Interest in non-fungible tokens is on the rise as proven by a sharp increase in Google searches for the term “NFT.”
Searches for NFT started picking up from the end of January 2021, climbing sharply week-on-week during February. Google trend data predicts the term to reach an interest mark of 100, which indicates peak popularity for the term by March 13.
In comparison, searches for “DeFi,” have been left far behind. Only seeing a relatively small peak earlier in the year before falling back down.
Among the most popular related searches are: What is NFT Crypto? What are NFT Coins? How do NFT’s work?
For those who don’t already know, an NFT is a digital asset that is backed by blockchain technology. They are not exchangeable and cannot be replicated. The idea being that these tokens represent genuine authenticity and digital scarcity.
Social media mentions have similarly pumped since the beginning of the year. Twitter analytics show a daily mentions average of nearly 2,000 and a total of 81.4 thousand mentions since January for the United States alone.
NFT Interest Pushed by Big Celebrity Sales
The rise in people wanting to know what NFT’s are and how they work is not surprising considering the recent flood of big-name auctions. These events have been bringing in astounding amounts.
Canadian musician Grimes sold an NFT Collection for $6 million and Kings of Leon became the first band to ever sell a new album as an NFT
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, an avid crypto enthusiast and investor, created an NFT of his first-ever tweet from 2006. The top bid at the time of writing this article is up to $2,500,000.
Christie’s Makes Biggest Sale on Record
Establishment auction house Christie’s has been quick to get in on this new kind of auction. It recently facilitated what is currently the most expensive NFT sale ever. The digital artwork by Mike Winkelmann, aka the digital artist Beeple, sold for $69 million.
The artwork is an amalgamation of 5,000 artworks posted by Beeple online over the last 14 years.
The sale was also the first time Christie’s added crypto payments on one of its listings.