NFT Market Slams on the Brakes as Capital Nearly Halves in a Month
The nonfungible token market has just endured one of its sharpest monthly contractions of 2025. According to CoinGecko figures cited by Cointelegraph, total NFT market capitalization fell from roughly $6.6 billion on October 5 to about $3.5 billion a month later, a 45–46% collapse that wiped away nearly half the sector’s paper value in 30 days. What makes the drop more striking is that it did not happen alongside a disappearance of activity; October actually saw an uptick in sales counts, reminding everyone that volume is not the same thing as value in a market where pricing is thin and sentiment-driven. The market was busy—just not bid high.
That split between activity and valuation is the real story. CryptoSlam data showed around $631 million in NFT sales for October, up about 13% from September’s $556 million, helped by pockets of enthusiasm on Bitcoin- and Base-based collections, which managed 9% and 24% growth respectively. Yet even with more trades going through, floor prices sagged, especially on Ethereum, which remains the dominant chain for NFTs but still saw market cap down about 25.5% over the period. Chains that had benefited most from the multichain NFT boom—BNB Chain and Polygon—were hit hardest, posting brutal 82% and 86% declines. When liquidity thins, capital rushes back toward the most defensible assets and networks; everything else reprices lower, fast.
Blue chips were not spared. Data from NFT Price Floor showed some of the space’s most established collections giving up tens of thousands of dollars in floor value in a matter of weeks. CryptoPunks, long treated as a kind of NFT benchmark, saw trading volume fall 40% and its floor drop from about $214,000 to $117,000 over the month. Moonbirds fared even worse in percentage terms, with volume down 63% and floors more than halved. Even collections that actually attracted more trading—Bored Ape Yacht Club and Pudgy Penguins among them—could not convert that activity into higher prices: BAYC volumes climbed by around 30% and Pudgy Penguins by more than 80%, but their floors still fell from roughly $36,700 to $19,500 and from $43,000 to the $18,000 area, respectively. More trading, lower prices—textbook sign of a market where sellers outnumber committed buyers.
The mechanics behind this are familiar to anyone who has watched NFTs since the 2021 peak. Much of the liquidity is speculative and moves quickly; when broader crypto sentiment softens or when traders rotate into coins, the NFT leg of the trade becomes the easiest to cut. At the same time, the supply side has never really shrunk—new mints, new collections, new onchain experiments keep arriving. Without a matching influx of fresh capital, that supply competes for a smaller pool of buyers, forcing floors down even on brands with real cultural traction. The fact that sales counts rose in October only underscores the point: user curiosity is alive, but user willingness to pay 2021 prices is not.
Large platforms are already adjusting to this cooler reality. OpenSea, which still counted more than 520,000 traders over the period, has been talking less about “just NFTs” and more about becoming a general-purpose onchain trading hub—an acknowledgement that digital collectibles will continue to matter, but probably as one revenue line among several. That pivot makes sense in a market where even top collections can lose 40–50% of floor value in a month: infrastructure players need activity, not just high prices, and they need to capture it across chains. If the next NFT upcycle is more fragmented—spanning Bitcoin inscriptions, Base social assets, gaming items and Ethereum art—then marketplaces have to be broader to catch it.
The good news for builders is that this downturn does not look like a collapse in interest. Hundreds of thousands of wallets are still transacting, and the technology—immutability, provenance, programmable ownership—remains useful for gaming, ticketing and brand loyalty. The bad news is that the market has once again reminded participants how fragile NFT pricing is when there is no concurrent rally in the wider crypto complex. Until ether, bitcoin and the other majors stage a sustained run that pulls more speculative capital back onchain, NFT collections—even the blue chips—will have to compete harder for every bid. For now, November opens with a smaller, tougher, but still very much alive NFT market.
Sources: Cointelegraph, CoinGecko market-cap data, CryptoSlam October NFT sales figures, NFT Price Floor collection data