This question was asked to NFT data specialists nonfungible.com. Their answer was quite simple; ‘we don’t know’. So, if the world’s largest NFT data resource didn’t know, how could anyone else know.
Nonfungible.com stated that wallets, although transparent, do not allow for geographic locations to be identified so it is impossible to trace back wallets to any country or region. Wallets by their very nature are both unidentified in the sense that no-one know who owns what, but identifiable because every transaction is globally visible. The dual visibility/invisibility means anyone claiming to know the number of Australian wallets (or any regions wallets for that matter) is providing an estimate at best.
Coinspot (an Australian cryptocurrency exchange platform) claims there are 2 million Australians with Coinspot accounts. This figure is most likely true as Coinspot collect email addresses to verify accounts before opening them. IP addresses can be geographically noted so Coinspot can track where their accounts are being opened. So, if there are at least 2,000,000 crypto wallets in Australia, how many of these would own, collect or trade NFTs?
When Blockchain Australia were asked how many Australian NFT collectors there were, the operations manager was wise enough and honest enough to also answer that she did not know. How much do they spend on NFTs? Not a clue. She did point me to some statistics that showed Australians to be one of the leading countries searching the term NFTs and that at least is hard data.
The first NFT Festival in Australia back in June 2021 had over 4000 viewers. The on-line festival was a huge success. But that was in June 2021 and this figure measures those interested in NFTs, not necessarily NFT buyers. Nine months later in real time measures epochs on the NFT timeline.
Last week was Blockchain Australia week and Day 3 was NFT Day. This was a hugely popular day. The day covered both the sports and art NFT markets. At best guess, the audience for the event was probably at least 5000 over the day. The day covered sports NFTs, gaming and the metaverse. We don’t know which percentage were interested in only collecting art NFTs.
Those interested in art NFTs are made up of creators and collectors. It is assumed that these categories are not mutually exclusive. Most creators are collectors. NFTs will sit in the creator’s wallet until sold, so in effect they are collecting their own work. But most collectors are not creators.
There are approximately 6000 ticks on the Australian and New Zealand flags in the popular discord for Psychedelics Anonymous (a high profile Australian NFT project), and in the run up to popular drops such as Hape Beast there were 5000 ticks on the Australian flag. But again, these do not necessarily represent NFT collectors.
After asking several Australian industry OGs the question, no-one was prepared to go on the record with a definitive figure, but it was generally agreed there are more buyers than sellers. While there is a lot of hype and the press spotlight is on high growth NFT projects, there are many Australian digital artists diligently working away selling 1/1s and creating incredible work. We estimate there may be around 800 Australian crypto-artists. This is based on trawling through twitter and discords trying to find as many as we can. They may not have high profiles, yet.
We know globally, according to Adam McBride (the NFT archaeologist), there are approximately 200,000 – 300,000 world-wide NFT collectors. On Open Sea there are 500,000 wallets, yet it is well known lots of people have lots of wallets, so the true number of people behind those wallets might be half that. $looksrare state in their podcast that there are more people playing Minecraft at any given time than there people who have bought NFTs (collectively). That’s how small the market is.
We also know there is more demand than supply. In any given month of 2021, there was approximately 30% more buyers than sellers, (nonfungible.com). For example, on Friday September 24th, 2021, at the height of an NFT bull run, there were 60,943 unique buyers and 38,004 unique sellers (60% more buyers the sellers). Now as we dwell at the bottom of the bear run, on Tuesday 29th March there were 5358 unique buyers and 5143 unique sellers (4% more buyers than sellers). Not only is the number of trades falling, the gap between unique buyers and sellers is closing.
So, circling back to the question, how many Australian art NFT holders are there right now?
We can only say we still don’t know but our best guess would be around 6,000 – 10,000 Australian art NFT collectors and 800 Australian crypto artists.
What we do know is, when the market ramps back up again, it is expected interest from collectors will grow very quickly. Not only will new collectors on-board but existing collectors will spend more. The next question is wen?
Disclaimer: Please do your own research. This is not financial advice and is personal opinion only.
Written by Sonia Komaravalli