According to data from blockchain analytics firm Nansen, successful and active cryptocurrency traders have been unloading Yuga Labs' ApeCoin and topping up with Aave's aSTETH.
In the last 24 hours, $1.28 million worth of APE has flowed out of wallets that Nansen categorized as "smart money," more than any other token the company tracks.
Nansen considers a wallet "smart money" if it meets at least one of several tests, including:
- It is known to belong to an investment fund
- It has earned at least $100.00 by providing liquidity to decentralized financial protocols (DeFi) SushiSwap and Uniswap, excluding so-called volatile losses.
- Made multiple profitable trades on a decentralized exchange (DEX) in a single transaction through mechanisms such as "flash loans".
Typically, outflows are a harbinger of a decline in asset prices. APE prices fell as much as 16.8% in the last 24 hours following the public launch of Metaverse's Otherside project, Yuga Labs' largest non-fungible token (NFT) product launch.
Yuga Labs is best known for creating the NFT collection Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) and launched ApeCoin, an ERC-20 governance and utility token used for the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) ApeCoin. People who wanted to participate in the Metaverse project "Otherside" had to buy an NFT with APE if they did not have a Bored Ape or Mutant. Any "Otherdeed" NFT representing a virtual land title in the "Otherside" metaverse was offered at a flat price of 305 APE.
Not surprisingly, among the NFTs, Otherdeed for Otherside was the most actively traded in the last 24 hours.
With a volume of just under 100,000 ETH and a turnover of around $285 million for Yuga Labs, Otherdeed for Otherside has clogged the Ethereum blockchain and cost traders over $176 million in fees alone.
Yuga Labs tweeted, "This was the largest NFT mint in history by a multiple, and yet the gas used during the mint shows that demand far exceeded the wildest expectations."
In light of the highest gas charges in Ethereum history, Yuga Labs publicly apologized on Twitter for "turning the lights out on Ethereum for a while."
In the same 24-hour period, about $0.8 million of aSTETH flowed into smart money wallets, the largest inflow among tokens tracked by Nansen. The inflows are considered a bullish signal, but aSTETH's value remains at roughly the same price level as Ether.
aSTETH is Aave's high-yield token for stETH, or stacked Ether, in Lido, the leading solution for liquid stacking. Although Curve has the largest pool of stETH, with a total value of $4.7 billion, Aave is another prime target for stETH, with a total of $3.01 billion in stETH. Smart money inflows into aSTETH confirm the widely held view that Staked ETH could be an ideal investment path for large institutional investors.