NFT Traders Showcase Their Blur Airdrops

In a much-anticipated event, the NFT marketplace Blur held its BLUR token airdrop this afternoon, with top traders seizing the opportunity to claim over $1 million worth of tokens at current market value. The biggest winner of the airdrop managed to claim over $1.9 million worth of Ethereum-based governance tokens.

Public blockchain data, curated by Dune, showed that the top claimant for the BLUR airdrop secured more than 3.2 million BLUR tokens, valued at approximately $1.93 million based on the current price of about $0.60 per token via CoinGecko.

It remains unclear who owns the Ethereum wallet that claimed the massive stash of tokens. However, the wallet is relatively new, having been created less than three months ago, and has been highly active in the NFT space, trading massive sums of Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Otherside NFTs in recent days.

A closer look at the trading activity of the wallet reveals that the holder has been buying and selling loads of the same NFTs repeatedly, suggesting wash trading or a coordinated effort to game the Blur trading model. The assets are being flipped at such frequency to generate an enormous trading volume, although the sale prices are not high enough to raise suspicion.

The second and third-highest claimants of the BLUR airdrop, who respectively claimed 2.97 million BLUR ($1.8 million) and 2.5 million BLUR ($1.5 million), showed numerous interactions with the top wallet, including back-and-forth batch sales of various NFTs via Blur. This either points to wash trading from one person or group across multiple wallets, or a coordinated effort to manipulate the Blur airdrop, driving up Blur’s marketplace trading volume.

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), were among the other top claimants in the Blur airdrop.

Blur offered 360 million BLUR tokens through the airdrop, with that circulating supply giving the token a current market cap of around $217 million. However, this is only a relatively small fraction of the overall BLUR supply, which will eventually tally to 3 billion BLUR once all tokens are released. So far, nearly 260 million of the airdropped tokens have been claimed, or about 72%.

When BLUR first hit the market today, it shot as high as $5.02 per token but fell sharply, currently down 88% from that short-lived peak. The successful BLUR token airdrop was an exciting event, with top traders and personalities scrambling to claim their share of the Ethereum-based governance tokens.