Original title: Some NFTs sold for millions — What are they worth today?
Original author: Robert D. Knight
Original source: https://cointelegraph.com
Compiled by: Mars Finance, Daisy
Investors who bought NFTs a few years ago may regret their decision.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are no longer as popular as they once were.
At the height of the NFT craze, it seemed as if the entire world was caught up in the digital art craze.
NFT collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes sparked a cultural trend that gained a lot of attention from 2021 to 2022. Celebrities like Justin Bieber, LeBron James, Tony Hawk, and Madonna purchased these artworks, sparking a series of headlines in mainstream media.
Snoop Dogg and Eminem even performed at the MTV Video Music Awards as the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
In January 2022, American socialite Paris Hilton talked about her love for NFTs with Jimmy Fallon on "The Tonight Show".
A few months later, the market peaked in May 2022, with a market cap of $526 billion. Today, the total value of the market is nearly $18 billion, a 97% drop. So, what are those NFT investments doing now?
CryptoPunk #5822
CryptoPunks is one of the largest and most well-known NFT series ever created. Launched by Larva Labs on the Ethereum blockchain in 2017, the series of 10,000 24x24 pixel “punk” characters helped fuel the rise of the crypto art movement.
In 2021, Christie's London auction house auctioned a batch of nine CryptoPunks for $16.9 million. According to Christie's, the CryptoPunk series was inspired by the London punk scene, Blade Runner, and William Gibson's 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer.
This is not CryptoPunk #5822, it is only a JPEG. Source: CryptoPunks
On February 12, 2022, CryptoPunk#5822was sold for 8,000 ETH or $23.7 million. The buyer was Deepak Thapliyal, CEO of blockchain banking company Chain. Just one month later, Thapliyal rejected an offer for 10,000 ETH, which would have given him an immediate profit of $2 million.
CryptoPunk#5822is one of only nine Alien CryptoPunks ever created. Another Alien CryptoPunk#635sold for 4,000 ETH or $12.4 million in April 2024, while Alien CryptoPunk#3100sold for 4,500 ETH in March 2024. These sales suggest that Thapliyal’s investment has roughly halved in value in just two years.
While interest in CryptoPunks may have waned, interest in Ether has not. In February 2022, 8,000 ETH would be worth just $23.7 million. Today, 8,000 ETH would be worth $26.6 million.
EtherRock #93
Launched in 2017, EtherRock is a collection of 100 "pet rocks" based on a free clipart image. All the stones in the EtherRock collection are the same size and shape, but vary in color. Most stones are gray or brown, but the rarest type of EtherRock is blue.
On November 2, 2021, EtherRock#93— a plain grey rock — sold for 420 ETH. What motivated the buyer to pay a whopping $1.8 million for this simple JPEG? The amount of ether paid may provide some clues.
All EtherRocks are more or less similar. Source: EtherRock
All EtherRocks are almost similar. Today, one EtherRock trades at around 200 ETH, which is about $750,000-800,000, about $1 million less than in 2021.
That’s a lot of money down the drain.
Bored Ape #8817
It’s hard to imagine a single NFT collection that did more to promote the industry to the world than Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Bored Apes are all the rage in the 2021 craze. They're practically everywhere. Collectors include sports stars, musicians and business leaders like "Shark Tank's" Mark Cuban. Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow even owns one. DJ and music producer Steve Aoki has collected at least 12, though he's since whittled the number down to seven.
On October 26, 2021, Sotheby's announced the sale of Bored Ape#8817for a record $3.4 million. Its main selling point is its golden hair, a feature found in less than 1% of all Bored Apes.
Bored Ape#8817sold for .4 million. Source: Southeby’s Metaverse
Other golden apes sold for similar prices during the same period. Bored Ape #3749, “The Captain,” sold for $2.9 million in September 2021, while Bored Ape#232sold for $2.9 million, or 1,080 ETH. Its owner, Thapliyal, later sold the ape for 800 ETH — a loss of 280 ETH, or $730,000 at current Ethereum prices.
On February 12, 2024, the gold Bored Ape#1726sold for just 275 ETH, or $665,000. If this transaction reflects the value of other gold apes, many investors could be facing millions of dollars in unrealized losses.
Some are worse
Investors who invested in less well-known projects may lose more. In September 2023, a report from dappGambl showed that of the 73,257 NFT series it identified, 69,795 had a market value of 0 ETH.
DappGambl concluded that 95% of NFT holders have zero investment value.
However, the "damaged" collectors may argue that it is one-sided to focus only on the price of NFT. After all, art is for the soul, not just for price speculation. From a technical perspective, the blockchain technology that supports NFT has also proven to be reliable.
You can take away an NFT collector’s millions of dollars, but you can never take away their digital certificate of ownership, immutably recorded on the blockchain, proving that the JPEG you right-clicked and saved to your hard drive didn’t really belong to you.