From a relatively unknown and misunderstood technology in 2017 to a $25 billion industry by 2021, the rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has been nothing short of remarkable.

In fact, so much hype surrounded NFTs in 2021 that Collins Dictionary named it the most searched term of the year. But these days, as NFTs continue to shake up several industries around the world and open doors for artists, creators, collectors, and investors alike, it seems like the cat is out of the bag.

For NFT enthusiasts, these are exciting times, to say the least. But minting and trading NFTs isn't for everyone. The nascent NFT market is volatile, and investing requires patience, risk tolerance, and developing certain skills.

One of the most important skills NFT traders and collectors can learn is how to read NFT prices and stats. By understanding how prices and stats work, traders can get an idea about how much an NFT is worth and why.

In this article, we'll look at the NFT market and related stats, factors that shape the price of an NFT — such as floor price and rarity, and we'll explain some tools like Rarity Sniper and how it can be used to determine an NFT's price. Overall, we aim to give beginners a better understanding of how to read NFT prices and stats.

Understanding the NFT Market

NFTs are unique, verifiable digital assets that are stored and traded on blockchains like Ethereum, Tezos, and Solana. Each NFT is a digital file that's converted into a one-of-one token using cryptography. These non-fungible tokens that are created (or "minted"), can represent digital art, music, collectible cards, video, GIFs, tickets, and several other digital and/or physical objects.

However, it's important to remember that NFTs are fungible or illiquid assets. That means that unlike the dollar and Bitcoin, which can be exchanged mutually 1:1 and nothing is lost or gained by either party, NFTs are distinct assets that must be bought or sold for an agreed-upon price and are usually paid for in cryptocurrency.

Other non-fungible assets include things like real estate, cars, wine, artwork, and antiques. These are markets where it takes time and effort to find a buyer, and with all illiquid assets, including NFTs, there's no guarantee a buyer exists.

Furthermore, because NFTs are a nascent industry and cryptocurrency and blockchain technology enable transparent transactions to occur rapidly, volatility in the NFT market is high. NFTs and popular NFT collections have been known to rise, and in some cases, plummet, in price rapidly, making or losing their holders large sums of money in the process.

But while there's no way to predict the NFT market or the price of a particular NFT, learning how to use tools and read NFT stats can help you monitor the long-term performance of an NFT or NFT project. This can lead to more informed decision-making when trading or collecting NFTs.

NFT Markets and Stats

Every day NFTs make the news, selling for thousands and even millions of dollars. Despite the limitations and risks associated with non-fungible assets, NFTs have proven one thing for certain: There is value in digital assets.

So, before we dive into some of the terms and strategies you can use to read NFT prices and stats, let's zoom out and look at the big picture with NFTs over the past couple of years.

Here are some NFT and NFT market statistics worth knowing:

• According to DappRadar, the NFT market did nearly $25 billion in sales in 2021.
• There were 2.7 unique active NFT wallets in 2021, and nearly half of them were related to NFT games.
• The largest NFT marketplace in terms of value is OpenSea: $13.3 billion.
• The largest NFT marketplace in terms of users is Axie Infinity: around 2.5 million daily active users.
• In January 2021, 2.4 million NFTs valued at $4.8 billion were traded on OpenSea.
• During the same period, the average price per NFT fluctuated between $1,300 and $6,900.

Furthermore, generative art NFT collections like CyptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club have floor prices in the tens of thousands of dollars. Individual 1:1 crypto art created by visionary digital artists like Beeple have sold for tens of million dollars. And American rapper and legend Snoop Dogg recently vowed to turn the iconic Hip Hop record label Death Row into an NFT label.

These are just some of the facts about the NFT revolution that's taking place. Now let's get into the terms and stats you'll need to determine an NFT's price.

Understanding the Floor Price

One of the most important concepts to understand when selling or buying NFTs is the floor price. The floor price of an NFT is the lowest price to purchase an NFT from a particular collection. There are several ways to check the floor price of an NFT, but we recommend using Rarity Sniper and OpenSea.

Rarity Sniper's NFT Prices and Stats page lists over 1,300 NFT collections and provides a variety of information about the floor price. To find your NFT, search for the collection by name or scroll down the list of NFT collections on the page to find yours.

Once you find your collection, you can toggle between the current floor price, the floor price over the last 7 days, and 30 days. By comparing the current floor price to the floor price a month ago, you can get a better sense of how the NFT is performing over the long term.

If you own an NFT that's not listed on Rarity Sniper, or you want to double-check the floor price, open OpenSea.io in your browser. As the leading secondary NFT marketplace, OpenSea lists millions of NFTs for sale and is a great place to find even the rarest NFTs.

To check the floor price of your NFT on OpenSea, search for the NFT or collection in the top search bar. If your NFT or NFT collection is on the market, it will show up and give you information such as the floor price, the number of items in the collection, and the total volume that's been traded.

Another way to check listed floor prices is to filter the collection by recently sold. This will show the NFTs in the collection that have recently sold, when they sold, and how much they sold for. If you know how often NFTs from a collection are selling and the minimum price they're selling for, you'll have a much clearer idea of how much your NFT is worth.

Rarity's Role in Determining Price

The floor price of an NFT is the lowest price that an NFT in a collection is selling for. But your NFT could be worth much more than the floor price if it is one of the rare NFTs in a collection.

NFT technology enables rarity to be created with digital assets, so in a sense, they are all rare. However, when it comes to generative NFT collections that are comprised of hundreds or thousands of NFTs, some NFTs within those collections are rarer than others.

NFTs in generative NFT collections are comprised of a series of traits and attributes that appear in varying frequency throughout the collection. For example, if a collection has 10,000 NFTs and only ten of those NFTs have a particular trait, those ten NFTs are rarer than NFTs with more common traits. In this way, rarity brings even more scarcity to NFT collections, and as a result, more value is created.

Rarity Sniper is a trusted source for finding an NFT's rarity score. To find your NFT's rarity score and ranking on Rarity Sniper, you can search NFT Collections for your collection and then enter your NFT ID number. Click on your NFT to see its rarity rank in the collection and the rarity of the individual traits it possesses.

By knowing the floor price of NFTs in your collection, how often the NFTs are selling, and the rarity of a particular NFT, you can arrive at a general idea of how much your NFT is worth. If you plan on selling a generative NFT, never do so without first checking its rarity.

NFT trends, Highest Prices, Floor and Volume

Rarity Sniper is not known just for its amazing rarity checking tool. The platform's NFT Prices and Stats page lists nearly 1,300 generative NFT collections and provides the following information about each:

• The floor price
• The 7-day average price
• Total volume
• The 7-day volume
• The total sales
• The % per sale
• The market cap
• The # of NFT owners
• The supply over a 1 day, 7-day, and 30-day period

By navigating the left-side menu on the NFT Prices and Stats page, you can search NFT collections by name or filter them according to floor price or 30-day sales volume. You can also check the sales per week and monthly sales using the list of statistics available.

This tool can be useful for NFT snipers or for owners who want to have a better understanding of the market history and accurately price their NFT.

What else shapes NFT prices?

The prices of NFTs aren't an exact science, and they can and do fluctuate drastically for several reasons, or sometimes what seems like no reason at all. Keeping your eye on prices and stats and visiting sites like Rarity Sniper frequently can help you keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on with NFT prices.

Listed below are some other factors that can contribute to the price of an NFT:

• The blockchain the NFT is minted on. This determines things like transaction speed and gas fees.
• The quality of the project and team behind the NFT or collection.
• The community of people who buy or support an NFT project.
• The quality of the NFT art and the reputation of the artist who created it.
• Celebrity or brand endorsements of the NFT or project.
• Supply and demand in the NFT market.

These are some of the factors that shape an NFT or NFT collection's price, but there are no sure bets if an NFT price will rise or fall. To participate in the nascent NFT space, you must be comfortable with a certain level of uncertainty.

If you are purchasing NFTs, choose NFTs from artists or projects that have a history and reputation, look for a project roadmap that has long-term goals that are feasible but ambitious, and ultimately, only purchase NFTs you love from the projects you believe in.

What is the price of an NFT for an Investor?

Exactly how much you'll pay for an NFT depends on several factors: The floor price, rarity, and the buzz behind the project. But one of the most important factors that determine how much you're paying for an NFT is the way you're acquiring that NFT.

There are several ways to acquire NFTs, including:

• Minting. This refers to purchasing an NFT when it is created, or at “mint.” Different NFT projects have different prices for their NFTs, ranging from nothing to thousands of dollars in ETH. Minting NFTs can be fun for collectors because, in the case of generative NFT collections, you can get lucky and mint a rare NFT for a low price.
• Sniping. This means you're purchasing an NFT on a secondary market such as OpenSea or Rarible. When you snipe NFTs, understanding how pricing and the NFT markets work as much as possible is critical. Tools like Rarity Sniper can be especially helpful to Snipers looking to pick up great deals on secondary markets and hold or flip them.
• Creating. If you're a digital artist or creator, you may wish to mint your own NFT. The price of creating an NFT depends on the blockchain you use to mint. See our article on minting NFTs for more pricing information.

For people minting, sniping, and creating NFTs, there are always fees to consider. But those fees depend largely on the decisions they make. One way to take a step back from all the noise is by looking at NFT trends through a rarity tool and learning as much about NFT and blockchains technology as you can before entering the market.

Most Successful NFT Collections

By using a tool like Rarity Sniper's NFT Prices and Stats page, you can also look up some of the top collections and determine important information about them. If you're lucky enough to own an NFT from one of the following collections, then you can check the floor price, market cap, and even the rarity of your NFT on Rarity Sniper.

Here are some of the current top NFT collections to date and their floor price over the past 30 days:

• Bored Ape Yacht Club. Floor Price: 106 ETH.
• Azuki. Floor Price: 25.8 ETH.
• Moonbirds. Floor Price: 25.5 ETH.
• Mutant Ape Yacht Club. Floor Price: 22.9 ETH.
• Doodles. Floor Price: 21.7 ETH.
• Clone X. Floor Price: 16.5 ETH.
• Bored Ape Kennel Club. Floor Price: 8.0 ETH.
• Cool Cats. Floor Price: 5.2 ETH.
• World of Women. Floor Price: 5.1 ETH.
• Otherdeed for Otherside. Floor Price: 3.3 ETH.

As you can see by the floor prices of these collections, they have been very successful. But generative NFT collections aren't the only types of NFTs that are being bought and sold for huge price tags. Many digital artists have also been successful at selling art on curated marketplaces like Nifty Gateway and SuperRare.

NFTs: The Largest Sale of All Time

Although generative digital art collections put NFTs on the map and boast some of the most popular and expensive NFTs to date, they are not the only types of NFTs that have enjoyed success. Some of the highest selling crypto art of all time has been 1:1 digital artwork.

Listed below are the two most successful digital artists and some of their largest NFT sales of 1:1 digital art:

• Beeple. “Everydays – The first 5,000 days,” a collage of the artist's work over 5,000 days, sold for $69.3 million at Sotheby's auction in March 2021. Beeple also sold a piece, the “Human One,” for $29.0 million in November of the same year, as well as the Crossroad for $6.6 million.
• Pak. “Clock,” an NFT that keeps a running clock of the days WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spent in jail, sold for $52.7 million in Feb 2022. It was purchased by the AssangeDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization with nearly 10,000 members. PAK, an anonymous digital artist, is also responsible for the highest NFT sale of all time: “The Merge” sold for a record-breaking $91.8 million in Dec 2021.

1:1 NFT art is often for sale on curated NFT marketplaces like Nifty Gateway, Foundation, and SuperRare. These NFT marketplaces, unlike OpenSea and Rarible, curate the artists who sell work much like the way a traditional art gallery exhibits work by selected artists.

Although this de-democratizes the NFT process to an extent, when a reputable curated marketplace vouches for an NFT artist, it can raise the reputation and the value of the artist's NFTs and collections.

How much should you price your NFTs?

If you're selling an NFT from a generative NFT collection, or a known NFT artist, then you should use the process discussed in this article to go about pricing your NFT: Take some time to understand how to read NFT stats, and always see how much similar NFTs from the collection are selling for.

If you're an artist or creator, and you're worried about how to set a fair price for your NFT or NFT collection, consider how much time the work took and how much experience you have selling art IRL. Overpricing an NFT not only makes it harder to sell, but it can also turn off whale investors who might see the move as unprofessional, or worse, greedy. In other words, don't try to get Beeple-rich off your first NFT project.

But no matter your reason for checking the prices and stats of NFTs, be patient and be sure to read up on NFT and crypto news to stay current on what's happening in the space. The more knowledge you have about non-fungible tokens, Web3, crypto, and the metaverse — the more you can be confident in your decisions moving forward with NFTs.