NFTs are dead. 

At least that’s what everyone is saying and if you look at the data, the top 100 NFT projects on Ethereum have lost 44% in USD value from the last quarter, so the naysayers aren’t exactly wrong. 

However, despite market conditions, there’s still NFT trading activity (2 million unique traders in Q3) and people are still making money by buying and selling NFTs. 

This does not mean you should spend money you can’t afford to lose (this is not financial advice, and shouldn’t be construed as such) but it is fascinating to follow some of the flips in the space during bear market conditions. 

Bored Ape #2276 Purchased for 68.8 ETH and Sold 5 Days Later for 95 ETH 

Shout out to DrJones0305, who puts out weekly NFT Twitter threads, who called out this big flip: 

Source: OpenSea.io 

Bored Ape #2276 has been bought and sold six times since it was minted on May 1st, 2021 for the following amounts: 

• 10 ETH ($23,019.80) on 7/27/2021 

• 28.88 ETH ($78,718.79) on 8/4/2021

• 31 ETH ($101,881.50) on 8/20/2021 

• 183 ETH ($548,483.94) on 2/4/2022 

• 68.8 ETH ($91,799.84) on 9/18/2022

• 95 ETH ($125,125.45) on 9/24/2022 

Note: I broke down how you can check the USD value of an NFT sale at the time of that sale in 3 easy steps here.

On September 18th, an offer of $91,799.84 was accepted and the NFT was sold. 

5 days later, it was sold for $125,125.45, a $33,325.61 profit: 

Source: OpenSea.io

It goes without saying that someone took a massive risk to purchase an NFT for almost six figures, but it generated a 36% return on investment within 5 days. 

How Did Someone Earn Over $33,000 in Profit From Flipping a Bored Ape NFT In Just 5 Days?

According to Rarity.tools, Bored Ape #2276 is the 515th rarest NFT in the collection. 

The current floor price of Bored Ape Yacht Club on OpenSea is 84.43 ETH, with the best offer price of 77 ETH. 

According to Cryptoslam.io, over the past 7 days, Bored Ape Yacht Club sales volume was up nearly 90%, the floor price increased 13.79%, active wallets increased 17% and total owners ticked up slightly to 6,582. 

So, someone was able to buy one of the rarer Bored Ape NFTs for about 16 ETH less than the floor price, while sales activity was starting to pick up. 

The first thing to consider when analyzing trades and flips is that not everyone acts rationally. 

Sometimes people need liquidity (i.e. they just need some of their money back and fast, for whatever reason), and sometimes, it might be worth it to take a loss just to get some of the money back fast. 

I can only speculate since I haven’t talked to the seller or buyer, but over the last 90 days, sales volume has been down 33%, floor price dropped 10% and there were 52% fewer buyers. 

My guess is that the buyer watched sales volumes grow stagnant for a few months and put an offer on the asset below the floor price to see if the seller would bite at the chance of getting some liquidity. 

Perhaps the buyer never checked rarity, and maybe that doesn’t matter to them. I highly doubt it was an accidental acceptance of an offer, but nonetheless, the asset was sold well below floor price and re-priced to reflect the rarity of the NFT at a time when the sales volume of the project started picking back up. 

Closing Thoughts 

I think it is valuable to watch activity during a bear market to develop pattern recognition if the market were to pick up again in the future. 

Again, this is not financial advice, and reading this won’t make you an all-star NFT trader, but putting myself in the flipper’s shoes, I can see why this person struck on an opportunity: 

• Sales volume of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs dropped over the last 90 days, and surely some holders became antsy 

• Floor price does not mean instant liquidity, but offers do 

• You have nothing to lose putting in an offer below the floor price, let the seller decide to accept or not 

• Rarity is tricky — to some it may matter more or less, some people might not even check it 

If you’re thinking some luck was involved here, or perhaps this was a wash sale as an opportunity for the seller to take a loss, those could be valid points as well. 

But overall, stagnating sales is a scary thing and those who have money to spend without fear of losing at all can purchase some NFT assets to hold onto in case market sentiment changes. 

In this case, it happened extremely fast within 5 days.