Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Prices Drop After FTX Sinks Crypto Market

Crypto prices are down at all levels this week amid news of FTX’s liquidity crisis and alleged mismanagement of client funds – and market turmoil may extend into the NFT world too. Popular Ethereum project the Bored Ape Yacht Club sees prices plummet as ETH plummets and owners potentially panic to sell their precious NFTs.

According to data from NFT floor price, the cheapest Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT available on the market (i.e. the “floor price”) is listed at 57.5 ETH at the time of this writing, or around $76,400 . Measured in ETH, this represents a decline of 7% in the last 24 hours. But measured in USD, given the decline in the value of ETH (which is down 13% this week), it has fallen nearly 24% in the past day.

Based on the current price, in USD, the floor price of a Bored Ape has fallen since its high of nearly $429,000 (152 ETH) on April 29 earlier this year, ahead of the launch of Virtual Earth NFT Acts for creator Yuga Labs’ Otherside metaverse game. That’s a drop of 82%.

After having recently gone neck and neck in terms of price floor with CryptoPunksanother valuable Ethereum NFT collection (also now owned by Yuga Labs), the monkeys lost their rhythm.

As of this writing, the floor price of a CryptoPunk has risen 6% (in ETH) in the past 24 hours to 66.75 ETH, or roughly $88,700. Amid the new market woes, some investors may view CryptoPunks as more durable assets that will hold their value better than other NFTs, given their status as an influential and enduring project as of 2017.

An NFT is a blockchain token that can be used to represent ownership of something, including things like profile pictures (PFP), works of art and collectibles. The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a popular PFP collection spanning 10,000 unique images, and has given nearly $2.5 billion trading on the secondary market since its launch in April 2021.

There are a few potential factors that could push Bored Ape prices down this week. One is the general desperation in the crypto market amid the FTX meltdown, which could prompt some investors to dump their “blue chip” NFT assets amid the recession. Interestingly, there is on-chain evidence to suggest such an action.

Data aggregated by Crypto upside down and shared by Evidence Research Director Punk9059 The Wednesday Shows a significant increase in trades on the leading market OpenSea using Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) instead of standard ETH. The share of WETH trades surged this week, surpassing the 50% mark late Wednesday afternoon.

Why is this important? Placing a bid on an NFT on OpenSea requires WETH, so when this number increases, it means more NFT owners are accepting bids placed on their assets. Offers are typically below the market value of any NFT, so the figure suggests sellers are accepting lowball offers to quickly liquidate their NFTs amid market chaos.

Another element linked to the decline of the crypto market concerns BendDAO, a lending protocol that allows users to take out crypto loans using valuable NFTs as collateral. Currently, BendDAO is auction of 14 NFT Bored Ape liquidated loans, with current bids on each well below the floor price in major markets. This may suggest weak demand for the assets.

In August, BendDAO itself faces a major liquidity crisis when it ran out of ETH and was not getting bids high enough to auction seized NFTs on liquidated loans. Ultimately, protocol members voted to lower the liquidation threshold to make it easier for BendDAO to auction NFTs for submarine loans.