The Guy Behind That Owl NFT Just Bought a $16.5M House

Kevin Rose's Moonbirds NFT project brought in over $500 million in sales in a few months.

While the Bored Ape Yacht Club is still one of the most successful NFT projects out there, the owl avatars known as Moonbirds have retained their value even as interest in NFTs continues to fall.

A collection of 10,000 NFTs created by tech entrepreneur Kevin Rose, Moonbirds features owls in different quirky poses and first started dropping in batches in April 2022. By August, Rose's project had brought in over $500 million in sales and nabbed $50 million in Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz. 

45-year-old Rose, who got his start by launching the website Digg in the early days of the internet and turned into a venture capitalist who was among the first to back Twitter and Square, was quickly propelled to even bigger investing fame amid the success of Moonbirds -- and, as first reported by celebrity real estate website Dirt.com, recently bought a $16.5 million house in Los Angeles' Brentwood neighborhood.

An Unfinished Home In A Glitzy Celebrity Enclave

A celebrity enclave that houses names like LeBron James and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brentwood is known for its high concentration of ultra-luxury properties. The home Rose bought sits on a half-acre lot and is presently still in the middle of construction.

Early aerial photos show that it is designed in the shape of the letter "L" and will take up over 7,600 square feet of space. Many of the walls will be completely glass and offer panoramic views of Los Angeles.

The main house is also slated to have six bedrooms and eight-and-a-half bathrooms -- spacious but also nowhere as large as some of the super mansions being built by other wealthy residents in the area.

Dirt.com also reports that the estate will be similar in style to the 7,000-square-foot Portland, Oregon house that Rose had custom-built in 2020 and just sold for just under $8 million in the summer. Amenities in that property included a wet bar, a wine cellar, a gym, a sauna, a home theater, and a three-car garage with EV chargers.

Have NFTs Hit A Peak That Isn't Coming Back?

Short for non-fungible tokens, NFTs are a way of asserting ownership over a piece of content like an image or a sound byte on the internet. Many are tied to a cryptocurrency and, with interest in them peaking at the end of 2021, many made fortunes reselling them to buyers willing to pay higher and higher prices.

While certain popular NFTs from Bored Ape Yacht Clubs or Moonbirds can still fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars, interest has been dropping dramatically as the crypto industry in general has been on a downfall and faces greater scrutiny.

Block tracker DappRadar found that NFT sales brought in $8.4 billion in sales in the third quarter of 2021 and only $3.4 billion in the same quarter in 2022. At the same time, the wider NFT market is still predicted to grow at an average CAGR rate of 35.27% until 2026.

"The non-fungible token (NFT) market is highly fragmented due to the presence of a large number of small and medium-sized players," analysts at market research firm Technavio said. "Vendors are adopting strategic initiatives such as mergers and acquisitions to remain competitive in the market."