Collector sells $18 million in NFTs on blur – then buys some back
Machi is selling 1,000 boring monkeys, mutant monkeys, and other NFTs this wild weekend
An NFT collector rampaged through the market over the weekend in a series of trades that sent investors reeling.
Machi, a major collector, sold 1,010 award-winning NFTs in just 48 hours on Blur, the newly crowned top NFT marketplace by volume, according to Nansen’s Andrew Thurman. The sale included 90 Bored Ape Yacht Clubs, 191 Mutant Ape Yacht Clubs, 112 Azukis and 308 Otherdeeds for 11,024 ETH ($18M).
NFT Dump
Jpegjohny from NFT Alpha Call described trades as “the biggest NFT dump ever.”
Thurman said Machi then turned around and bought back 57 BAYC, 190 MAYC, 11 Azukis and 285 Otherdeeds for 8,479 ETH ($13.9 million).
Floor prices for most of the collections Machi unloaded had only single-digit losses for the week, with BAYC down 4% and MAYC down 6.4%, according to NFT Price Floor. Otherdeeds bucked the trend to rise 15% over the same period.
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“In the last 48 hours, NFT degen Machi sold 1,010 NFTs for $18.6 million,” Andrew Steinwold of the metaverse-focused investment firm Sfermion, told his 73,000 followers. “TOTAL NFT trading volume for 2019 was ~$8M. We’ve come a long way. The NFT market will only get more liquid, with lower fees, and much much bigger from here.”
Takes a profit
Machi’s sale came after OSF and Mando, a pair of high-profile NFT collectors, made headlines in the NFT community for “take profit” by unloading 71 BAYC, 11 MAYC and seven Azuki, among other NFTs, on February 22.
Mando and OSF executed their sell orders to bids Machi previously placed for around 77 ETH each, according to NFT statistics. Beeple, the popular digital artist and NFT adopter, parodied the event with an artwork titled “SYNTHETIC MONKEYS” on Twitter.
Many of Machi’s recent BAYC trades were executed for approximately 59 ETH each, suggesting that the collector may incur significant losses on the sale.
Blockchain speculators are speculating about the motivation behind Machi’s trades, despite the collector posts that he “carried the costs of decentralized OSF and Mando’s monkeys”.
– I did it for the club. You’re welcome,” he added.
Thurman speculated that Machi could lock in some profits while generating significant volume on the platform to secure a significant airdrop allocation from Blur. He also suggested the trades could involve “quite bare-bones market manipulation”, saying Machi’s selling could panic the markets and create opportunities for the trader to buy back at lower prices.
Blur Airdrop
HashBastardsNFT, a social media influencer, noted that Machi and fellow BAYC whale, Franklinisbored, have been trading Bored Apes between each other, presumably to boost trade volume for Blur’s airdrop.
Liam Herbst, an NFT analyst, tweeted that whales who want to wash-trade NFTs on Blur, “meep 0.5% in fees for each flip”. He warned that prices for top collections could fall if the marketplace’s top traders decide to stop executing the strategy and withdraw their bids from the market.
“A whale may decide that the risk of losing $ on NFTs exceeds the benefit of Blur points, and so they’ll dump their sack on other farmers,” Herbst said. “These farmers are likely to do the same, causing a cascade of bids being accepted and listings being undercut.”
