Weekly NFT Sales Hit $47.14 Million as Bitcoin Volume More Than Doubles
By Crypto Wire
October 18, 2026
CryptoSlam data captured on October 17 put rolling seven-day NFT sales at $47,138,650, a 24.57 percent climb from the prior week’s roughly $37.84 million print, even as transaction counts fell 32.35 percent to 507,562. Buyer addresses jumped 252.23 percent to 107,061 and seller addresses rose 192.38 percent to 89,117, a mix that reads like fewer, larger tickets drawing more wallets back into the tape rather than a pure spam-mint rebound. For culture desks, the week’s signature was not another PFP floor meme — it was a Bitcoin Ordinals ticket that alone rewrote the chain ranking.
Ethereum still led blockchains with $19,590,513 in sales, up 18.48 percent, about 41.6 percent of the global total. Polygon held second at $8,377,559, down 1.99 percent, while Bitcoin surged 132.05 percent to $8,252,706 and flipped into third ahead of BNB Chain at $4,100,527. Immutable and Base rounded out the top six at roughly $2.55 million and $1.88 million. CryptoSlam separately flagged wash-volume lines on several chains — including about $1.61 million on Ethereum and $18.72 million on Polygon — so treat the headline sales as the ranked tape, not a claim that every dollar cleared a clean secondary.
Collection culture followed the same split. Polygon-based Courtyard led weekly collection sales with $7,682,847 across 133,157 transactions, the phygital card market still grinding volume while blue-chip PFP chatter cooled. Ethereum’s Argonauts took third at $2,750,332, and Pudgy Penguins printed $2,564,945, up 77.03 percent, after collector Adam Weitsman said in separate coverage that he bought 117 Penguins over the October 10–11 weekend — a lore beat, not a CryptoSlam address tally. CryptoPunks sat seventh at $1,336,908, down 45.49 percent, on just 15 transactions.
The culture spike on Bitcoin was a single Ordinals print. CryptoSlam’s high-value sales table listed an $8888 BRC-20 inscription (prefix 85760015743bc7e) at $2,968,838.11, or about 36.3755 BTC, roughly two days before the snapshot — one transaction that was about 36 percent of Bitcoin’s entire weekly NFT sales and the whole reason the $8888 BRC-20 category ranked second among collections at that same dollar figure. Two $X@AI BRC-20 entries followed at about $638,448 and $514,873. Those are inscription tickets, not a broad Ordinals floor recovery, and the desk will not invent a “Bitcoin NFT season” from three prints.
Ethereum still cleared the fourth-largest named ticket — a Uniswap V3 Positions NFT-V1 #291 sale for about $217,866 in USDC — a reminder that DeFi position NFTs keep showing up in CryptoSlam’s top sales even when PFP timelines go quiet. A Cardano ADA Handle near $205,083 rounded out the top five individual sales. Spot backdrop during the Oct. 17 check put Bitcoin near $81,523 and Ethereum near $2,429 on CoinGecko, with global crypto market cap around $2.84 trillion; those spot prints are a different clock from the seven-day NFT dashboard.
Compared with the Oct. 10 crypto.news snapshot that put weekly sales near $39.85 million on 778,055 transactions and only 30,332 buyer addresses, this week’s CryptoSlam capture shows value and wallet participation up while raw tx count is down — denser culture trades, not more mint spam. OpenSea’s Flagship buy of Otherside Koda #7940 and Yuga’s Mudwater Solana claims remain separate October culture chapters already on the 8bitcrypto wire; they do not explain the Courtyard grind or the BRC-20 whale print inside this CryptoSlam window.
Lore thread: Watch whether another Ordinals or BRC-20 ticket clears seven figures before the next CryptoSlam seven-day roll, and whether Courtyard’s buyer count keeps shrinking while dollar volume holds — that would confirm a thinner, richer phygital culture tape rather than a broad PFP renaissance. Pudgy’s Weitsman stack is already a named lore signal; the next receipt is a public follow-on buy size or a CryptoSlam collection rank that breaks the current top-four pack.
Bottom line: Weekly NFT sales printed about $47.14 million on CryptoSlam, up roughly a quarter week over week, with Bitcoin’s surge driven by a near-$3 million BRC-20 ticket and Courtyard still leading collection culture on Polygon. More wallets, fewer transactions — denser lore, not a mint frenzy.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or trading advice. The NFT market is highly volatile, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions related to digital assets. The cover image for this article may have been created using artificial intelligence (AI).
