BAYC Struggles to Survive the Mass NFT Decline As Floor Prices Plummet

The non-fungible token (NFT) market has been plunging along with the rest of the cryptocurrency market. Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC), the largest NFT collection by market capitalization, has seen its floor price—the minimum price a piece in the collection sells for—fall 20% in the past week.

The sharp plunge has seen the collection’s pieces on NFT lending platforms come within the risk of liquidation. According to data pointed out by crypto journalist Colin Wu, the floor price of some BAYC pieces in the NFT marketplace Blur is below 50 ETH.

Similarly, Wu notes that due to this, there are currently 31 BAYCs in liquidations auctions in BendDAO, a decentralized peer-to-pool-based NFT liquidity protocol for NFT lending and borrowing.

“The floor price of BAYC has dropped by more than 20% in the past week, and the floor price of some BAYC in Blur has been lower than 50 ETH. There are currently 31 BAYCs in liquidation auctions in BendDAO due to the sharp drop in floor prices,” Wu wrote in a tweet. 

BAYC has not been the only blue-chip NFT collection that has been struggling, more so, especially since the FTX exchange fallout. Data from the NFT market analysis platform Dappradar shows that the floor prices of other top collections have also nosedived in the last seven days.

Collections including CryptoPunks, Mutant Apes Yacht Club (MAYC), Other deeds for OtherSide, and God’s Unchained have plunged 15%, 31%, 37%, and 14%, respectively, in the last week. This cross-market puts a lot of NFT holders at risk of massive losses.

However, the market maintains some level of bullish optimism. The floor price plunge has also been marked by an increase in sales volume across the collections, except for God’s Unchained, which saw a 29% plunge in volume.

The NFT market and FTX collapse

The FTX implosion has continued to rock the entire crypto market. Notably, the BAYC floor price plunge began to take full force after revelations emerged that Yuga Labs, the owner of the rights to the cartoon ape NFTs, was affiliated with FTX and may have lost funds in the collapse.

According to NFTGo, Yuga Labs held the BAYC treasury and over 18,000 ETH royalties on BlockFolio, which FTX previously acquired. However, Yuga Labs has clarified that it was able to escape the funds being lost by a whisker as it had moved the funds to Coinbase Custody just the week before.