That viral post claiming "NFT is dead" flooded the feeds, but the market didn't collapse at all— the issue lies in liquidity, not how much Bieber lost.

The Amplification Effect of a Viral Post and the “NFTs Are Dead” Narrative

The Polymarket post about Justin Bieber’s Bored Ape being down 99% already has 800k+ views. It’s been mocked and reshared by countless accounts, effectively becoming the epitaph for the entire NFT market. This kind of spread is changing the narrative: if retail investors are losing this badly, institutions will only be more cautious. Once dollar liquidity tightens up, NFT-related assets are often the first to suffer. This lines up with Raoul Pal’s recent concerns about liquidity.

But the picture shown by on-chain data is completely different from the “crash” implied by the tweets:

• BAYC floor price is between 5.17-5.46 ETH (about $10.7k). Over the past 24 hours there have only been 4-6 trades, with total volume of 22-65 ETH;
• Bieber’s #2324 is valued at around $12k, and it basically matches its attributes and historical sale prices;
• After the tweet went viral, trading volume and activity didn’t show any unusual fluctuations;
• BAYC has about 5,600 holders (56% of total supply), and this number has basically not changed.

There’s a misunderstanding that needs correcting here: celebrity losses don’t mean “NFTs are dead.” What really locks up the market is structural liquidity shortfalls, not one person’s investment failure. More than 300 mocking quote tweets—including @WatcherGuru and @cryptorover—are focused on that 99% pullback, but that has no causal relationship to APE’s price action: ApeCoin has been down from above $13 to $0.086 since 2022, which has nothing to do with this post.

On the operational side, a few points need to be emphasized:

• Don’t use this post as a reason to bet on ApeCoin’s “news-driven trading” or a short squeeze.
• Even if the floor price is stable, the volume is extremely thin. That’s more like liquidity drying up plus a holiday effect—not panic selling.
• A stable holder count may be just an appearance; conviction is being lost. Without new incremental narratives or products (for example, Yuga Labs’ metaverse progress), rebounds are unlikely to last.

The table below lays out several mainstream stances in the market and my take:

Disagreements Under the Post and Overlooked Variables

The discussion mainly splits into two camps:

• Those mocking the losses: treating a single case as a death sentence for the entire sector;
• Those emphasizing IP value: for example, @vangoyaa points out that the person who originally sold the Ape to Bieber made away 500 ETH, and the asymmetric nature of the payoff is completely ignored.

A few additional facts:

• CoinGecko shows BAYC’s all-time high was 153.7 ETH; compared to the peak, it’s down about 97.5% currently, and it has decoupled from BTC’s rise;
• This event has no connection to ApeCoin on-chain at all; basing a short-term bet on this post is likely to be a trap;
• In the long run, the holders who can survive the liquidity drought—and builders who can actually monetize their IP and execute with application capability—are the ones with an edge.

A few conclusions:

• The market hasn’t crashed; liquidity is the dominant variable.
• The volume-price structure shows “stagnation with inflation pressure” characteristics: the floor is steady, but trades are scarce.
• Without a macro USD liquidity rebound, sector activity won’t recover in a trending way.

My take: you’re already late. Narrative hype has peaked, and there’s no new information. At this stage, the advantage goes to builders and long-term holders who can get through the liquidity vacuum period. Short-term traders have a very low win rate in this low-volume environment, and funds should wait until macro liquidity rebounds before considering entry.