What is a floor price?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 4 min
In short
The floor price is simply the lowest active listing in an NFT collection. It gets used as shorthand for a collection's level, but it is an asking price rather than a trade, and in a thin book one listing can move it sharply. As a valuation for holdings it is a rough number at best.
Key points
- The cheapest item currently listed for sale
- An asking price, not a completed trade
- One listing can move it a lot in a thin market
- Sites count different venues, so figures differ
Definition
For a given NFT collection, the lowest price among all sell listings at that moment. It is used as a rough indicator of the collection's overall level.
Because the floor is the cheapest listing, it does not mean anyone paid that. In a collection with ten items listed, cancelling the cheapest one makes the figure jump; adding one cheap listing makes it drop. The thinner the book, the further this number sits from reality.
Figures also differ by which venues a site aggregates. A tracker that scans several marketplaces and one that only sees its own listings will not show the same floor. And a portfolio value computed as holdings times floor quietly assumes you could sell all of them at once.
Within one collection, actual sale prices vary widely by trait rarity. The floor is normally set by the most ordinary items, so it is not an average of the collection.
Watch out for
- · The floor is an asking price and guarantees nothing about actually selling
- · NFTs can simply find no buyer and end up with no market price at all
- · A handful of addresses trading back and forth can manufacture an apparent level