NFTs are securities — or so the SEC seems to be preparing to argue in court, with OpenSea the potential defendant.
Putting aside the merits (or lack thereof) of a case against the firm, most NFT activity happens elsewhere these days.
The chart below plots US-dollar denominated trading volumes for NFT marketplaces on EVM chains, shown by the colorful columns in the background. Crypto’s total market cap is otherwise reflected by the blue line.
It includes NFT trades on Ethereum, Base, Blast as well as Solana and Bitcoin, over the past four years.
The data points to over $62.75 billion in NFT trade volumes since August 2020, with OpenSea facilitating nearly 58% of it.
A look at just the past year shows a total of $11.37 billion in NFT trading volume. OpenSea, based in New York, only contributed 10% of those trades.
Blur alone processed $3.75…
