Rising NFT marketplace Blur held its anticipated BLUR token airdrop this afternoon, and some of the top traders snagged more than $1 million worth of tokens at the current value. In fact, the top trader snagged more than $1.9 million worth of the Ethereum-based governance tokens.
According to public blockchain data curated by Dune, the top claimant in the BLUR airdrop took home over 3.2 million BLUR tokens, valued at about $1.93 million based on the current price of about $0.60 per token via CoinGecko.
It’s not immediately clear who holds the Ethereum wallet that claimed that enormous stash of tokens, but it’s a relatively new wallet created less than three months ago. It has also been incredibly active in the NFT space, trading massive sums of Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Otherside NFTs in recent days.
A look at the trading activity from the wallet shows that the holder has been buying and selling loads of the same NFTs over and over again, suggesting wash trading or at least a coordinated effort to game the Blur trading model. The sale prices aren’t high enough to raise suspicion, but the assets are being flipped at such frequency to generate enormous trading volume.
Interestingly, a look at the wallets of the second-highest claimant (2.97M BLUR, or $1.8 million) and third-highest claimant (2.5M BLUR, or $1.5 million) show numerous interactions with the top wallet, including back-and-forth batch sales of various NFTs via Blur.
Again, it points to either wash trading from one person or group across multiple wallets, or a coordinated effort. As with the top wallet, it’s not immediately clear who owns these wallets—but they’re all intertwined in what appears to be a large-scale and successful attempt to manipulate the Blur airdrop, surely driving up Blur’s marketplace trading volume in the process.
Other top claimants in the Blur airdrop include well-known collectors and social media personalities, including the pseudonymous Machi Big Brother (almost 1.85 million BLUR, or $1.1 million worth), Keungz (610K BLUR, or $368,000 worth), and major Bored Ape Yacht Club trader Franklin (540K BLUR, or $326,000 worth).
Blur offered up 360 million BLUR tokens through the airdrop, with that circulating supply giving the token a current market cap around $217 million. It’s a relatively small chunk of the overall BLUR supply, however, which will apparently tally 3 billion BLUR once all tokens are released. Nearly 260 million of the airdropped tokens have been claimed so far, or about 72%.
BLUR shot as high as $5.02 per token when it first hit the market today, but fell sharply. It’s currently down 88% from that short-lived peak.
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