[UPDATE]: since the release of this article, the managing team has suspended its WICKD operation and will post a revamped version later this week
As I wrote a few weeks ago, Wicked Ape Bone Club (“WABC”) collection was doing extremely well in the last days of August, with floor nearing 0.8 among very high sale volumes.
The collection did lose around half of its floor price following the wide market correction that started in early September across all the crypto sphere, which specifically shook the NFT market after the August exceptional surge.
Wicked Ape Bone Club managed however to stabilize at around 0.4 ETH floor price, and sale volumes seemed to be slowly, but steadily recovering.
But since last Saturday (September 12th), floor price crashed again and went all the way back to 0.2 ETH, with some apes going for as low as .11 ETH at press time. So what happened?
It is fair to assume that this extreme drop price was mainly caused by the release of the ‘Wicked Hounds Bone Club’, which is another 11,111 NFT collections of skeletal hounds that serve as companions to the original apes (just like BAYC did with the ‘Bored Ape Kennel Club’ collection).
All ape owners were given a 14 days window to mint a random hound for each ape they owned, while 1,000 hounds were offered for public minting – and sold out.
While the release of these hounds was clearly announced in the roadmap from the beginning and followed through by the team, unfortunately it did not bring added value to the original collection as many expected, but instead diluted its value, as apes owners dropped their apes once they had minted their corresponding hounds, which caused a rapid drop in value as supply suddenly far exceeded demand.
The hounds did not perform well on the secondary market either, and their floor price is since stalled at around 0.05 ETH.
So, what to expect from here? First, it is undeniable that the WABC community is currently one of the best out there in the NFT market. Spirits are still high despite the current situation, and many stakeholders are long-term holders that believe in the project and share a common vision. A few hours spent on their Discord will convince anybody that the community is exceptionally strong, fun and motivated, but also rather mature, with a strong focus on long-term growth.
The art itself is also very good, and its esthetic appeal was certainly a strong catalyst in driving up the collection value in the first 10 days or so after launch.
The team itself is also clearly here for the long term, and has shown repeatedly that it was working behind the scenes to promote the project and make it successful, although its latest decisions have been met with a lot of criticism by the WABC community.
The latest team’s announcement on September 14th, which detailed a plan to release 90k+ more NFTs in upcoming skeletal collections, seemed especially ill-advised business-wise, and it was widely perceived as a dilution of the value of the existing collections.
It remains to be seen whether the team will listen to its community and focus on increasing its collections value before considering flooding the market with similar tokens. Either way existing Wicked Bone collections have undoubtedly enormous potential and could easily break back past 0.4 ETH floor provided there is renewed interest from newcomers.
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