decrypt.co
So far, it's been a green year for cryptocurrencies.
The broader crypto market capitalization has zoomed 6.7% to $884 billion since the start of the year, according to data from CoinGecko.
Gaming and NFT-related cryptocurrencies, including Gala (GALA), Decentraland (MANA), Apecoin (APE), and The Sandbox (SAND), are no exception and have posted hefty double-digit gains over the past week.
GALA, the native token powering Gala’s crypto gaming ecosystem, is up a whopping 139.8% over the past week and is the leading gainer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, per data from CoinGecko.
At press time, GALA changes hands for $0.042, up 13% in the last 24 hours, and is the 98th-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Despite GALA’s raging weekly gains, the gaming crypto is still down 94.8% from its historical all-time high of $0.8248 recorded in November 2021.
According to data from Coinglass, GALA futures positions totaling $31.82 million have been liquidated over the past week.
Of those liquidations, roughly 25% were long positions, with the rest coming from blown-out short trades.
Liquidations data for GALA. Source: Coinglass.
APE, the token underpinning the leading NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club and its upcoming metaverse platform Otherside, also gained 23.5% over the past seven days.
As of this writing, APE trades at $4.87, up 4.2% over the past 24 hours, per data from CoinGecko.
According to data from Cryptoslam, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT trading volume soared 32.38% to $18.061 million, topping the most-traded NFT list over the past week.
Following BAYC is Mutant Ape Yacht Club, another Apecoin-adjacent NFT collection that posted a tremendous 60.75% rise in trading volume to $13.310 million over the same period.
NFT volumes push GALA, gaming tokens
Looking past GALA and APE, other gaming-adjacent crypto projects have also posted serious gains over the last seven days.
MANA, the token behind the metaverse game Decentraland, has risen 29% to $0.40 over the past week, per data from CoinGecko.
The bullish week has been enough to reverse MANA’s monthly losses. On a yearly note, however, MANA is still down 89%.
The Sandbox has also seen its native token SAND gain 26.5% over the same period. At press time SAND trades at around $0.51, dropping 0.5% on the day per data from CoinGecko.
The primary driver behind the upward price action of most of these gaming and NFT-linked tokens is the spike in NFT trading volumes over the past week.
According to data from Cryptoslam, NFT trading volume increased 31.56% to $207.358 million over the past week.