As the price of ETH drops, owners of the well-known Ethereum project Bored Ape Yacht Club may sell their expensive NFTs in a panic.
The lowest Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT currently on the market (floor price) is listed for 58.46 ETH as of writing, which is around $73,524 — according to NFT Price Floor. That is a decrease of 0.57% over the previous day in terms of ETH.
The Apes have slowed down after recently competing head-to-head in terms of floor price with CryptoPunks (another valuable Ethereum NFT collection that is now owned by Yuga Labs).
The floor price for a CryptoPunk is currently 66.5 ETH, or approximately $83,636, which is up by 2.86% over the previous 24 hours as of the time of writing. Given their status as a significant, enduring project from 2017, some investors may view CryptoPunks as more resilient assets that will keep value better than other NFTs amid the recent market troubles.
There are a few possible reasons why Bored Apes are dropping in value. One is that the collapse of major crypto exchange FTX has urged many investors to sell off their NFT assets during a market slump — a possibility that is backed by an on-chain evidence.
Data compiled by Flipside Crypto and uploaded on Wednesday by Proof Director of Research Punk9059 reveals a sharp rise in transactions on popular exchange OpenSea using Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) rather than regular ETH. This week, WETH trading increased significantly, crossing the 50% threshold as of late Wednesday afternoon.
WETH trades as a percentage of total OpenSea volume is above 50% for the first time today. The chart below is pretty wild.
Everyone accepting the bids that are out there.
This is up from 40% when I tweeted this chart earlier. pic.twitter.com/5Zo66UPLfF
— NFTstatistics.eth (@punk9059) November 9, 2022
WETH is required to bid on an NFT on OpenSea, therefore when that quantity increases, more NFT owners are likely to accept bids. The data implies that sellers are accepting lowball offers to swiftly unload their NFTs during the market chaos because bids are often below the market value for any NFT.
The BendDAO lending protocol, which enables users to obtain cryptocurrency loans by pledging valuable NFTs as security, is another factor connected to the struggling crypto market. The current bids for all 14 Bored Ape NFTs, which BendDAO is auctioning off from liquidated debts, are far below the market floor prices. This may indicate a dismal demand for the assets.
When BendDAO ran out of ETH in August and didn’t receive enough competitive offers to auction the NFTs confiscated from liquidated loans, it encountered a serious liquidity issue. The protocol’s users ultimately voted to lower the liquidation threshold in order to make it simpler for BendDAO to auction off NFTs for underwater loans.
