Chainalysis tracked the total value of cryptocurrency and average transaction size sent to NFT platforms.

Chainalysis: After $26.9B in trading, are NFTs poised for a boom or crash?

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been on a roll this year, with $26.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency traded on the two popular types of Ethereum smart contracts associated with NFTs, according to an analysis by Chainalysis.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have skyrocketed in popularity over the last year in a variety of industries from collectible art to games. NFTs use the security and transparency of the digital ledger of blockchain to authenticate the uniqueness of digital items. So it can be used to confirm that a piece of art or a game character is a one-of-a-kind collectible, and that is fueling new business models.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.