SNEAK PEEK
- A trader unintentionally placed a bid for an NFT for 100 ETH that was quickly snapped up.
- The token belonged to the Gemesis NFT collection of OpenSea.
- Many users believe the sale to be the illegal practice of wash trading.
An NFT trader has fat-fingered a bid for a free non-fungible token and bought it for 100 ETH, with its current value being $191,239.
The NFT was part of OpenSea’s Gemesis NFT collection and free non-fungible tokens aimed to celebrate OpenSea Pro’s launch on April 4. The bid by the trader is an increase of 250,000% on the floor price of 0.04 ETH.
A marketplace aggregator, OpenSea Pro offers a vastly enhanced pack of features such as advanced orders and live cross-marketplace data to professional users.
According to some, the sale was wash trading; however, Twitter user “0xSun” had faith in the sale, which happened on the Blur NFT, since the trader intended to bid $100; but accidentally bid 100 ETH.
A Reddit user who posted regarding the sale hinted at doubt on the wash trading theory and argued that it was an open offer available to all, which made it very risky to be a wash trade because another trader or bot would snap up an offer quickly for more than the floor price.
“Wash trading” refers to a type of market manipulation wherein a trader purchases and sells an asset to spread deceiving information into the market. It is unlawful in traditional stock markets, though it is highly prevalent in NFT trading.
On April 25, 2022, OpenSea acquired NFT aggregator Gem for an unknown price and revamped the platform to create OpenSea Pro.
Users who purchased a minimum of one NFT on Gem before March 31 qualified to mint a Gemesis NFT, and the minting window closed on May 4.
