Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs experienced a volatile weekend as Jeffrey Huang, known as Machi Big Brother, triggered a flurry of sales and subsequent purchases within the collection.
Over the past few days, Huang managed to sell more than 50 Apes, as reported by NFT marketplace Blur. Notably, on Saturday, he cashed in 19 Apes in a single transaction on Blur, earning 651 Ethereum, equivalent to approximately $1.2 million at the time of writing.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, highly regarded within the NFT space, had already faced downward pressure on their floor price in recent months. However, Huang’s actions caused the collection to hit its lowest point in terms of Ethereum value since November 2021.
To put this into perspective, the floor price of Bored Ape NFTs reached its peak around 152 Ethereum in April 2022. Yet, as reported by NFT Price Floor, this “blue chip” NFT collection recently dropped to approximately 33 Ethereum or $62,000.
NFTs are distinct digital tokens representing ownership of various items, often including digital artwork. The Bored Ape Yacht Club collection is currently valued at over $737 million, making it the second most valuable collection in terms of market capitalization, trailing only Crypto Punks.
Following Huang’s trading activities, the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection experienced a partial recovery on Sunday. Huang acquired 14 Bored Apes, with one NFT from the collection fetching as much as 41 Ethereum or over $77,000. As per NFT Price Floor, the cheapest Bored Ape is currently priced at around $74,000, reflecting a 14% increase over the past day.
Coinciding with Huang’s acquisition of Bored Apes on Sunday, he took to Twitter to announce that the “best meme wins an ape,” sharing an image of himself holding a shotgun as a meme template.
Huang’s high-profile Bored Ape trades have emerged shortly after blockchain investigator ZachXBT, known for his pseudonymous identity, revealed that he is facing a defamation lawsuit filed by Huang. The lawsuit stems from an investigative article published by ZachXBT last year, in which he accused Huang of embezzling tens of millions of dollars worth of Ethereum from a now-defunct crypto treasury management platform, co-founded by Huang.
ZachXBT has deemed the lawsuit as unfounded and an attempt to stifle freedom of speech. He has managed to raise over $1 million in donations to support his legal defense. On the other hand, Huang maintains that the allegations in the article are false and that he has been unjustly defamed.
