Elon Musk appears to take a potshot at NFT by saying “dunno seems kinda fungible,” in a tweet on 4th May. The tech billionaire changed his Twitter profile picture to an image featuring various avatars from the Bored Ape non-fungible token collection.
Due to this, the token price of the digital project soared briefly. ApeCoin, the token launched by Bored Ape creators Yuga Labs, surged 19% in an hour at around 8 a.m. ET to a daily high of $17.5 following Musk’s profile image change.
The price has since retraced back and at press time trading at about $15.44. It’s not known exactly if Musk actually bought a Bored Ape NFT. Nevertheless, the billionaire liked a tweet from Michael Bouhanna, an executive at auction house Sotheby’s.
Bouhanna reacted to his new profile pic and offered to send him”the original file minted with the buyer’s approval.”
Looks like Musk might have simply right-clicked and saved the picture to make it his profile image. Or this could mean something else. Who Knows! given that the celebratory “Meme Lord” is well known for his Twitter musings.
The tweet comes at a time when BAYC’S Otherdeeds Nft sparked a buying frenzy last weekend that led to skyrocketing gas fees on Ethereum.
NFTs are losing their sheen?
Yuga Labs, the creator of the popular Bored Apes Yacht Club collections, netted roughly $320 million on Saturday from the launch, making it the biggest sale of its kind. Each buyer paid $5,800 per NFT, plus as much as $6,000 in transaction costs or “gas fees”
Once the initial euphoria subsided, prices dropped like hot potato! prompting backlash from the Twitter community, with some accusing the sale of being botched.
According to DappRadar, trading volume for Otherdeeds shed by 68% on Tuesday from a day earlier, despite it being the most traded NFT collection over a 24-hour window.
The NFT market is known for its extreme volatility and has struggled to maintain momentum in secondary markets, and sometimes, in primary markets as well.
One in three NFT collections, on average, have little to no trading activity, according to blockchain analytics firm Nansen. Another third is trading below the amount it cost issuers to mint the tokens.