The Guy Behind That Owl NFT just bought a $16.5 million house
While Bored Ape Yacht Club remains one of the most successful NFT projects out there, the owl avatars known as Moonbirds have retained their value even as interest in NFTs continues to decline.
A collection of 10,000 NFTs created by tech entrepreneur Kevin Rose, Moonbirds feature owls in various quirky poses and first began dropping in batches in April 2022. By August, Rose’s project had brought in over $500 million in sales and received $50 million in series A financing from Andreessen Horowitz.
45-year-old Rose, who started out by launching the website Digg in the early days of the Internet and became a venture capitalist who was among the first to back Twitter and Square, was quickly propelled to even greater investment fame amid the success of Moonbirds — and, as first reported by celebrity real estate website Dirt.com, recently bought a house for $16.5 million in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.
An unfinished home in a glittering celebrity enclave
A celebrity enclave that houses the likes of LeBron James and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brentwood is known for its high concentration of ultra-luxury properties. The home Rose bought is on a half-hectare site and is currently still in the middle of construction.
Early aerial photographs show that it is designed in the shape of the letter “L” and will take up over 7,600 square meters of space. Many of the walls will be completely glass and offer panoramic views of Los Angeles.
The main house is also slated to have six bedrooms and eight and a half bathrooms — spacious, but also not as large as some of the super-mansions being built by other wealthy residents in the area.
Dirt.com also reports that the property will be similar in style to the 7,000-square-foot Portland, Oregon home that Rose had custom built in 2020 and just sold for just under $8 million over the summer. Amenities at this property include a wet bar, a wine cellar, a gym, a sauna, a home theater, and a three-car garage with electric car chargers.
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Have NFTs hit a peak of no return?
Short for non-fungible tokens, NFTs are a way to claim ownership over a piece of content such as an image or sound byte on the internet. Many are tied to a cryptocurrency, and with interest in them peaking towards the end of 2021, many made fortunes reselling them to buyers willing to pay higher and higher prices.
While certain popular NFTs from Bored Ape Yacht Clubs or Moonbirds can still earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, interest has dropped dramatically as the crypto industry in general has been on the decline and facing greater scrutiny.
Block tracker DappRadar found that NFT sales generated $8.4 billion in sales in the third quarter of 2021 and just $3.4 billion in the same quarter of 2022. At the same time, the broader NFT market is still forecast to grow at an average CAGR rate of 35.27% until 2026.
“The non-fungible token (NFT) market is highly fragmented due to the presence of a large number of small and medium-sized players,” said analysts at market research firm Technavio. “Suppliers are adopting strategic initiatives such as mergers and acquisitions to remain competitive in the market.”
