- NFT wash trades worth over $500 million have happened on Blur in less than two weeks
- An NFT whale dumped 1,010 NFTs and bought back 991 of the same collectibles
- Wash traders are targeting a bigger share in the upcoming airdrop of season two Blur tokens
NFT wash trades worth over $500 million have happened on Blur in less than two weeks, explaining why Blur has been trumping OpenSea in trading volume since it airdropped its Blur token on February 14. Over the weekend, an NFT whale and a possible wash trader was caught dumping 1,0100 collectibles and later bought back a huge chunk of the same NFTs. Most of the wash trades are meant to increase a trader’s share in the upcoming airdrop of season two Blur tokens scheduled for April.
NFT Whale Dumps 1,010 Collectibles
According to CryptoSlam’s engineer Scott Hawkins, the platform noticed inconsistent behavior on the NFT exchange such as NFT being sold and bought back at prices close to their previous sale value.
In what’s likely the largest NFT dump ever, in the past 48 hours Machi has sold 1,010 NFTs, including:
– 90 BAYC for 5707 ETH
– 191 MAYC for 3091 ETH
– 112 Azuki for 1644 ETH
– 308 Otherdeed for 582 ETHBut he’s not registering much profit for these collections. Why? pic.twitter.com/4NyMF3gzuy
— Andrew T (@Blockanalia) February 24, 2023
One such event was captured by Nansen where known NFT whale Jeffrey Hawng, popularly known as Machi Big Brother, “sold” 1,010 NFTs and later “bought back” 991 of the same collectibles within 48 hours.
Blur Encouraging Wash Trading?
According to Hawkins, Blur doesn’t have measures to detect and thwart wash trades, adding that the platform’s operating model seems to encourage such behaviors. For example, the NFT exchange doesn’t support creator fees, has no platform fees and offers more Blur tokens to those with a high NFT trading volume.
Hawkins added that the wash trading is also a result of the ongoing war between the platform and OpenSea, which has spilled over to the whole NFT space. Blur isn’t the first NFT platform to experience wash trades since LooksRare was also accused of facilitating $8 billion in wash trading when it launched its exchange token.
Since Blur’s NFT wash trading is linked to the upcoming season two Blur token airdrop, the NFT market will likely shake off the false recovery and display the real market condition after April.
