When the NFTs came out in July, some Reddit Collectible Avatars could be bought, but many have also been given away for free to the site’s most active users.
What Are Collectible Avatars on Reddit?
This time, NFTs are reaching a new group of people through Reddit.
This week, the social media giant’s Reddit Collectible Avatars collections have been the talk of the crypto world. In the last 24 hours, they have brought in a total of $2.2 million in trading volume on the top NFT marketplace OpenSea.
After their first release in July of this year, few people on Reddit or in the wider crypto community paid much attention to the avatar NFTs. But in the past few weeks, many active Reddit users have started getting free collectible avatars. This, along with the recent release of a few Halloween-themed collections, has made people more interested in avatars.
Each Reddit Collectible Avatar is made on the Polygon blockchain and can be used as a user’s profile picture on the site. Avatars also give users other benefits, like the ability to mix and match clothes with other avatars and a glow effect on their comments.
Some Reddit avatar collections, like “The Singularity,” have millions of copies, but other collections don’t have as many. This has caused the value of popular avatars to skyrocket as interest in NFTs has risen this week. At the moment, it looks like the Sys32Template “Spooky Season” collection has the most valuable avatars. Some of the 210 NFTs in this small group have sold for as much as 2.8 ETH, or about $3,700.
The most traded NFT collection on OpenSea over the past day has been poieeeyee’s Another Spooky Season collection. Since its release on October 24, when it had 1,800 NFT, the poieeeyee collection has traded for more than $1 million. But it’s not just these examples that have to do with Halloween that is doing well. The value of the Foustlings collection, which was part of the first set of Reddit avatars that came out in July, has increased by more than five times this week. On October 22, it would have cost 0.31 ETH to buy a Foustlings avatar. Now, the same NFTs often sell for up to 1.65 ETH, which is a floor price increase of 432%.
Many people on Reddit are excited about their new, often valuable avatars, but die-hard NFT fans don’t seem to have caught on to the excitement. Since they came out in July, NFT people have known about the Reddit Collectible Avatars but have mostly ignored them. Now, their prices have gone through the roof, making many people wonder why these Reddit avatars are getting so much attention.
Why do so many people use Reddit avatars?
NFTs on Reddit have been successful for many of the same reasons that Bored Ape Yacht Club or CryptoPunks have.
On Reddit, users can show off their wealth through their avatars and change how other users see them. Giving users the option to change how they look online for a fee is not something that is only done in the crypto space or on Reddit. Popular online games like Counter-Strike, League of Legends, and Overwatch have been selling “skins” or other cosmetic items to players for years. In this way, Reddit avatars are familiar to people who have bought cosmetic items online before and were willing to pay for them.
But there are also other reasons why Reddit avatars have done well. The social media site already has millions of users, so its collectible avatars will be more interesting to a wider range of people than the average NFT collection. In contrast, many “crypto-native” NFT collections try to start from scratch and build a community around their avatars. Some succeed, but many more fail.
Also, it’s important to know that Reddit Collectible Avatars have been advertised without using any crypto jargon. “Reddit Vaults” has replaced “crypto wallets,” and “NFT” has been replaced by “Digital Collectible.” For people who are used to using crypto and trading NFTs, this may seem like a small change, but for people who have never done this before, it has made a huge difference in how easy it is to get started.
Also, the decision to not call the Reddit avatars “NFTs” has helped them become more popular. In the past few months, NFT has become a bad word in many art and gaming communities. The word has been tainted with a lot of bad ideas, from using too much energy to scams and even money laundering. On the other hand, “Digital Collectible” is easier to understand, doesn’t have the baggage that “NFT” does, and has probably helped users who were skeptical of blockchain technology before to start using it.
But even though all of these things may be true, some people are more skeptical about the Reddit avatar hype. Meltem Demirors, the CSO of Coinshares and a popular Crypto Twitter user, has said that the status and value that Reddit avatars give might be the reason why they are popular outside of the Crypto community. “Reddit NFTs show that everyone wants to be the first to know about something new that gives them status and makes them money,” she wrote. “People don’t actually hate NFTs or crypto. They hate that people who aren’t them get status and wealth from it because they think they deserve it more.”
The Reddit Collectible Avatar collections show that anything can be successful if it’s marketed well. Reddit has found a way to make a technology that is hard to understand the fun and accessible to everyone, even those who don’t know much about crypto. Other companies, both in the crypto space and outside of it, will probably keep a close eye on Reddit so they can try to copy its success.
