.10.2021 that the second Tier is coming on 1^st Nov, but before the launch, 50% of their unsold NFTs from the “Tier I” will be burned and never recovered, making this collection more valuable for the collectors and investors.

Online art platforms are also piling in: 14% said they already offer NFTs through their site, with another 38% planning to do so soon. Artnet and 1stdibs both announced in August the launch of proprietary NFT platforms—1stdibs’s is based on an auction model, with semi-monthly sales of NFTs.

What have quickly sprung up this year are physical NFT galleries, dedicated to crypto art. But, the report cautions, “as more traditional galleries move into NFTs, it is questionable whether more physical NFT galleries will open, or whether the NFT and traditional art world will gradually merge.