NFT Market Cap Drops $1.2B as Ether Declines; Penguins Overtake Apes

The non-fungible token (NFT) market lost more than $1.2 billion in value in less than a week as Ether’s rally slowed, according to sector data.

On Monday, NFT Price Floor data showed that the total valuation of NFT collections had dropped to $8.1 billion, a 12% decline from Wednesday’s NFT market cap of $9.3 billion, which had surged 40% since July. 

NFTs losing $1.2 billion in valuation in less than a week coincided with a 9% drop in Ether (ETH) prices. At the time of writing, Cointelegraph data showed ETH traded at $4,260, down from a high of about $4,700 on Wednesday. 

Many NFTs are minted on the Ethereum network. With valuations and sales denominated in ETH, bullish or bearish momentum in the crypto asset often translates into increased or decreased value in the NFT sector. As ETH went down 4% in the last 24 hours, a majority of the top 10 collections also showed declines in value. 

NFT market cap drops by over 12% as ETH declines

While it continued to be the top collection by market capitalization, CryptoPunks saw about $300 million wiped from the collection’s value.

At the time of writing, data showed it was worth $2.1 billion, down 12% from its 2.4 billion market cap on Wednesday. 

CryptoSlam data showed that the collection’s sales volume reached $12.7 million, a 34% drop in the last seven days. Total sales only reached 51, down 28% in the last week. 

The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), which was ranked second in overall NFT market capitalization on Wednesday, dropped to third place on Monday, as the collection declined to $482.3 million.

This represented an almost 20% drop from Wednesday’s $602 million. 

Related: NFT sales surge to $574 million in July, second-highest in 2025

Penguins overtake Apes in market capitalization

Meanwhile, Pudgy Penguins climbed to the second-highest valuation despite erasing about $100 million in overall value.

On Monday, the collection’s market cap was $491 million, down 17% from Wednesday’s $591 million. 

Last week, publicly traded blockchain company BTCS Inc. announced that it added three Pudgy Penguins NFTs to its corporate digital asset treasury.

This showed that companies are beginning to recognize blue-chip NFT collections as legitimate assets for treasury diversification. 

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