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4th Annual NFT.NYC Conference
Billboards display Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT art (Noam Galai/Getty Images)
Weird Money

Crypto’s boom is so big people are even kicking the tires on Bored Ape NFTs again

Just like last cycle, a bitcoin boom has sent more money back into the NFT market.

Jack Raines

On the Snacks Mix podcast last week, we had the pleasure of chatting with Nat Eliason, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur-turned-author of “Crypto Confidential,” to chat about the recent resurgence of bitcoin. During our conversation, he noted an interesting trend that happened during the last bull market (emphasis ours):

Once we hit peak mania, prices correct and retail money that bought the top gets burned, and then things start to get more competitive.

Don’t get me wrong, there is still a lot more money to be made at that point, but the total crypto market cap might go sideways for a year like it did in 2022. But a lot can happen in these sideways markets. That’s when NFTs got huge, and you had Olympus, and ConstitutionDAO, and these other crazy DeFi projects. After bitcoin and ethereum had come down from their peaks, people were chasing other opportunities.

Basically, once people had made their money on the “blue chip” cryptocurrencies, and that money was still in their crypto wallets, they looked for opportunities — hence the NFT and DAO boom. If history doesn’t repeat itself, it certainly rhymes. On Sunday, Cointelegraph noted that NFT weekly sales volume from November 11-17 had jumped 94% week over week, from $93 million to $181 million. And it’s not just volume that increased: prices of NFTs have been climbing, too. Floor prices for the “Bored Ape Yacht Club,” everyone’s favorite pixelated primates, jumped from ~10.5 ETH to 13.5 ETH over the last week as well.

I’m not going to declare that “NFTs are back,” but the recent bitcoin run certainly hasn’t hurt their prospects.

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Sui blockchain halts transactions for second day in a row

The sui blockchain is stalled again on early Friday, with the last transaction occurring more than two hours ago, data from blockchain explorer Suiscan shows.

“The Sui Core team is actively investigating. Updates and incident review will be shared as soon as they are available,” the team wrote on X.

The ongoing pause comes immediately after experiencing a halt the day before “due to a crash bug in the gas charging logic introduced by the 1.72 release,” the team said on Thursday.

SUI, the network’s native cryptocurrency, has dropped around 20% in the past seven days, according to CoinGecko.

crypto

SoFi continues to surge following launch of its stablecoin to 15 million customers

SoFi Technologies announced Wednesday that its 15 million members can now use its stablecoin, SoFiUSD, marking the first time a US national bank-issued stablecoin is available on a banking app, but the markets seem to have really taken notice Friday, sending shares up over 7% in early trading.

Options data as of 9:42 a.m. ET also shows a bullish tilt from traders, with a put/call ratio around 0.16 vs a 20-day average of 0.39.

SoFi’s move is the first step to integrate SoFiUSD into the firm’s broader ecosystem, with plans to allow members to convert the stablecoin into tokenized deposits and roll out SoFiUSD on centralized exchange Bullish.

The stablecoin is currently on ethereum and solana, but the firm aims to add more blockchains to the list.

“We believe we can combine the speed and versatility of the blockchain with the trust of a bank to improve how money moves around the world,” SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said in a statement. “People no longer have to choose between blockchain technology and regulated banking products.”

Since President Trump signed stablecoin legislation GENIUS Act in July last year, the market capitalization of stablecoins has increased nearly 24% to $320.8 billion, data from DefiLlama shows.

crypto

Ethereum drops to a 2-month low under $2,000

Ethereum has dropped 4% in the last 24 hours to trade as low as $1,967 on Thursday morning, a mark not seen since March.

Selling pressure is weighing on the token as “traders are actively opening short positions,” CryptoQuant Head of Research Julio Moreno told Sherwood News. “US spot demand for ETH has weakened, as seen by an extremely negative Coinbase price premium approaching levels not seen since February.”

The price action has spurred $237.2 million in liquidations, with the majority of them, $225.1 million, coming from long positions, data from CoinGlass shows. Elsewhere, ethereum ETFs have notched their longest outflow streak this year at 12 days, with Wednesday recording almost $67.2 million in outflows, per SoSoValue.

“ETH’s break below the psychologically important $2,000 level reflects a deterioration in near-term crypto risk sentiment rather than a collapse in Ethereum fundamentals,” according to Coinbridge cofounder and CIO Kelly Ye.

Ye said the drop under $2,000 was amplified by rising volatility and geopolitical tensions amid renewed US-Iran escalation and broader de-risking across high-beta assets.

Sentiment surrounding the cryptocurrency has also softened after David Hoffman, a known ethereum advocate, publicly disclosed offloading his entire ETH position and questioned whether the network’s growth translates to meaningful value accrual to ethereum as an asset, Ye pointed out.

“Still, ETH has continued to hold a broader pattern of higher lows since the April 2025 tariff-driven selloff near $1,500, with the February 2026 low around $1,800 now emerging as the next key level to watch,” Ye told Sherwood News.

“Importantly, on-chain activity has not shown significant deterioration, and Ethereum TVL [total value locked] measured in ETH terms has started trending higher again since May, suggesting underlying network usage remains relatively resilient despite weaker price action,” Ye added.

Some ethereum treasury firms have not stopped their strategy, such as Bit Digital, which announced on Thursday purchasing 8,568 ethereum tokens for $20 million, bringing its total holdings to 158,461.75 tokens.

Meanwhile, other altcoins are also in the red, with solana and dogecoin dropping over 3% in the last 24 hours.

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