Bored Ape Yacht Club has long been considered the marquee brand in non-fungible tokens with nearly $3 billion in sales since early 2021.

But the decline of the collection’s floor price — the lowest registered selling price for one of the NFTs — hit a somber milestone on Sunday when it fell to about 27 ETH (roughly $53,000), according to NFT Floor Price. That's the the lowest point since August 2021.

While many NFT watchers have taken to Twitter to speculate about what’s happening with Bored Apes, the simplest explanation might also be the best, argues The Block Research analyst Brad Kay.

“Prices in any market are set by the marginal buyer and seller, and in the current scenario, there appears to be a scarcity of buyers,” said Kay, who added that larger holders of Bored Apes dumping the tokens can also negatively impact price.

Bored Ape liquidity

One major Bored Ape holder known as Machi Big Brother — or Jeffrey Huang in real life — has been making waves recently by selling a large number of the NFTs on the Blur marketplace in an apparent effort to score bonus tokens the marketplace offers traders.

Blur token incentives aside, the NFT market is, by many measures, weak and lacking liquidity, which has in turn driven prices down. Across the board pricing for top-shelf collections like Doodles, Azuki and CryptoPunks have suffered.

“Liquidity merely amplifies reality. If there is no demand for your JPEG, price goes down until there is,” posted Twitter user @0xak_, a self-proclaimed NFT enthusiast with more than 11,000 followers on the social media platform.

NFT statistician and market watcher NFTstats.eth, or @punk9059, also took to Twitter over the weekend to publish data that provided some insight into the market’s lack of liquidity. Using a chart to demonstrate, NFTstats.eth said that “more than 80%” of NFTs in top collections like Bored Apes and CryptoPunks “haven't been sold once in 2023.”