Anonymous Whale Burns Bored Apes, Polymarket Users Push for Token Answers

The anonymous Bored Ape burner’s identity and motive remained unconfirmed. Catherine estimated that the wallet received about 100 ETH from Binance and spent roughly 12–15 ETH buying and burning Apes, while stressing that its total funding was unknown. Another 100 ETH was reportedly deposited into an account referred to as Oson the previous day. Speakers discussed Ocin, Osan and Oson, but did not establish whether those names referred to the same operator. One account was said to have been created in September, bought Argonauts, burned what a speaker thought were two Bored Apes, and given away NFTs.

Ben D was the leading identity theory for some speakers, with one estimating a greater-than-50% chance that Ben D and the burner were the same person or controlled by the same person, based on information others had shared. That was speculation, not confirmation; other names were floated without evidence, and alleged account origins in South Asia or links to scam accounts did not identify the operator. Catherine said Ocin held 71 Apes, valued at about $104,000. A speaker said Machi held 128, or 1.2% of the collection, while no other wallet held more than 0.61%. The concentration was described as positive, with Adam’s five Apes distinguished from his much larger holdings of other NFTs.

Speakers suspected the highly visible burns, giveaways and criticism of Garga were designed to draw attention to the burner rather than to the Apes themselves, but said the motive was unknown. One characterized spending about $40,000 out of hatred as evidence of how strongly Apes affect people; another saw a possible pattern of provoking a popular project before promoting or selling an NFT or meme coin, while acknowledging the comparison could be wrong. They cautioned that buying roughly 100 ETH of art did not prove genuine artistic interest. An argument over Argonauts followed Jay Z’s criticism that newer projects put little effort into art; Oson urged him to look at Argonauts, which a speaker defended as pixel art rather than “pixel junk.” A collector worried the dispute could harm the project and its community. Speakers also warned that Discord accounts and servers are not proof of trustworthiness and advised against sending ETH or NFTs to unsolicited contacts.

The clearest Polymarket development was an open letter demanding clarity on whether the platform would issue a token or airdrop and how it would reward users who generated volume and paid fees. The letter cited a statement by Polymarket’s CMO in October 2025 that a token and airdrop were coming, followed by deleted related posts and a help-center page saying neither had been announced. Tokenomics and user allocations remained undisclosed. The writers said they would reduce activity and move volume elsewhere if the answer remained indefinite; Polymarket had also indicated it would address a revenue comparison at Token2049. Speakers questioned how much prediction-market volume came from genuine demand versus incentivized trading by the same actors, but said they did not know. Rumors of an effort to remove CEO Shane were mentioned without supporting detail.

The token question drew disagreement: Diego argued Jack Butcher did not need a token and that one would crash, while another speaker speculated that credits balances or statements might convert into a fungible token, without claiming that was likely. Credits were estimated to have a current market cap of about $5 million, with $20 million described as possible but uncertain. Speakers also cautioned that NFT attention can move quickly as mercenary capital chases new trends, and that buying a team’s own collection can signal conviction and buy support but can also raise manipulation concerns. Separately, a speaker saw tokenized stocks as a possible source of new on-chain retail and institutional participants, with Robinhood viewed as the likeliest on-ramp; activity was also noted on Solana and Ethereum mainnet, where new capital flows could create opportunities and supply shocks for small-supply projects.