Many publishers closed out 2020 in a better financial position than they expected early on in the pandemic, giving them the flexibility to experiment with new revenue streams and launch new products in 2021.
One of those experiments involved dabbling in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which rapidly caught fire across a wide range of industries this year, including the publishing space.
As of Dec. 23, the total number of NFTs sold, year-to-date, reached nearly 14.5 million, and a total of about $13.8 billion was spent to buy them, according to NonFungible.com, a database of blockchain gaming and crypto collectible markets. Considering how much was spent, it’s important to note that the number of unique wallets (digital stores for cryptocurrencies and NFTs) that bought and sold NFTs also increased substantially in 2021, reaching nearly 1.4 million as of late December, up from about 87,000 on Jan. 1.
