We present all the latest facts & figures about NFTs in 2022, including how many people trade NFTs and which countries have the most interest in them.

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If you’re on any form of social media, you may have already heard of 

. NFT stands for “non-fungible token,” a tradeable digital asset that cannot be replicated or replaced with something identical. NFTs are images or other assets that can be bought and sold on a crypto blockchain.

The crypto boom of 2021 drew NFTs into the limelight, although the concept of an NFT has existed on blockchains since the first NFT — 

 was minted in 2014. So how popular have NFTs become in 2022? How many people are buying, selling, and trading them, and how many people plan to? 

 to ask 2,002 adults across the U.S. whether they’ve ever bought or sold an NFT, whether they intend to do so, and if they know what NFTs are. Alongside this, we conducted an analysis of millions of Google searches conducted worldwide in order to determine which NFTs are most highly sought and which countries are most interested in them.

To find out more about the population’s engagement with NFTs, we used 

 to ask 2,002 adults across the U.S. about their experience using, trading or understanding NFTs. We then divided our survey respondents into demographic groups, such as age and gender, to better understand the demographic influences on NFTs. 

NFTs have waxed and waned in popularity over the years, even before their mainstream boost in 2021. While their main platform is currently the Ethereum blockchain, the first NFT¹ was actually minted on the Namecoin blockchain in 2014. In 2016, NFTs began to migrate from other platforms to Ethereum with collection games such as 

 an asset adoption, and breeding game. Then, NFTs caught the attention of mainstream media and crypto enthusiasts in 2021. So how many people have jumped on the bandwagon and started trading NFTs in 2022?

*Our survey found that 3.8% of people in the US have bought or sold NFTs in the past. 3.8% of 258.3 million (the adult population of the US) equals 9.8 million, which we’ve rounded up to 10 million in this statistic. 

Which Age Groups Are Most Likely to Trade NFTs?

With every trend that hits mainstream social media, there are target audiences. The similarity of NFTs to trading cards and collection games makes their target market anyone who may have enjoyed these games in the past. We wanted to know if this reflects the age of the population involved in buying and selling NFTs. To find out, we divided our survey respondents into age groups from 18–24 up to 65+. 

 One in 8 U.S. adults between the ages of 25 and 34

 are planning to buy and sell NFTs in the future, 

making them the most likely age group to do so

 despite only 1.1% having traded them in the past

Who’s More Likely to Trade NFTs — Men or Women?

Anyone can start an NFT collection. However, where there are target audiences, there are differences in demographics. Does gender affect how many people are trading NFTs? To find out, we separated our survey respondents into men and women.

Men in the U..S are more than twice as likely as women

They are also 3.8% more likely to plan to trade NFTs

Women are half as likely to be interested

 in trading NFTs as men are (8.3% vs. 15.5%).

When NFTs hit mainstream media, their popularity began to extend beyond crypto circles. It can be argued that NFTs have introduced plenty of people to blockchain networks and will continue to do so since they appeal to anyone who loves to collect. So, just how many people are familiar with NFTs in the U.S. in 2022?

have heard of NFTs and understand what they are.

but don’t know what they are or how they work 

Which Gender Is More Likely to Know What NFTs Are? 

Since NFTs are more commonly traded by men, does this reflect which gender has a better understanding of them? And are men more familiar with the term “NFT”? We found that:

	14. Surprisingly (given that more men than women trade them), more men than women know about NFTs 

 have heard of and understand NFTs (46.6%),

over half of all women in the U.S. are entirely unaware of NFTs

At What Age Are Adults in the US More Likely to Understand NFTs?

Similar to gender, does age reflect the likelihood that someone will know about and understand NFTs? We found that:

One in 5 young adults have heard of NFTs, but don’t understand what they are

 are the least likely to have heard of NFTs

the most likely to have heard of, but not understand,

nearly half of U.S. adults between the ages of 25 and 54 are familiar with NFTs

, making them the most likely age group to know about them (44.3%).

So when did NFTs become so popular? How many people are really interested in them, and how much has this interest changed over time? To answer these questions, we used 

 to analyze global search volumes for the key phrase’ “What is an NFT?” and several variants. We repeated this process every month between November 2020 and June 2022 to view the trend over time.

Searches for “What is an NFT?” grew by 

over one million between October 2021 and January 2022

 (1,094,989), at the same time as the crypto price boom² of late 2021.

, dropping down to 200,448 searches in June 2022.

The biggest peak in interest was in January 2022

	24. Interest in NFTs started to rise rapidly in January 2021, experiencing its first peak in February 2021 with people searching 

94,900 times, 87,000 more than in January.

Which Countries Have the Most Interest in NFTs?

In light of this, we wanted to find out which countries are more interested in learning about NFTs. To do this, we repeated our process with the same key phrases in KWFinder for each country around the world. We left out Iran, Sudan, and Russia, where no search data was available. We then divided the average monthly search volume by the country’s population³ and multiplied the figure by 100,000 to find out how many searches were carried out per 100,000 people.

 is more interested in NFTs than any other country in the world, with Singaporeans 

searching an average of 197.4 times per 100,000 people 

	26. People from the Cayman Islands are up next, searching for “What is an NFT?” 

182.6 times per 100,000 people per month.

Australia is the fifth most interesting country

, searching more times per 100,000 people

 than any other English-speaking country in the world

	28. New Zealand isn’t far behind, with New Zealanders searching for “What is an NFT?”

 an average of 154.7 times per 100,000 people per month

Types of NFTs: Which Are the Most Popular?

An NFT can be anything a seller wants them to be — an image, image sets, sound clips and even tweets⁴! An NFT is a statement of ownership recorded on a blockchain, meaning that the nature of the asset is less important than its uniqueness and consequent value. That’s why Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s 2006 set-up tweet sold for upward of $2.9 million in 2021. It’s irreplaceable and completely unique — perfect for an NFT! 

Many creators have jumped on the bandwagon since the creation of the NFT in 2014. The inception of NFT collection games began with 

 in October of 2015, in which users of the Ethereum blockchain could buy and collect pieces of digital “land.” The concept has been adopted by many creators and fans since, with game after game being added to the wide digital world of blockchains. 

So which games and NFT game platforms are the most popular in 2022? And has the popularity of this asset adoption concept changed over time? To find out, we researched global search volumes for a variety of NFT adoption games and NFT platforms for each month from November 2020 to June 2022, and then added these figures and divided them by the number of months to find the monthly average. In the vast majority of cases, we’ve gone with the keywords that Google determines to be NFTs. However, it’s important to note that many of the searches for terms such as “Doodles” may be in reference to unrelated subjects.

accumulating an average of over 2 million searches per month

with people searching a monthly average of 

, with people around the world searching 

NFT games need platforms in order to be used. There are plenty of these platforms available for NFT artists to utilize — but which are the most popular?

Has Interest in NFT Games Changed Over Time?

We also collected searches over time for a wide variety of NFT games and several of their variants over time. We then added up the totals for each month to find out how the popularity of NFT games has changed over time. 

This was after a sharp increase between June and July

	34. Searches for NFT collections then dropped until rising again between October and November,

 reaching the second peak of 12.9 million in November 2021

In Which Countries Are Different NFT Games Most Popular?

Does interest in NFT games vary between countries? Which countries have the most interest in playing and learning about different NFT collections? To find out, we once more repeated our keyword research for each country. We then calculated each country’s average searches per 100,000 people per month to find out which countries are the most interested in each NFT type. 

80+ NFT Statistics 2022 — Global NFT Trading and Popularity Facts

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