The Defiant

NBA Top Shot's $50M in Sales Beats CryptoKitties and Decentraland

The whole NFT digital collectible market has been exploding lately, but NBA Top Shot is in a league of its own.  NBA Top Shot is a line of officially licensed, collectible NFTs (made by CryptoKitties creator Dapper Labs) showcasing the best moments from NBA games. Unlike most other collectible NFTs, which are dropped on marketplaces…

By: Dan Kahan Loading...

NBA Top Shot's $50M in Sales Beats CryptoKitties and Decentraland

The whole NFT digital collectible market has been exploding lately, but NBA Top Shot is in a league of its own.

NBA Top Shot is a line of officially licensed, collectible NFTs (made by CryptoKitties creator Dapper Labs) showcasing the best moments from NBA games. Unlike most other collectible NFTs, which are dropped on marketplaces like Nifty Gateway and are issued on Ethereum, NBA Top Shot primarily lives on their own official hub site (although, like other NFTs, they are still transferable to outside wallets), and are issued on the Flow blockchain.

NBA Top Shot boasts $50M in total marketplace transactions after launching last fall. For comparison, CryptoKitties, which launched in 2017, has just over 35.5M in all-time market sales, while Decentraland, which has the highest all-time volume on nonfungible.com, has $40M in total sales since its 2017 launch.

Mainstream Audience

The surge of interest in digital basketball cards points to the potential for a new audience of users to start using crypto. While financial services, speculation, and the appetite for “hard money” have been the primary selling points for cryptocurrencies so far, digital collectibles and games have the chance to draw in users who aren’t necessarily as interested in finance and tech.

While no individual NBA Top Shot has broken any NFT sale records (the highest sale price for an NBA Top Shot is currently $100k for an FTT Series 1 LeBron James Block), the overall Top Shot market is heating up. Drops have been selling out in minutes, and drawing the attention of other big shots like Michael Batnick of Ritholtz Wealth Management and Mark Cuban.

Fastest Growing

In a recent Twitter thread, angel investor and McKinsey alum Romeen Sheeth called the demand for NBA Top Shots “insane” and said that with $30M worth of sales over the past 30 days, they’re “on pace to be the fastest growing marketplace ever.”

Top Shot’s most recent drop of over 2.6k packs on Saturday sold out within 30 minutes. The packs were priced at $999 each, meaning NBA Top Shot brought in $2.6M from the drop. Over 25k collectors lined up for a shot at buying packs, showing a significant consumer demand.

Sheeth goes on to explain that NBA Top Shot, and digital collectibles in general, hold value because they combine culture, scarcity, and credibility, with an emphasis on the credibility factor. Previously, the asset-value of digital collectibles was limited due to technological capabilities, but with crypto and blockchain, digital assets can be held and validated without third-party intermediaries.

DeFi AlphaPremium Content
Start for free

This means that even if the NBA Top Shot website ceases to exist, collectors will still be able to keep their Top Shots.

Moreover, the broad appeal of the NBA license has the potential to bring basketball fans who were previously unfamiliar with crypto or DeFi into the space.

The Top Shot market seems to still be heating up, so any b-ball fans (or investors) who want to get in on the ground floor of digital trading cards should take notice.

Subscribe to DeFi Daily Newsletter and Get Smarter on DeFi & Web3.

80k+ investors informed every day.