Animoca Brands is going full degen on digital collectibles again, snapping up gaming and collectibles firm Somo. The acquisition deepens Animoca’s Web3 empire, folding Somo’s playable, streamable, and tradable goods into its blockchain-based portfolio. Animoca plans to plug Somo into its ecosystem, using cross-promo moves and its global partner network to turbocharge growth. Co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu dubbed SOMO the “cultural operating system for collectibles,” saying it slots neatly into the firm’s existing stack.
The buy comes as the NFT market stages a surprise rally. In the first two weeks of 2026, the global NFT market cap jumped by roughly 20%, rising from about $2.5 billion on January 1 to over $3 billion. It’s one of the strongest short-term comebacks in more than a year after a brutal 2025 slump that felt longer than a bear market meditation retreat.
CoinGecko data shows a big chunk of those gains happened in a single 24-hour window. The cap sat just under $2.7 billion on Tuesday, then surged to $3 billion by Wednesday—a $300 million pop. Trading volume over 24 hours also spiked 18.7%. Some community sleuths pointed to blue-chip NFTs bouncing, high-value sales ticking up, and new NFT projects dropping token airdrops. As one X wag put it, “We’ve seen this pattern before. Is 2026 the next NFT cycle or just a fake bounce?”
Even with the recent pop, the sector is still miles off its ATH. On January 14, 2025, the NFT market cap sat around $7.3 billion. That means the space is still down 59% year-over-year, latest rally notwithstanding.
