With the Blur marketplace set for a second airdrop soon, Nansen’s Andrew Thurman theorized that this major NFT dump could be a play to reap extra BLUR token rewards while also booking some profits.
According to data from Nansen, nonfungible token (NFT) whale Jeffrey Hwang — known colloquially as Machi Big Brother — dumped 1,010 tokens for a total of 11,680 Ether (ETH) or $18.6 million in the space of 48 hours.
In a Feb. 25 Twitter thread, Nansen’s Simian Psychometric Enhancement Technician Andrew Thurman highlighted the trading activity over the previous two days, and noted that it's “likely the largest NFT dump ever.”
The major selling event included 90 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs, 191 Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFTs and 308 Otherdeed NFTs to name a few.
In what's likely the largest NFT dump ever, in the past 48 hours Machi has sold 1,010 NFTs, including:
— Andrew T (@Blockanalia) February 24, 2023
- 90 BAYC for 5707 ETH
- 191 MAYC for 3091 ETH
- 112 Azuki for 1644 ETH
- 308 Otherdeed for 582 ETH
But he's not registering much profit for these collections. Why? pic.twitter.com/4NyMF3gzuy
Notably, however, Machi Big Brother (Machi) promptly bought back 991 NFTs following the dump, with Thurman theorizing that could be a play to either book some profits while also conducting “one big wash trade to generate huge Blur airdrop profits,” or a “pretty naked market manipulation. ”
Machi is reportedly one of the biggest receivers of the BLUR token airdrop from upstart NFT marketplace Blur, which recently ousted OpenSea from being the top-ranked NFT platform in terms of trading volume.
On Feb. 14, the project started dishing out its first round of airdrops to the community, with the amount of airdropped tokens depending on the user’s level of platform engagement and Ethereum-based NFT trading activity.
On Feb. 17, blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intel indicated that Machi had received 1.8 million BLUR tokens, and cashed it all out for $1.3 million.
Machi is currently not holding any $BLUR - like others, he sold it all.
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) February 16, 2023
In total, he received $1.3M for his 1.8M Blur tokens, selling at an average price of $0.707.
It took 38 separate transactions for him to completely sell his $BLUR! pic.twitter.com/nhJpGK1uFf
As such, Machi could be looking to score some fresh BLUR tokens in the next round by ramping up NFT trading activity, while other whales may be looking to do the same also.
Related: Blur founder Pacman puts the NFT marketplace war into perspective
Looking at the floor prices of top collections that Machi initially dumped, BAYC, MAYC and Otherdeed NFTs have seen their prices drop 7.77%, 9.2% and 8.16% in the past 24 hours, according to data from NFT Price Floor.
“One man's quest for an airdrop is wrecking some markets,” Thurman noted in a subsequent post.
FWIW my "partial cashout" theory doesn't seem to be panning out -- he hasn't sent anything to Binance in a while pic.twitter.com/FbqBsRzjHd
— Andrew T (@Blockanalia) February 25, 2023
At the time of writing, BLUR sits at $0.79 with the price declining by 17.7% over the past seven days, according to CoinGecko.
On Feb. 22, the Blur team tweeted that the project will soon airdrop $300 million worth of tokens in its second round, or “season two.”
