Bored Apes, CryptoPunks Fall Below $100K as NFT Momentum Stalls
Floor prices for blue chip NFT collections CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) both fell well below $100,000 worth of ETH this week for the first time in months as the broader NFT market fell to trading figures not seen in years.
Although NFTs have recovered somewhat, it currently costs 49.8 ETH ($93,692 at the time of writing) to acquire a CryptoPunk, according to NFT Price Floor. While still a pretty penny, it’s down more than 30% from just a month ago, when the cheapest CryptoPunk on the market could be bought for just over $128,000 USD in ETH.
It’s a similar story for Bored Apes celebrity friendly flagship project from the NFT behemoth Yuga Labs. Entering the pool currently costs at least 49 ETH, or roughly $92,200; buying a Bored Ape hasn’t required so little ETH since November 2021.
These falling numbers appear to be symptomatic of a larger concern: fewer and fewer trades are taking place across the NFT market. Since mid-April, daily trades across all NFT marketplaces have fallen an astounding 71%, according to Dune Analytics.
This decline in activity has been incremental and consistent across platforms. Such a low number of NFT trades – just 20,000 on Thursday – has not been seen since late 2021.
The reasons for the recent drop-off remain unclear. Ethereum’s post-Shanghai the price increase was slow this weekbut the cryptocurrency of the largest NFT market still looks relatively strong, clocking in at around $1,845 at the time of writing, as of CoinGecko.
One specific factor disproportionately responsible for the recent rosy headlines about the enduring strength of the NFT market has been the rise of Blur, a relatively new NFT trading platform that quickly overtook OpenSea as the top NFT marketplace in the end of February.
However, Blur’s ascension was fueled by a reward system that encouraged traders to leave other marketplaces and flip as many NFTs as possible, even if they were back and forth between them.
Although the NFT market rose February and in March to around $2 billion in total trade each month, this growth was driven almost entirely by volume from Blur which some industry experts have labeled as manipulated “laundering”.
Activity on Blur has continued to dominate the market, accounting for over 60% of all NFT trading volume in the past week. But it may well be that Blur’s strategy of luring customers from other platforms and encouraging them to make pointless trades for financial rewards has begun to dampen genuine NFT market activity.
Some have pointed to recent spikes in gas taxes, likely caused by the rise of meme coins like PEPE in the last week, as potential explanations for the phenomenon. IN a Twitter thread on Thursdayresearch firm SeaLaunch pointed to a number of macro factors that may have played a role, ranging from high gas taxes to traders facing liquidity problems around the US tax deadline.
Others have pointed to the gloomy numbers as an indication that the long-awaited “bottom” of the crypto and NFT bear market is finally here. But as the past year has shown, sometimes it’s even lower to go.
