Unreal demand? Irregular sales worth billions fire up wild NFT market

business-standard.com:

On Jan. 12, an image of a computer-generated pixelated person was sold for about $50.6 million worth of cryptocurrency on a new online marketplace that caters for non-fungible tokens.

It gets stranger.

Five minutes later, the same "Meebit" NFT - a virtual character clad in purple shorts and green sneakers - was sold back from the buyer to the original seller for around $49.6 million.

Confused? Welcome to the weird and wild world of NFTs, a new breed of crypto assets that represent digital items, from images and videos to clothing for avatars. They have exploded in popularity over the past year as part of a fledgling and largely unregulated economy for the much-hyped metaverse.

The Meebit, which can be used as a profile picture, was exchanged between two cryptocurrency wallets - which are anonymous. Although the underlying blockchain technology creates a public record when an NFT is sold, it doesn't record the names of those involved. A person can own multiple wallets, acting as both buyer and seller in a trade.

The digital character was among dozens of NFTs on the LooksRare marketplace that were sold back and forth between a small number of wallets in quick succession for unusually high prices last month, according to a Reuters review of publicly available blockchain records.

Since Jan. 11, for example, another Meebit NFT - this one with a sporty outfit and ponytail - has been passed between three wallets in over 100 sales, mostly in the $3-15 million range. In the week of Jan. 12-19, a "Loot" bag NFT, representing virtual equipment for online adventure games, was exchanged across 75 sales between two other wallets, for $30,000-$800,000 a time.

The activity has helped LooksRare generate at least $10.8 billion in trading