In a market that has been steadily declining, users have little desire to trade assets like NFTs, which are relatively illiquid and have a single use. According to data analysis, over 80% of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks have not been sold even once in 2023, and the NFT market this year is extremely illiquid. At a time when the market is already in trouble, top projects like Azuki have crashed and burned, completely eroding users’ patience and motivation for holding NFTs and plunging the entire market into a slump.
The entire NFT market lost 30% of its total market value in just two weeks. NFT OG blue chip Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks were hit hard. BAYC, which once had a floor price of 146 ETH, plummeted to below 30 ETH, leaving users to lament, “I haven’t seen a monkey this cheap in a long time.” CryptoPunks, which had always been “unfazed,” also fell 20% due to the missteps of Azuki, and its floor price nearly broke through 40 ETH.
Recently, Justin Bieber spent 500 ETH (about $1.31 million) to buy BAYC #3001 in January 2022, which is now worth less than $60,000, leaving him with a loss of more than a million dollars.
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Yesterday, BAYC #3953, which ranks second in rarity according to rarity.tools data, sold for only 200 ETH (about $372,000), far below the peak price of rare NFTs in the series. It is worth noting that in October 2021, BAYC #8817, which ranked 16th in rarity, sold for $3.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction, becoming the most expensive BAYC ever sold.
In October 2021, BAYC #8817 sold for $3.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction, and the buyer was an anonymous mystery buyer. This is also the most expensive BAYC ever sold.
Looking back two years ago, 2021, which was jokingly referred to as the “year of NFTs,” witnessed not only the rise of countless projects, but also the total market value of the NFT market increase nearly 3,000 times from 168,000 ETH to a high of 5.06 million at the end of the year. Even at a time when the pandemic was casting a gray panic over the world, “Non-Fungible Token” became Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2021. Subsequently, many well-known celebrities and institutions at home and abroad, such as Curry and JJ Lin, also bought into the Web3 world with high-priced BAYC and CryptoPunks, among other veteran NFTs.
In the NFT frenzy of 2021, can the stars who rushed into the sea think of such a grand and innovative concept falling into the dust just two years later? This article will take stock of those celebrities who have held or still hold well-known NFT projects and are well-known in China, and briefly calculate how much they have lost in this market that has fallen into an ice hole. “Duosun.gif”
JJ Lin
JJ Lin is one of the celebrities who boarded the Web3 train in the “NFT Year”. In March 2022, JJ Lin posted a wallet photo with the BAYC #3914 pattern on his Twitter and thanked his buddy Huang Licheng for giving him the NFT.
According to the transaction history, BAYC #3914 was bought by Huang Licheng for 2.59 ETH and then gifted to JJ Lin. According to OpenSea’s tracking of JJ Lin’s wallet address, he had already started buying NFTs in 2021. He even bought CryptoPunks #8601 for 125 ETH in 2021, at a time when ETH was at a historical high of $4,742. This small picture was worth nearly $600,000 at the time, but now in this disillusioned market, #8601 has shrunk to only $84,000. JJ Lin’s wallet holding this NFT has evaporated assets worth as much as $500,000.
As of now, JJ Lin has a total of 111 digital collections, including BAYC, CryptoPunks, Azuki, Azuki Elemental, and other projects.
In the turmoil of the past month, JJ Lin’s NFT portfolio value has dropped from 152.71 ETH to 91.12 ETH, with a cumulative loss of 40%. It is worth mentioning that when the reputation of Azuki Elementals was dragged to the ground by the entire community, JJ Lin still minted six NFTs from the series on June 30th. He is indeed a man who has held 23 domestic concerts this year, and he is really capricious.
Jay Chou
“Pop” is the word that often comes up when it comes to JJ Lin and Jay Chou for post-90s and post-00s. The buddy who knows this rule well, in order to give everyone a chance, of course, sends one monkey to each person. In April 2022, Jay Chou posted on his Instagram that the BAYC #3738 given to him by his buddy was stolen by a phishing website, and this NFT was subsequently sold for 130 WETH (about US$440,000), 155 WETH (about US$500,000), and 164.69 WETH (about US$575,500) respectively. Before that, the highest price this NFT had ever sold for was 15 ETH when the buddy bought it, but after staying in Jay Chou’s wallet for three months, its value increased tenfold. The theft of the NFT can be said to have indirectly caused Jay Chou to lose $500,000. But for him, this is just a small amount compared to the sales of “Mojito” in 2020.
Jay Chou, who has always loved to keep up with fashion, has established his own fashion brand and boosted his friend’s milk tea shop. It makes sense for him to invest in NFT. Unlike JJ Lin, Jay Chou did not become an “NFT shopping fanatic”, but once again teamed up with PHANTACi, his fashion brand, to create the NFT project Phanta Bear, which is based on himself as the creative prototype.
After all, it is “Jay Chou’s bear”. On the day Phanta Bear went online, there were 4,944 holders, and the project’s total market value reached its peak a week later, with a highest market value of 51,999.99 ETH.
Unlike Jay Chou’s long-term dominance in pop music for more than 20 years, Phanta Bear finally returned to calm after nearly two months of issuance due to its constant total quantity. In the recent turbulent NFT market, the floor price of Phanta Bear has also dropped from its highest point of 7.3 ETH to the current 0.11 ETH. It’s just a deep bear curse, even Jay Chou can’t change it.
Xu Jinglei
She is even more heavyweight.
Xu Jinglei is one of the early players in NFT. In 2021, Xu Jinglei changed her Ins avatar to the Animetas series NFT. Friends who were watching the show quickly dug up Xu Jinglei’s OpenSea account from her avatar. According to her holding records, Xu Jinglei already had 400+ collections in 2022, and now she has more than 1,300, including BAYC, MAYC, DeFi Apes, Azuki, 6Sixty6 and other series.
If only BAYC is counted and the gifting situation is not considered, Xu Jinglei herself has purchased BAYC five times. Moreover, judging from her high buy-in of 95 ETH to purchase BAYC #1505 on February 16 this year, it seems that Xu Jinglei is a player who only goes all-in when she sees the right opportunity. Based on the current market floor price and ETH/USD ratio, these five monkeys alone have cost Xu Jinglei more than $220,000 in losses.
Continuing to hold and continue to gamble on the Azuki, 6Sixty6 and other series, Xu Jing Lei has probably lost more than $1 million. Unlike Jay Chou and JJ Lin’s accounts, most of the new series of NFTs now come from others’ transfers, Xu Jing Lei’s account continues to be active in the trading market. According to NFTGO data, Xu Jing Lei’s account alone has a gas used for trading of 715.67 ETH, equivalent to nearly $1.54 million. However, in the continuously declining market, active trading cannot reverse the continuous loss of portfolio value. The volatility of the past week has reduced Xu Jing Lei’s collection portfolio value from 715.59 ETH to 628.85 ETH. However, Xu Jing Lei seems to really love “small pictures”, and has still purchased 40 new collections in the past week without being affected by the market sentiment.
It’s not that all the celebrities who invested in NFT projects are like Xu Jing Lei who has a “pure love” for small pictures. Yuen Man Lok, who is also an early NFT player, collects collections mainly through transfers from others. Taking CryptoPunks as an example, of the 8 NFTs in Yuen Man Lok’s current account in this series, only two were purchased by himself (although they were purchased at high prices of 70 ETH and 85 ETH respectively). If only counting these two pixelated characters, Yuen Man Lok has lost $150,000.
With “Jay Chou Bear” being popular in early 2022, Yuen Man Lok also took advantage of the market trend and launched his own NFT brand “ZombieClub Token” after half a year of preparation. It was sold out immediately within two minutes of the launch, directly occupying the first place in the OpenSea platform transactions at that time, and set a record of being sold out in only 2 hours and 42 minutes. The platform-wide sales of ZombieClub at that time was as high as HKD 35 million, equivalent to $4.48 million. Wow, it turns out that he has to triple the losses of these years to catch up with the sales at that time.
What sets Yuen Man Lok apart from other celebrities is that his collection of small pictures seems to be not really simple for “collection” or issuing his own NFT brand. In 2021, Yuen Man Lok collaborated with the world-renowned auction house Christie’s to hold an event called “No Time Like Present”, and sold collections such as CryptoPunks, BAYC, and Meebits, ultimately achieving a turnover of HKD 120 million, equivalent to $15.6 million. It is worth noting that a year later, Christie’s auction house sold a total of 87 NFTs, with a total price of only $5.9 million.
It seems that Louis Koo might have had some arbitrage intentions when auctioning off his collections and creating his own NFT brand, as he made nearly $20 million from it at the time. Although the title says “loss” status, the more it is written, the more it seems that he didn’t actually lose anything. Considering the current freezing point of the NFT market, even if all 382 collections that Louis Koo currently holds go to zero, his previous income may be enough to cover any losses caused by extreme market conditions. One wonders if Louis Koo, who treats NFTs as an investment, is now grateful for the choices he made at the market’s peak?
Chen Ou
On May 1, 2022, Chen Ou, chairman of the Hong Kong-listed company Meitu Group, bought a “Bored Ape Yacht Club” NFT. He posted on his social media “I was Fomoed and couldn’t resist buying Bored Ape Yacht Club #8848.”
Let’s take a look at Chen Ou’s wallet address. According to OpenSea data, Chen Ou currently holds four “Bored Ape Yacht Club” NFTs, and the cheapest price for these four apes is 87 ETH, or about $203,000. Of the four NFTs, Chen Ou himself purchased two – Bored Ape Yacht Club #8848, which he bought on May 1 for 187 ETH, or about $560,000, and Bored Ape Yacht Club #8265, which he bought on May 13 for 133.95 ETH, or about $310,000. Based on the current floor price and ETH/USD exchange rate, the value of these two Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs is now only worth $56,000, and this “coin trading veteran’s” “fear and anxiety” is indeed reasonable, as he has lost $810,000 on these two apes alone.
“Bored Ape Yacht Club” was not Chen Ou’s first foray into NFTs. In 2021, Chen Ou traded CryptoPunks, and the average price of the five CryptoPunks he held in his address was around 110 ETH. In August 2021, Chen Ou bought CryptoPunk #2558 for 125 ETH, when the market price was around $400,000. Today, it is worth only $80,000, and Chen’s investment has evaporated by 80% out of nowhere.
Just three small pictures caused this experienced mall expert to lose more than $1.1 million. I don’t know if Mr. Cai can resist the temptation and stop rushing around.
On April 30, 2022, according to OpenSea data, an address named “allenzhu.eth” bought “BAYC # 9279” with a price of 170 ETH (about 500,000 US dollars), and Allen Zhu, a managing partner of GGV Capital, has the same English name. At the same time, Zhu Xiaohu’s latest WeChat avatar has also been updated to the “BAYC # 9279” avatar.
OpenSea shows that BAYC # 9279 has been transferred several times and is now in a wallet account without even a name. Considering that Zhu Xiaohu’s most recent WeChat Moments screenshot still uses BAYC # 9279, we still believe that this NFT belongs to Zhu Xiaohu’s personal account. And this account is even more remarkable, holding a total of 523 NFTs, all transferred from other addresses, and all-in on BAYC, MAYC, and BACK, and even holding 187 bored apes.
These 187 NFTs are now worth “only” 5760 ETH (about 10.938 million US dollars), a total value evaporated by 80% compared to the heyday of BAYC, which had 146 ETH.
As for the wallet that Zhu Xiaohu used to buy #9279 at the time, it now only has NFTs from six projects, including Tatols NFT, WomenUnite Cold, and Life Beyond Origin Collection. Unlike his successful bets on Didi and Ele.me in the real world, four of the six NFT series he still holds have gone to zero, and the remaining two are currently worth only 0.188 ETH (about 357 US dollars) and 0.3 MATIC (about 0.201 US dollars), respectively.
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