OpenSea Sees Older Mickey Mouse Avatar Become Most Trending NFT, Market Revival Remains Slow

The NFT sector, last year, managed to amass $8.70 billion (roughly Rs. 72,457 crore) in sales.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by Siddharth Suvarna | Updated: 3 January 2024 17:52 IST

Photo Credit: OpenSea

There were 4.16 million sellers and 4.97 million buyers of NFTs in 2023

Highlights

NFTs are digital collectibles built on blockchains
NFT market underwent a notable slump in 2023
Mickey Mouse-inspired NFTs became top traded on OpenSea

The charm of OG cartoon characters seem to be making a comeback on to the newer generations with a fresh flavour of Web3. At a time when the overall NFT market is experiencing upheaval, NFTs inspired by one particular cartoon character outshone all others on the world's largest NFT platform, OpenSea. This character is none other than the iconic Disney mascot, Mickey Mouse. A total of three NFT collections modelled after Mickey Mouse emerged as top rankers on OpenSea.

The NFT sector, last year, managed to amass $8.70 billion (roughly Rs. 72,457 crore) in sales, the lowest since 2019's $3.75 billion (roughly Rs. 31,232 crore). The number of NFT transactions, however, rose to 90,607,554, surpassing the figure of 54,857,850 that was clocked in 2022.

In the backdrop of the market status, NFTs influenced by a very distinct version of Mickey Mouse – that was created to be featured in the 1928 short film “Steamboat Willie” - took OpenSea by storm. NFT artists were quick to create collectibles around this version of Mickey Mouse after Disney, as per US laws, lost claims to it after holding it for 85 years.

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Now that Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse is public domain, the first instinct of any HACK is to use him for a slasher horror. But the thing is: 1920s Mickey was a working class hero. Do you not wish to reclaim our man as an icon of the proletariat? Or are you A CLASS TRAITOR?? pic.twitter.com/vzFvKXsL1Q
— David Rattigan (@davidmrattigan) January 1, 2024

On OpenSea, the Steamboat Willie Public Domain 2024 NFT collection secured the top rank. The floor price (lowest price) of the NFTs from this collection is ETH 0.20 (roughly Rs. 39,399), showed a CoinTelegraph report. Meanwhile, Steamboat Willie and Steamboat Willie's Roverboat secured the second and third rank on OpenSea's top list with the floor prices of ETH 0.13 (roughly Rs. 25,609) and ETH 0.02 (roughly Rs. 3,939) respectively.

The buzz around NFTs peaked in September 2021 when sales of these digital collectibles managed to amass around $881 million (roughly Rs. 7,344 crore). In September 2023, reports claimed that among the top 8,850 NFT collections by market cap, 18 percent were worthless, and 41 percent saw their prices drop to around $5 (roughly Rs. 415) to $10 (roughly Rs. 835).

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Soon after however, a new NFT category – Bitcoin Ordinals along with some collections like Anime-inspired NFT series Azuki, Ethereum NFT projects Pudgy Penguins, Milady Maker as well as Solana projects Claynosaurz and Chads kept the NFT boat afloat.

Findings from cryptoslam.io indicates that there were 4.16 million sellers and 4.97 million buyers of NFTs in 2023.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, OpenSea, NFTs, Micky Mouse

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More