Counterculture NFT collection Milady Maker surged in volume after Elon Musk tweet

Crypto’s counterculture NFT project Milady Maker saw a huge surge in volume yesterday following Elon Musk’s tweet of a Milady meme. Whether that bump is going to have the same impact as the Twitter chief’s affinity for dogecoin remains to be seen. 

Earlier in the day, Musk had liked a reply to his former girlfriend and singer Grimes, which mentioned the word “milady” and featured two memes about Miladys. Later on, he tweeted one of the memes, without adding context or clarifying whether he knew it was related to an NFT project.

Regardless, it sent the Milady NFT collection, NFT collections related to it and a token under its name that was only created a few days ago higher.

The biggest impact was to the main Milady collection. The project hit 7,433 ETH ($13.5 million) in trading volume, according to OpenSea, with more than 1,300 sales. The project had the largest trading volume on OpenSea, more than two and a half times that of popular NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club, according to Martin Lee, a data journalist at crypto data site Nansen.

“It wasn’t just a small handful of wallets apeing in as well, it was by far the highest number of unique buyers. I saw a bunch of purchases well above floor,” he said, referring to the floor price, which is the lowest price available for an NFT collection.

Musk's history with dogecoin

It’s not the first time Musk has started a crypto-related rally with a tweet. He has for years sent dogecoin on rollercoaster rides with his on-again, off-again affinity for the memecoin. Most recently, he sent it soaring about 27% after swapping Twitter’s blue bird for a Shiba Inu last month.  

Following Musk’s Milady tweet, the floor price rose from 3.8 ETH ($6,900) to as high as 7.2 ETH ($13,000) before it came back down to around 5 ETH ($9,000). 

Lee noted that there was a large amount of sales from existing holders who were cashing out on the increased attention. Lee said that there were 349 sellers against just 106 buyers, suggesting the new buyers were picking up multiple NFTs.

Some of the buying action came from pre-existing Milady holders. He noted that 11 wallets who have never sold a Milady bought more NFTs. In contrast, 26 wallets who had never sold a Milady previously, decided to sell.

Musk’s tweet also had an impact on the Redacted Remilio Babies NFT collection, which describes itself as an expansion of the Milady paradigm — with a schizophrenic reactionary aesthetics twist.

This collection saw a surge in trading volume to 1,570 ETH ($2.8 million), with 813 sales. Its floor price rose from 1.5 ETH ($2,722) to 2.4 ETH (4,356). 

A token called Miladys

On the fungible side of things, Musk’s tweet also caused a surge in the price of a token called milady meme coin (LADYS), which isn’t officially linked to the Milady NFT collection.

This token’s price pumped 3,000%, according to CoinGecko, and hit a $150 million market cap. It even saw a trading volume of $200 million.

However, there are a lot of red flags with the token. It was created just three days ago, according to crypto data site Arkham Intelligence, and a large percentage of its supply is owned by a very small number of wallets (and therefore individuals). 

One wallet spent $10,000 on milady meme coin and it’s now worth $2.7 million, Arkham noted. This suggests that, were these large wallets to sell, that could put a significant dent in the price of the token, which only has a limited amount of liquidity in its pool on the decentralized exchange Uniswap.