“Eminem’s down bad,” Jason Yanowitz jokes upon hearing rumors that the famed performer finally let go of his Bored Ape.

A recent tweet — viewed nearly two million times — correctly stated that Bored Ape #5099 had recently been sold.

But Eminem’s Bored Ape isn’t #5099. 

It’s #9055, once purchased for 123.45 ether (ETH) or approximately $450,000. 

The tokenized cartoon remains comfortably in place, perhaps forgotten, but definitely not dumped by the rapper’s paper hands.

The thing about blockchain is it’s pretty easy to browse through transactions and profiles to find out the truth. And the truth is, even though Eminem hasn’t capitulated, NFTs are not doing so hot at the moment. 

The floor price on “blue chip” NFTs such as CryptoPunks and Bored Apes has steadily fallen while most NFTs have fared quite a bit worse, plummeting into irrelevance.

But that trend could offer some positive opportunities, Michael Anderson says.

The co-founder of Framework Ventures spoke to Blockworks on the Bell Curve podcast (Spotify/Apple) about contrarian input he recently received from a fund manager, stating, “It might be the right time to start buying Punks.”

Fellow co-founder Vance Spencer rolls his eyes and smirks upon hearing the suggestion.

Anderson continues, despite the uncomfortable laughter. “We were also talking with another manager in the space,” he says, “and one of their pretty strong theses — and I think they’ve already been deploying into it — is buying NFTs.”

“There’s an element here where it gets so low and potentially attractive that it might become a good investment category.”

Buying ain’t easy in a bear market

But the depressing reality of a bear market makes it difficult to pull the buying trigger. Mike Ippolito asks fellow podcast co-host Yanowitz, “Remember when you and I said we were definitely gonna buy Punks when they went down?” 

Neither has bought one yet.

Novel NFT marketplace models changed the Punks game, Spencer explains. “Blur farmed the farmers” he says, when “someone on March 17 sold 800 Punks into Blur bidding liquidity at once.”

Farmers were paid in Blur points for bidding on NFTs, Spencer says. “Meanwhile, the people who were selling NFTs were actually the biggest net beneficiaries.”

“You have this two-sided liquidity that has never happened before,” he says.

The biggest winners of the Blur binge, Spencer says, were the sellers and the protocol itself as it lapped up profits from artificial bid liquidity. The buyers, he says, were the losers, holding bags of devalued assets.

“When the market changes that dramatically in terms of volume and liquidity, I at least want to wait to re-underwrite things.”

Ippolito compares the Blur phenomenon to a low-liquidity DeFi event that once took place on SushiSwap. “The incentives were so strong on Sushi,” he explains, “that they pulled so much liquidity to one place.”

“If you held these illiquid DeFi coins, your entire incentive was to sell.”

“A similar comparison could be made to Blur.”

In the middle of the curve

“You might think something is super bullish because you’re pulling a bunch of liquidity to one venue,” Ippolito explains, but in reality,  “you’re incentivizing everyone to dump at the same time,” he says. 

Spencer is not convinced of Anderson’s time-to-shop-for-NFTs thesis. “Maybe we’re just too right and left curve simultaneously to be part of this new generation of degens.”

“But wouldn’t that put us mid-curve?” Anderson counters.

“Right in the middle of the bell curve,” Ippolito quips.

“It’s worked well so far,” Spencer concedes.

The current best offer on Eminem’s Bored Ape #9055? 35 wrapped ether, which translates to about $67,000.

Perhaps Marshall should follow the probability curve and hang on a little while longer.

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