Got me like, baby, oh no... Justin Bieber’s Bored Ape non-fungible token is worth 95% less than the $1.3M he paid for it in January 2022, as the value of Bored Apes and other blue-chip NFT collections plummets. The cheapest Bored Ape on the market (aka the “floor price”) could be had for 27 ETH on Sunday, down 88% from a peak of 152 ETH in April 2022. NFTs in a recently launched Bored Ape spinoff game have fallen too.
- Class rep: Yuga Labs — which owns Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, and other NFT collections — is one of the best-known NFT companies, and cooling interest in its tokens could be a bad sign for the broader industry.
It’s not a “gm” for NFTs… NFTs were a buzzword in 2021-22. But after cratering later last year and clawing back some of its interest earlier this year, the non-fungible tide has turned once again. NFT royalties, a revenue driver for the collections’ creators, are at their lowest point in two years, partly because they often aren’t enforced. Just $10M in NFTs are being sold daily, compared to $30M last year. Popular NFT collections including Doodles and Pudgy Penguins have seen recent price dips, and Azuki Elementals fell nearly 60% last week following a controversy with its founder.
Buzzy businesses need to keep things fresh… While investors might not expect much excitement from a century-old canned-goods company, innovative products like NFT collections need to keep churning out new-ness. But Yuga Labs appears to have let its bananas go from ripe to rotten, and it may be running out of time to even make bread. It’s been hyping the release of its virtual world, dubbed Otherside, since March 2022 — but after buyers spent $320M on Otherside “deeds,” they’re still waiting for the world to go live.