Blokyz NFT Raffle Draws $64 Million in Ethereum (ETH) Commitments

$64 Million Chases 7,500 NFTs

More than $64 million in Ethereum (ETH) flooded into the Blokyz NFT raffle over a 24-hour window — and the company is now refunding nearly all of it. Blokyz, a Web3 collectibles maker that previously produced physical resin figures for brands including CoinGecko, Arbitrum and KuCoin, listed its 10,000-piece Original Blokyz collection on Ethereum with 7,500 spots reserved for a public raffle priced at 0.03 ETH each, roughly $75 at the time. Entries were unlimited per wallet, and every losing ticket was promised its 0.03 ETH back — a design that encouraged whales to queue hundreds of attempts at once, since each additional entry only locked more ETH temporarily rather than costing the full price on every miss. The raffle stayed open for its full 24 hours even after enough entries had accumulated to fill every spot. When it closed, on-chain data shows 22,443 wallets had submitted 853,964 entries through the smart contract, committing 25,618.92 ETH worth $64.4 million — about 114 entries per available NFT. But only 7,500 winning tickets could actually settle, so Blokyz keeps just 225 ETH, roughly $566,000, and queues the rest for refund. The headline number briefly looked like a record for a market widely written off as dead; by money retained, however, it is not close — Yuga Labs, the studio behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, generated roughly $410 million from its mints. What does look real is demand: the figures now trade near five times their mint price, suggesting most winners are holding. Winners keeping assets in browser-connected wallets should also note recent findings on malicious browser extensions stealing wallet secrets. For scale, the entire NFT market sits near $2 billion — a hot weekend does not make a bull market.

Arthur Hayes Calls Ethereum (ETH) His Top Pick

While retail capital was queuing for $75 collectibles, one of crypto's best-known macro traders was making a larger claim about the asset underneath. Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at digital-asset investment firm Maelstrom, named Ethereum (ETH) as his top-priority holding in a video interview published on August 28, arguing the coin carries 3x to 5x upside within a relatively short horizon. His reasoning is contrarian: ETH remains the only large-cap cryptocurrency that has not reclaimed its 2021 all-time high, and that neglect is, in his view, exactly the setup worth owning. As the core layer-1 anchoring the DeFi ecosystem and the chain with the largest developer base — now extending through its layer-2 scaling networks — Ethereum should see pent-up chase-buying erupt into a forceful rebound, a “hate rally,” once Bitcoin resumes its uptrend. Hayes framed the risk/reward by contrast with his own Hyperliquid (HYPE) trade, one of the cycle's best large-cap performers: Maelstrom's fund entered in the low $30s and took profit near $75. He remains constructive on HYPE but judges that its now-widespread recognition leaves too many expectations priced in, making a repeat of that asymmetric surge unlikely — which is why he concludes ETH offers the superior risk/reward at 5x-plus potential. The chain's fundamentals continue to compound beneath the price: developers are weighing EIP-8394, a quantum-safe staking proposal guarding $104 billion in staked ETH, a reminder that the network's security budget and roadmap keep expanding regardless of sentiment cycles. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bybit.

One Settlement Layer, Two Stories

COINOTAG's reading is that both stories describe the same infrastructure. The 25,618.92 ETH committed to the Blokyz raffle and the refunds now flowing back to 22,443 wallets are verifiable directly on Etherscan — a transparency the sale's unrankable “record” claims lack — showing Ethereum functioning as neutral settlement for everything from $75 resin figures to eight-figure capital queues. Hayes' thesis treats that same asset as the market's most under-owned large cap, and exchange supply dropping 1.4 million coins since June 3 fits his accumulation narrative. The real test starts now: whether 22,000 refunded wallets redeploy, and whether ETH finally reclaims its old high.