Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs may have hit more than a rough patch as the floor price for the once-celebrated collection hit its lowest point since August 2021.
As of Monday, the floor price on Bored Ape NFTs sank to 10.9 ether (about $34,000), according to NFT Price Floor data. The NFTs’ floor price has not been that low since early August 2021, when it hit 9.5 ether, also according to the NFT data site.
Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, or BAYC, collection declined to comment.
The collection, which once had a slew of celebrities promoting the NFTs, first launched three years ago in April 2021. While the overall NFT market, especially for pricey, profile-picture tokens, has been depressed for quite some time, BAYC has often been regarded as the market’s biggest success story, boasting an engaged community and popular iterative collections.
Historically, BAYC is the top NFT collection, among the collectibles market, by sales volume, having registered more than $3 billion, according to CryptoSlam! data.
BAYCs acquired by notable celebrities like Kevin Hart and Justin Bieber have later went on to sell for a fraction of their original price. The current floor price is more than 90% below BAYC’s all-time high floor price of 128 ether (now about $395,000), which it hit in April 2022, according to NFT Price Floor.
Crypto startup firm MoonPay helped facilitate Hart’s purchase of a BAYC in 2022. The company reportedly also gifted other celebrities BAYC NFTs in exchange for promoting MoonPay. The list of celebrities included Hart, Bieber, Madonna and Jimmy Fallon.
MoonPay, however, denied giving celebrities NFTs for free.
A class action lawsuit was filed in late 2022 that alleging celebrities publicly promoted Bored Apes and MoonPay without disclosing either their financial interests in the companies or if they had received compensation.
In February, Yuga Labs replaced its CEO, former Activision Blizzard executive Daniel Alegre, with Yuga co-founder Greg Solano. That same month, Yuga Labs also acquired rival non-fungible token creator Proof, which is best known for its Moonbirds collection.
Source: The Block
