Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs were once the hottest digital property on Ethereum’s NFT market, but now Yuga Labs’ signature collection and other affiliated NFTs are setting new lows.
The current floor price for BAYC, which indicates who can buy it at the lowest price, is approximately 13 ETH, or $51,000. The last time it was this low was on August 18, 2021, when it was trading at 13.65 ETH, according to data from CoinGecko.
That means that today BAYC is a whopping 91.3% off the all-time high price floor of 153.7 ETH, which was posted on May 1, 2022.
Similarly, Yuga Labs spin-off collection Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) currently posts an all-time low reserve price of 2.18 ETH.
Another BAYC-themed collection, Otherdeeds, is trading at an all-time low price of 0.19 ETH. Otherdeeds represent title deeds for the sale of digital plots in the Bored Ape metaverse game Otherside.
When Otherdeeds launched in May 2022, it cost 305 ApeCoin to mint one. That was almost $6,000 at the time. Granted, Ethereum is up 50% since then, but even taking that into account, Otherdeed’s current floor price is only $746.
Move over Ethereum! Ordinals run forward
Ethereum NFTs like Bored Ape Yacht Club managed to monopolize the entire market during crypto’s bull run in 2021. That’s because pretty much everything was on Ethereum.
We now have exciting alternative NFT markets on Solana and Cardano, but none of Ethereum’s NFT competitors surpass its oldest rival: Bitcoin.
The Ordinals protocol allows data to be inscribed on individual satoshis. Satoshis are the lowest units of Bitcoin, such as cents to a dollar. This feature gives the network some additional functionality and has given network users the ability to store non-fungible and fungible tokens on Bitcoin and build dapps.
In early March 2024, Ordinals NFTs posted $168.5 million in sales over a seven-day period. They beat Ethereum NFTs, which posted $162 million in the same period.
Miners may also have to rely on Ordinals to cover a potential shortfall after Bitcoin’s halving on April 19, the date when their block rewards will be halved.
Bitcoin rewards will continue to halve every four years, so miners will have to generate revenue from Ordinals transaction fees. Ordinals’ activity currently accounts for about 20% of miners’ revenues.