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$300,000 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Mistakenly Sold for $3,000
If you’ve been keeping an eye on the NFT market of late, you know how prestigious the Bored Ape Yacht Club really is. The NFT collection has become a major drawcard in the digital art world, accumulating serious interest and a boatload of cash in the process. Even celebrities like Steph Curry and Post Malone have got in on the act, with the NFT artworks going from anywhere between USD$200,000 into the millions. So imagine the horror one Bored Ape Yacht Club owner had this week when he realised he’d accidentally listed his USD$300,000 NFT for the grand old sum of USD$3,066, all because of ‘fat fingers.
Image: Open Sea
Generally, sales that push the envelope on both ends of the market draw the ire of the community, suggesting funny business may be at play. There have been numerous reports of NFT owners selling digital artworks to themselves for exorbitant amounts and passing high-scarcity NFTs off for insanely low prices. Naturally, when the coveted Bored Ape went up for a bargain price, eyebrows were raised, however, reality was much less nefarious than it seemed.
According to CNET, the owner, real name Max or username maxnaut, intended to list his Bored Ape for 75 ether, or around USD$300,000, however, accidentally listed it for 0.75, just one hundredth the planned price. It sold instantly.
In fact, reports suggest the buyer paid a further USD$34,000 to speed up the transaction and ensure that no one else could snap it up, before immediately relisting it for a whopping USD$248,000. The new transaction appears to have been completed by a bot, which according to CNET can be coded to immediately buy NFTs listed below a certain price on behalf of their owners in order to take advantage of these exact situations’.
Image: Open Sea
“How’d it happen? A lapse of concentration I guess,” Max told CNET. “I list a lot of items every day and just wasn’t paying attention properly. I instantly saw the error as my finger clicked the mouse but a bot sent a transaction with over 8 eth ($34,000) of gas fees so it was instantly sniped before I could click cancel, and just like that, $250k was gone.”
While Max’s ‘Fat finger’ error, where a seller accidentally makes a trade online for the wrong thing or for the wrong amount, is a big stuff-up, it’s not the worst we’ve seen. Just last month, a CryptoPunk NFT was listed for USD$19,000 instead of the intended USD$19 million.
The industry is so new, bad things are going to happen whether it’s your fault or the tech,” Max told CNET. “Once you no longer have control of the outcome, forget and move on.”
If anything, Max’s mistake serves as a reminder to double-check every listing, especially when there are hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line. It also goes to show that NFT fans have entirely too much money.
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Nick Hall
Nick Hall is the Editor-in-Chief of Man of Many and an accomplished journalist. He completed a Bachelor of Creative Industries at the Queensland University of Technology, with a double major in Journalism and Music. Prior to working at Man of Many, Nick spent two years as a journalist with Inside Franchise Business, focusing on small business, finance and legal reporting. In 2021, Nick was named B&T's Best of the Best Journalist of the Year. With an extensive background in the media industry, Nick specialises in feature writing, fashion, lifestyle and entertainment content. A qualified barber and men's stylist, Nick also holds a Cert III in Barbering from the Queensland Hairdressing Academy.
