Justin Bieber Takes a Bath on $1.2M BAYC NFT, Floor Price Falls

Pop icon Justin Bieber might have incurred a sizeable loss after he forayed into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with the purchase of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT. His digital collectible’s value has dropped by about 95% today, costing him a startling loss of approximately $1.2 million.

Justin Bieber paid $1.3 million for a Bored Ape NFT in January 2022. The NFT’s worth has sharply declined, falling to around $60,000.

Effective Loss for Justin Bieber Might Be Nil

While Justin Bieber has lost close to $1.2 million on the NFT capital, the effective loss is allegedly nil. It has been speculated that he may have received the BAYC NFT for free in exchange for promoting BAYC on social media.

Several Twitter users have speculated that Justin Bieber’s wallet received a transfer of 400 ETH (about equivalent to $1.2 million at the time) from a wallet linked to MoonPay and Yuga Labs.

The parties did not issue a statement confirming this, even though the NFT company that produced the well-known collection created waves for delivering NFTs to celebrities in the past.

By December last year, both businesses were named defendants in a lawsuit that accused them of using celebrity endorsements in misleading promotions.

Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Collection a ‘Blue Chip’

Leaving aside the circumstances around Bieber’s BAYC acquisition, the value of the NFT has experienced a significant decline, now being worth around $50,000.

According to NFT Floor Price, the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection has had a volume of 27,775 ETH in the past week. It ranked second with a market capitalization of 300,000 ETH.

The current price floor for Bored Ape Yacht Club is 30.3 ETH. The collection has a 24-hour trading volume of 3,500 ETH across 118 sales.

State of the Broader NFT Market

The decline in Bieber’s NFT investment is not an isolated incident. While the crypto market is recovering slowly, the floor prices of several top NFT collections have experienced drops.

Within the Azuki ecosystem, NFT collections have been particularly affected. Over the weekend, Azuki, Alemental, and Azuki Elemental Beanz collections lost 20%.

SnowGenesis, an NFT lending and borrowing platform, also reported a record-breaking liquidation of over 1,200 NFTs in the past three days. According to crypto journalist Colin Wu, it was the biggest-ever liquidation of NFTs. This notably included around 3% of all Beanz NFTs.

As the NFT market experiences a downturn, blue-chip NFTs could soon be stabilizing. CryptoPunks and Mutant Ape Yacht Club have seen gains on the daily charts.