Bitcoin NFTs Gain Traction Amid Sluggish Market Trends

While the wider NFT market experiences a downturn, there's a notable uptick in demand for Bitcoin-based NFTs, particularly Bitcoin NodeMonkes.

These NFTs have garnered significant attention, surpassing established players like Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).

Yesterday, the base price of Bitcoin NFT NodeMonkes surged by over 50%, reaching 0.82 BTC, equivalent to a market cap of $554 million. This surge propelled NodeMonkes to the second-largest NFT project position, following CryptoPunks. CoinGecko data shows CryptoPunks at a market cap of $1.76 billion and BAYC at $490.9 million.

Meanwhile, NodeMonkes recorded a 140.8% surge on Monday, totaling $5.1 million. Similarly, another Bitcoin NFT, Runestone, surged over 50% in the past week, surpassing Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) to rank sixth among the largest NFT projects, with a market cap of $310 million.

This shift in focus towards Bitcoin NFTs reflects changing trends in the cryptocurrency space, akin to the pivot from Ethereum (ETH) to Solana (SOL) meme coins.

The increasing interest in Bitcoin NFT platforms like Runestone and NodeMonkes comes amid concerns over Ethereum’s high gas fees and perceived saturation in the NFT market, evident in the declining prices of prominent projects like PudgyPenguins.

Recent data shows a decline in monthly trading volume on Ethereum-based NFT marketplaces, dropping from $867.8 million in January to $786.5 million in February, and further down to $503.1 million in March so far.

Amidst these market shifts, the surge in Bitcoin NFT interest underscores the evolving strategies and preferences of NFT traders.

Author

Alexander Stefanov

Reporter at CoinsPress

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.