Indian crypto exchange WazirX has announced the immediate closure of its NFT marketplace operations. The closure has been met with surprise and some users have accused the company of a “rug-pull”. WazirX has clarified that users can still hold their NFTs in their wallets and sell them in other marketplaces such as OpenSea.
Prior to the closure, the WazirX NFT marketplace had 52,253 items on sale on OpenSea. The closure follows a similar announcement from Friendsies, which cited market volatility as the reason for “pausing” operations.
The Indian NFT market had been gaining traction prior to the closure, with celebrities from the film and sports industries launching their own NFTs. Technology consultancy firm Deloitte predicts that the Indian sports and entertainment NFT market will grow to $1 billion in the near future, while the global sports NFT trade will cross $2 billion in 2022. Despite this optimistic outlook, the prolonged bear market and unfriendly regulatory environment seem to have hit the crypto subsector hard.
