How a Price Battle Between Two Heavyweight NFT Exchanges is Pumping Prices

cryptonews.com:

Despite the prices of most major cryptocurrencies stagnating over the course of the last 30-days, with the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum only up a respective 1.7 and 4.0% and BNB and XRP down 3.9% and 7.0% each according to CoinMarketCap, the prices of non-fungible tokens (NFT) have been pumping. According to NFT Price Floor, the price floor to get your hands on an NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection has jumped 17.5% over the course of the last 30-days to $117,750.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection is currently the most valuable in the NFT space, with a market capitalization (according to the price floor) of around $1.177 billion. The minimum price to get your hands on a CryptoPunk NFT is up around 5.5% over the same time period – CryptoPunk is the second most valuable NFT collection, with a price floor market cap of also over $1.0 billion.

The rally in NFT prices comes despite broader derisking in traditional asset classes, with a string of strong US data releases last month boosting Fed tightening bets – with inflation heating up again and US economic activity and labor markets remaining robust, the Fed is now seen taking interest rates to around 5.5% by the middle of the year, versus expectations for rate hikes to pause around 5.0% only one month ago.

Such a shift in Fed tightening expectations has typically been a negative for digital assets, which are still very much viewed as a speculative asset class. In such circumstances, NFTs have historically been one of the worst-hit sectors of the crypto space. The rally in prices also comes amid a ramp-up in regulatory pressure on centralized crypto firms in the US, with the SEC recently targeting Kraken over its staking program and Paxos over its