Long-term holders of Azuki NFTs are selling the digital assets en masse following the Elementals decline.
Defined as holding on to the non-fungible token for more than a year, 132 long-term Azuki holders sold their NFTs during or after this week’s release of the new Elemental collection. That was an 817% spike in long-term holders selling their Azukis, according to crypto data provider Nansen.
Launched a few days ago, Elementals is a new NFT collection that belongs to the Azuki ecosystem, a blue-chip brand in the world of digital assets. The first 20 minutes of launch were reserved exclusively for owners of Azuki NFTs. An entire batch of 10,000 NFTs sold in about 15 minutes, generating $37.5 million in revenue. That was in addition to another 10,000 Elementals being sent out to existing Azuki members.
Due to the speed with which the new Elementals collection sold out, the general public never had a chance to purchase the Azuki ecosystem.
Beans sale
Holders of Beanz Official Non-fungible Tokens, a collection of 20,000 anthropomorphic bean NFTs that act as “sidekicks” to the human avatars in the main Azuki collection, were also able to purchase Elementals during the exclusive 20-minute window. Since then, Beanz non-fungible tokens have also been part of a major sell-off, as 89 incumbent owners have sold the digital asset since Elementals launched; a 155% increase in long-term Beanz holders unloading the NFTs.
“The significant selloff appears to be largely attributable to Blur’s lending platform,” said Brad Kay, research analyst at The Block Research. “Before the airdrop, Azuki and Beanz had 700 and 550 outstanding loans respectively. After the Elemental minting, which caused a sudden sell-off, more than 50% of the outstanding loans were liquidated/repaid. While values have recovered to pre-airdrop- levels, the substantial increase in supply may have catalyzed this cascading event.”
Data from long-term holders selling Azuki and Beanz NFTs. Image: Nansen
Elements of confusion
Some in the Azuki community lamented that the launch of Elementals failed to deliver on the promise of growing the ecosystem by adding new members. In addition, critics noted that the new NFT collection – teased for containing new attributes such as flowers of lightning, water, earth and fire – was too similar to Azuki’s original collection.
The Azuki team said they “missed the mark” with the Elemental drop and vowed to do better in the future.
The Azuki NFT Collection, a subsidiary of Los Angeles-based startup Chiru Labs, launched in January 2021. This week’s drop in Elementals caused Azuki’s trading volume to hit its highest level in more than a year, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard.