Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Prices Plunge as Machi Big Brother Makes Major Moves

The price of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs saw turbulence over the weekend as Jeffrey Huang, also known as Machi Big Brother, initiated a a flurry of Bored Ape sales and then followed up with several purchases of NFTs from the collection.

In total, Huang sold over 50 Apes over the past couple of days, according to data from NFT marketplace Blur. In one transaction alone on Saturday, Huang cashed in 19 Apes at once for 651 Ethereum on Blur, worth around $1.2 million, as of this writing.

Viewed widely as one of the leading NFT collections, the floor price of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs has already faced pressure over the past several months, but the collection sank to its lowest point priced in Ethereum since November 2021 amid Huang’s moves.

For comparison, the floor price for Bored Ape NFTs peaked at around 152 Ethereum in April 2022. But the so-called “blue chip” NFT collection saw that figure recently skid to around 33 Ethereum or $62,000, according to NFT Price Floor.

NFTs are unique digital tokens tied to the ownership of an item, often digital art. And the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection is valued at over $737 million, second only to Crypto Punks in terms of market capitalization.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club collection rebounded somewhat on Sunday after Huang scooped up 14 Bored Apes, purchasing one NFT from the collection for as much as 41 Ethereum, or over $77,000. The cheapest Bored Ape currently costs around $74,000, an increase of 14% over the past day, according to NFT Price Floor.

Around the time he began accumulating Bored Apes on Sunday, Huang said on Twitter that the “best meme wins an ape,” attaching an image of himself holding a shotgun to be used as a template for creating memes. 

Huang’s high-profile Bored Ape trades come just over a week after pseudonymous blockchain sleuth ZachXBT disclosed he is being sued by Huang for defamation. 

The lawsuit concerns an investigative article posted by ZachXBT last year, where he accused Huang of embezzling tens of millions of dollars worth of Ethereum from a defunct crypto treasury management platform, which was co-founded by Huang.

ZachXBT has described the lawsuit as “baseless” and “an attempt to chill free speech,” raising over $1 million in donations to fund his legal defense, while Huang has maintained allegations in the article are false and that he was “unlawfully defamed.”