Written by: Glendon, Techub News
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed three cryptocurrency-related legislations: the CLARITY Act, the GENIUS Act, and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance National Act. Among them, the GENIUS Act (the "Guidance and Establishment of the U.S. Stablecoin National Innovation Act") was officially signed into law by President Trump at the White House on Friday local time, marking the implementation phase of U.S. stablecoin regulatory legislation. The positive policy news quickly stirred the market, leading to an immediate market response. Over the past week, Bitcoin has stabilized at $115,000 after breaking a new high of $123,000; Ethereum has climbed to over $3,800, and the entire cryptocurrency market has seen a broad increase.
In a less conspicuous corner, the NFT market has also experienced its largest trading volume increase in recent months. According to The Block, the total NFT trading volume across all blockchains reached $143.5 million in the past week, the highest level since mid-January this year. Among them, Ethereum NFTs had a trading volume of $75 million in the past week, accounting for about 52% of the total trading volume across major blockchains, while Bitcoin-based NFT trading volume increased from $11 million to $25.6 million during the same period.
Additionally, according to data from Magic Eden, as of the time of writing, the floor prices of all on-chain NFTs have collectively risen, with Moonbirds increasing by 34.2% in the past 24 hours, priced at 1.93 ETH; SMB Gen2 rising by 33.8%, priced at 24.99 SOL; Chromie Squiggle by Snowfro increasing by 38.4%, priced at 5.8 ETH; and Taproot Wizards rising by 30.2%, priced at 0.22 BTC.
Moreover, CoinGecko data shows that the current global NFT total market value has risen to $6.37 billion, up 21.7% in the past 24 hours.
Prior to this, CryptoSlam data indicated that the total NFT sales on Ethereum in June were only about $100 million, marking the lowest monthly sales record since February 2021.
From the data, we can see that the NFT market has shown signs of recovery. Undoubtedly, the recent performance of the NFT market has been significantly influenced by U.S. policy factors and the overall upward effect of the cryptocurrency market. So the question arises: is this recent warming of the NFT market merely a "flash in the pan," or does it have more long-term upward potential? Can it leverage the improvement of the broader environment and various positive factors to make a comeback and recreate the glory of previous years?
The NFT Industry is Still Steadily Developing
Before discussing the longer-term development of the NFT market, we need to clarify the key influencing factors behind the recent surge in this market. The previously mentioned stablecoin legislation and the effects of the cryptocurrency market will be set aside for further discussion.
From the perspective of internal participants in the NFT industry, the recent series of layouts and marketing by the NFT project Pudgy Penguins has undoubtedly attracted considerable attention to the quiet NFT industry. For example, Pudgy Penguins will launch its Web3 mobile game Pudgy Party on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and has partnered with Chinese toy company Suplay to expand its visibility in the domestic market. (For more on the key layouts made by the Pudgy Penguins team, refer to “From Debuting on NASDAQ to the ‘Profile Picture Trend’: Pudgy Penguins’ Centralized Marketing Drives PENGU to Three Consecutive Gains”)
The most notable event is the "Profile Picture Change" craze it sparked. On July 12, Coinbase changed its profile picture on the X platform to a Pudgy Penguin PFP with its logo, which subsequently triggered a large-scale effect, with major exchanges and projects such as Polkadot, EigenCloud, Opensea, Binance.US, Nansen, Solana, OKX, Gate, HTX, Juipter, Trust Wallet, SOL Strategies, and Gemini joining in, naturally driving a significant increase in Pudgy Penguins trading volume.
According to CryptoSlam data, as of the time of writing, Pudgy Penguins' sales in the past 30 days reached $19.2486 million, an increase of 277%; of which, the project's sales in the past 7 days alone reached $10.9272 million, accounting for over 56%.
On the other hand, the NFT trading platform OpenSea has also been making continuous efforts this year. After announcing the official launch of the OpenSea2 (OS2) platform and the airdrop of its native token SEA, OpenSea acquired the Rally wallet again on July 9 and announced plans to launch a mobile version of OpenSea this year.
According to nftpulse data, as of the time of writing, the number of users in the OpenSea market reached 197,000 in the past 7 days, an increase of about 84%; its market trading volume was approximately $49.3 million, an increase of nearly 39%. It is worth mentioning that after OpenSea decided to issue a token, its user and trading volume once again took the market lead, although its market trading volume over the past year (approximately $1.2 billion) still lags behind Blur's $2 billion.
In addition, some "whale" level investors seem to be refocusing their attention on the NFT market. According to OpenSea data, an address starting with 0x1bb spent 2,081.6 ETH to purchase 45 CryptoPunks. This address also spent 60.5 ETH to buy a Chromie Squiggle from the Art Blocks Curated NFT series.
CryptoSlam data shows that the trading volume of CryptoPunks in the past 24 hours was approximately $15.1 million, an increase of over 11,143%, with 83 transactions. Additionally, in the past 24 hours, Pudgy Penguins' trading volume reached approximately $3.79 million, up over 214%; Bored Ape Yacht Club's trading volume was about $2.19 million, up over 789%. From the chart below, we can also see that the trading volume of some projects has significantly increased.
From the above cases and data, it is not difficult to see that platforms and project teams like OpenSea and Pudgy Penguins are still steadily and continuously developing in the NFT industry. According to DappRadar's latest quarterly report, in the second quarter of this year, the average monthly NFT traders have risen to 668,598, a 20% increase from the previous quarter. The simultaneous growth in total sales also indicates that users are gradually and steadily returning to the NFT space. In other words, the long road to recovery for the NFT market had already begun before the recent explosive market conditions.
Based on the above viewpoints, the question returns to the starting point: what will be the future development of the NFT market?
A Brief Warming or a Sign of a "Comeback"?
As we conclude this topic, I believe we can set a tone: the NFT market will exhibit a robust and sustained upward trend.
Firstly, thanks to the increasing clarity of global cryptocurrency policies and regulations, the NFT industry, as an important branch of the cryptocurrency sector, will naturally benefit from this. Although regulations such as the U.S. GENIUS Act and Hong Kong's "Stablecoin Ordinance" (effective August 1, 2025) do not directly mention NFT assets, they create a very favorable policy environment for the NFT market by strengthening the regulatory framework for stablecoins.
Taking the GENIUS Act as an example, this act mandates that stablecoin issuers (such as USDT and USDC) must fully collateralize their reserves with U.S. cash or U.S. Treasury bonds maturing within 90 days. This measure effectively eliminates the risk of stablecoins decoupling during NFT transactions, enhances the security of large payments, and can also improve the capital settlement efficiency of high-value NFTs (such as virtual real estate and artworks), thereby lowering the barriers for institutional investors to enter the NFT market.
The risk lies in the fact that the act does not clarify whether NFTs are subject to the "securitized asset" clause. If the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) classifies certain NFTs (such as income-generating NFTs) as securities in the future, the relevant NFT issuers may face additional disclosure obligations. Therefore, compared to areas like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins, NFTs still face some regulatory uncertainties. However, in the long run, this regulatory uncertainty may actually drive NFT assets toward standardization.
Secondly, the overall upward trend of the cryptocurrency market also provides fertile ground for the development of NFTs. As BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes stated in a recent post, "the Ethereum season" has arrived, and the DeFi and NFT markets are expected to benefit and make a comeback.
Currently, NFT assets are primarily concentrated on chains such as Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Base, and Bitcoin, with Bitcoin reaching a historic high and Ethereum breaking $3,800, the highest level since December 16, 2024; Solana has also surpassed $200, reaching its highest point since February 14. As a "barometer" of the Web3 and blockchain ecosystem, the price increases of mainstream assets will undoubtedly enhance market confidence, attract more investment inflows, and boost investors' trust and interest in NFTs, prompting more funds to enter the NFT market. In fact, this has been fully reflected in the trading volume of the NFT market over the past week.
The above two points mainly stem from external environmental factors and market fundamentals. However, from the perspective of the NFT industry itself, exploring more use cases for NFTs is crucial for driving its development. Notably, the currently popular narrative of tokenizing real-world assets (RWA) has many points of alignment with NFTs. Some industry insiders even believe that RWA tokenization could become a "new catalyst" for the revival of NFTs.
The alignment between the two lies in the efficient mapping of physical assets. NFTs, with their uniqueness, can serve as "digital passports" for physical assets, allowing ownership of artworks, real estate, music works, and other tangible assets to be verified on-chain, significantly shortening the traditional property transaction time and reducing fraud risks. On the other hand, high-value physical assets can be fragmented through NFTs to lower the investment threshold, enabling fractional investment. For example, splitting a $10 million artwork into 1,000 NFTs can reduce the investment threshold from millions to tens of thousands, allowing more holders to share in the appreciation benefits.
DappRadar's quarterly report indicates that the narrative of RWA is not only gaining traction in the DeFi space but is also creating a wave in the NFT sector. In the second quarter, the number of NFT applications increased by 10%, and RWA-related NFTs surged by 29%, briefly ranking second in trading volume. The report emphasizes that NFT market activity in the second quarter was primarily driven by RWA and gaming assets, and it believes that the tokenization of physical assets could very well become a key catalyst for bringing NFTs into the mainstream spotlight.
In summary, I believe the development prospects for the NFT market are relatively optimistic. However, returning to its former peak will not happen overnight, and it is unlikely to be achieved in the near term. CryptoSlam NFT data platform strategist Yehudah Petscher has analyzed that the NFT market's outlook will be more moderate than previous highs, potentially peaking in the first quarter of 2026, but it will be difficult to recreate the NFT frenzy seen from 2021 to 2022. This is because the previous bull market was primarily driven by speculative factors, which are no longer present in the current cycle.
Of course, we cannot rule out the possibility of the NFT market discovering new opportunities and "catalysts," or the emergence of some suddenly popular NFT projects. For example, the NFT series launched by American rapper Snoop Dogg on Telegram in July sold out in just 30 minutes, raking in $12 million, reminiscent of the NFT frenzy period.
However, while this celebrity-backed NFT series can temporarily ignite market enthusiasm, driving the entire industry back to its peak state is no easy task. DappRadar's report has analyzed that the second-quarter data for NFTs shows that emerging narratives are rising, and classic models are returning, emphasizing that "NFTs are becoming increasingly affordable, but market enthusiasm has not waned; rather, it has shifted in nature."
From the perspective of the entire industry, for the NFT market to achieve a resurgence, it will need to rely on more internal and external favorable factors. However, at present, it is steadily recovering, and the future looks promising.
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