In August 2021, Steve Aoki told CoinDesk that NFTs would be “part of culture” within five years. Almost exactly five years later, onchain data tracked by Arkham Intelligence shows the Grammy-nominated DJ quietly moving what’s left of his liquid crypto holdings to Gemini. The timing is hard to miss.
According to the blockchain data, Aoki’s wallet recently sold roughly 1.785 billion Shiba Inu tokens, worth about $10,300, and 7.25 Ether, valued at approximately $15,900. Combined, the transactions amounted to just under $30,000.
Steve Aoki is out of the market.
Steve Aoki, DJ and former NFT Influencer, just sold $30K of SHIB and ETH, moving the proceeds to Gemini.
He still holds 7 Bored Ape NFTs that he paid over $800K for in 2021. They are now worth only $13.8K each. pic.twitter.com/w4boNLm60o— Arkham (@arkham) April 13, 2026
About two weeks before that, the same wallet had already exited 4.155 billion PEPE tokens for around $14,700 through decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch. The fascinating part about this is that this doesn’t seem like the typical one-off portfolio trim. It looks more like a steady wind-down, position by position, token by token, with the proceeds parked at a regulated exchange.
What the numbers don’t capture about Aoki’s NFT position
Strip away the onchain transactions and the more revealing number is this: Aoki still holds seven Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs he bought for over $800,000 during the 2021 frenzy. At current floor prices, each one is worth roughly $13,800, putting his entire BAYC portfolio at around $97,000, an 88 percent drawdown from cost basis.
He’s not alone in that pain. BAYC floor prices, which hit the equivalent of more than $400,000 per NFT at the peak of early 2022, have since collapsed below $14,000. The same bull market cycle that pushed Bitcoin past $126,000 in all-time highs largely skipped the NFT sector altogether.
Capital in this cycle has rotated toward assets with clearer utility profiles, something of liquid staking tokens, real-world asset protocols, and AI-adjacent blockchain projects, leaving speculative digital collectibles behind.
Aoki’s own NFT ventures followed a similar arc. His “Dominion X” TV project, developed alongside Seth Green’s Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, sold 500 NFTs on Nifty Gateway in seconds. His manager told CoinDesk at the time that the sale “barely covered” production costs.
The show never reached broadcast. His “Steve Aoki Universe” collection generated early buzz tied to his music brand, but sustained demand never materialized. What once looked like a blueprint for celebrity-led Web3 utility ended up mirroring the broader pattern: explosive launch, rapid fade.
A $30,000 sale with outsized symbolism
From a pure market mechanics standpoint, none of this should move the needle. A $30,000 sale in SHIB or ETH is basically noise relative to their daily trading volumes. Predictably, neither token showed any visible price reaction following the transactions. Macro factors, Bitcoin dominance, institutional ETF flows, Federal Reserve rate signals, carry far more weight than any single celebrity wallet.
But symbolic weight is a different thing. Aoki was arguably the most recognizable face of the celebrity NFT wave. Asides from being a buyer; he was also an evangelist. Ape-themed raves, blockchain-tied music drops, public predictions about culture shifting onchain was all what Aoki was about.
When someone that embedded in the 2021 narrative begins converting whatever liquid exposure remains and routing it to a centralized exchange, it reads as a signal, even if an imprecise one, that the speculative chapter is closing.
For retail participants who still associate celebrity wallet activity with conviction signals, this may nudge sentiment around meme coins and legacy NFT collections a little lower. That’s a narrower effect than it would have been in 2022, when celebrity exits could ripple visibly through community forums and token prices.
The market has largely moved on. But in corners of crypto Twitter (CT) and NFT communities still waiting on a BAYC recovery, this kind of news lands differently. What’s harder to read is why Aoki hasn’t moved the Bored Apes.
It’s possible the tax math doesn’t work, realizing losses on illiquid NFTs can be complicated depending on how they were originally structured. It’s also possible that holding them costs nothing in the meantime, and selling at these prices feels like an admission that the bet is definitively over. Whether that’s conviction, inertia, or something else entirely isn’t something onchain data can answer.
What it does show, fairly clearly, is a portfolio in late-stage unwind. Liquid positions sold, proceeds centralized, illiquid NFT exposure sitting deep in the red. For anyone who watched the 2021 cycle up close, it’s a familiar-looking ending.