The metaverse and NFTs exploded in 2021. However, in the first 3 months of 2022 global search interest has declined significantly in both the concepts.

In late 2021, Zuckerberg changed Facebook’s name to Meta (NASDAQ:). This was the beginning of metaverse hype. The popularity of NFTs, particularly for artworks and unique digital objects was a result. Many believe the NFT boom was caused by celebrities or large NFT drops. In December 2021, ‘NFTs’ gained more interest than ‘cryptocurrency.’

Google (NASDAQ:) Trends shows the search volume for the keyword ‘NFT’ has been steadily decreasing since mid-January. Over the past year, the word ‘NFTs’ gained the most interest in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, The Philippines, and Canada.

According to Google, people have been losing interest in ‘metaverse’ since the end of January. Within 12 months, this keyword was the most searched for in Turkey (China), Singapore, Cyprus and Lebanon.

NonFungible statistics show that NFT sales are also declining. At the start of February, NFT sales were over 376,000. However, these numbers have dropped to below 100,000 per day in recent days.

The Flipside

• NFTs are not yet fully developed, according to many. New initiatives or projects could increase interest in the keywords.
• Russian aggression against Ukraine could have caused significant disruption to financial markets (including cryptocurrency and metaverse)