Is the reign of the Bored Ape Yacht Club coming to an end?
In 2022, they were the kings of the digital jungle. Justin Bieber had one. Paris Hilton had one. Steve Aoki had eight. A year later, at the tail end of a bear market, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has waned in dominance, with its floor price sinking from 152 Ether in April 2022 to 37.95 Ether today.
The weekend was particularly volatile for the collection, and it can be traced back to one trader.
Data from Ethereum NFT marketplace Blur shows that Jeffrey Huang, aka ‘Machi Big Brother’, sold over 50 Apes over the weekend. In a transaction made on Saturday, Huang flogged 19 NFTs in one transaction for 651 Ether (~$1.2 million).
While floor price is down, BAYC sales are still slightly in the green, with 1008 sales recorded over the past 7 days. The highest sale over the past week also came in at a healthy 149.70 Ether ($281,748 at the time of writing) – a 154% increase from the previous week.
Ape trades aside, it’s been a busy period for Huang: Just last week, he sued blockchain sleuth ZachXBT for alleged defamation following a claim he was embezzling tens of millions of dollars in Ether for his now-defunct crypto firm.
So is BAYC losing ground?
Bored Ape still takes the #1 spot on OpenSea, but it has naturally started to lose ground to its competitors. Time passes, and everyone has their moment until a new, better thing rises up.
Data from CryptoSlam.io shows that Azuki and Ordinals have outpaced BAYC in terms of sales volume over the past 24 hours.
The rise of Bitcoin Ordinals has stolen some of the limelight from BAYC in recent months. While Ethereum was once the sole contender for blue-chip NFTs, the Bitcoin network has seen a 651% increase in buyers over the past 30-days, compared with 15% on Ethereum.
Read more: Binance to add Bitcoin Ordinals to its NFT marketplace as BRC-20 hits $1 billion total value
In addition, a case can be made that the initial novelty of BAYC as a PFP project started to wear off when other projects with better utility (not just tickets to niche events and apparel) started to climb the ranks.
This isn’t to say BAYC is done for – it still ranks #1 of all time in terms of sales volume and floor price on OpenSea – but it does suggest that one era is coming to a close for another to begin.
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