The icy crypto bear market is only getting colder because of FTX’s collapse and the subsequent contagion spreading to other businesses. Since early this year, the NFT market has also lost a lot of heat. Nevertheless, some “blue chip” Ethereum NFTs continue to fetch high prices, as shown by the sale of a Bored Ape today for just under $1 million.
This morning, Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT #232 traded on the secondary market for 800 ETH, or around $927,000. Keung, a well-known pseudonymous collector, purchased the tokenized profile photo (PFP) from Deepak Thapliyal, CEO of Web3 cloud software startup Chain.
Recent months have seen a significant decline in the value of many Bored Ape NFTs, including one that singer Justin Bieber bought earlier this year for $1.3 million in ETH but is now only worth about $69,000. However, according to data from Rarity Tools, this gold-furred ape ranked 324th out of 10,000 NFTs, is one of the rarer avatars. Few apes—less than 5%—have golden fur.
A renowned NFT collector, Thapliyal broke the record for a CryptoPunks purchase by paying 8,000 ETH, or $23.7 million at the time, for a single NFT. In a recent tweet which was later deleted, he stated that he would keep the record-breaking Punk. However, he said that he will sell his rare NFTs after Chain was affected by the fall of FTX.
NFT is a blockchain token used to demonstrate ownership of a special item, such as digital versions of products like artwork, other digital collectables, and video game assets.
On October 1, Bored Ape #8585, which sold for 777 ETH, or $1.02 million, became the last sale on the site to reach that milestone. At that time, ETH was worth around 13% more than its current price.
Although drastically shrunk, the NFT market is still alive. Approximately $700 million in secondary market NFT sales were reported in October, according to data from DappRadar and Dune, compared to $5.36 billion in January. The NFT market’s trading volume increased to $25 billion in 2021 and remained at that level through the beginning of 2022. Nevertheless, the growth has considerably slowed since the crypto market started falling in May.