Collectors buy $450k in Coca-Cola NFTs despite poor historical performance

NFT collections from major brands rarely perform well, but that hasn’t stopped traders from piling into Coca-Cola’s latest offering

article-image

Fotazdymak/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Traders on Coinbase’s new Base chain have piled over $450,000 into an NFT offering from brand giant Coca-Cola — a strong showing despite the fact that major brand NFT launches have consistently demonstrated a lackluster history on secondary markets.

Coinbase announced the launch of the collection on Sunday, part of the chain’s “Onchain Summer” initiative, and minting began roughly at noon in New York. The inspiration for the collection is an aesthetically confused mashup of both classic and contemporary art with Coke bottles. 

In the initial days of minting, the new collection quickly gained popularity among collectors. At time of writing, nearly 60,000 Masterpieces have been minted, bringing in over $450,000. Minting is scheduled to end Wednesday at 12 pm ET. 

Among the 3,000 individual NFT collections on Base, Masterpiece contract addresses account for 8 of the top 50 most active collections in terms of transfers on a 24-hour basis, despite being just a few hours old. 

The Masterpieces mint contract has been sending proceeds of the sale to a secondary address, which has collected just over 192 ether (ETH) worth $360,000 for the three classic painter themed collections of Vermeer, Munch and Van Gogh. Secondary addresses for the contemporary artists have gone to separate addresses, raking in a total of $88,000. 

The Base chain is quickly emerging as a destination for NFT traders. According to two Dune Analytics dashboards, over the past week, transfers for two popular NFT standards — ERC-721 and ERC-1155 — have been growing steadily, with Base now accounting for over 10% of total multichain volume for both standards. 

Future prospects

Despite the hot start in what is otherwise a sluggish bear market for NFTs, Masterpieces buyers may have a rough road ahead of them in terms of turning profit on their digital Coke bottles. 

Historically, buying NFT collections from major brands has been a fraught proposition for traders. Fellow drink giant Budweiser launched the Budverse Cans: Heritage Edition collection in November 2021, selling digital images of stylized historical beer cans for $499, or $999 “gold” cans. Since the mint, the floor price has fallen to .1 ETH on scant volume, representing a drawdown of 63%. 

This type of performance is not unusual for NFT launches from major brands. 

TIME Magazine’s NFT drop was one of the most chaotic in Ethereum’s history, with MEV bots crowding the mint such that the collection sold out almost immediately. While the NFTs originally sold for .1 ETH, climbed as high as 3 ETH after mint, but now has settled at .03 ETH — a dollar-term drawdown of 83%. 

Generally speaking, brand collections enjoy a brief pump before collapsing and permanently remaining under mint price. However, multiple pieces from the Masterpieces collection have already fallen below their mint on OpenSea, even though minting is still open for another day.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

  • Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
  • Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
  • Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
  • 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
  • Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
  • The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
  • Supply Shock: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.
Tags

Upcoming Events

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

morpho 2 graphic.png

Research

Utilizing a ‘DeFi Mullet’ approach, Coinbase’s Bitcoin-backed loans integration with Morpho demonstrates a powerful blueprint for CEXs to monetize dormant assets by expanding adoption of wrapped products (cbBTC, USDC) while also supporting native and/or preferred DeFi ecosystems (Base) which can further lead to downstream growth in onchain liquidity and increased utilization of the related assets.

article-image

The platform also rolled out 13 tokenized funds for institutions on the Connect platform

article-image

The company’s expanded lineup introduces new ETF products, as more and more issuers get into crypto funds

article-image

President Donald Trump announced a 10% levy on almost all goods and additional tariffs on so-called “worst offending” countries

article-image

Solana may be in “recomposition” mode, as new protocols put usefulness ahead of mere virality

article-image

The stablecoin issuer will have to contend with bigger players and the interest rates environment

article-image

The president reportedly was still working on his tariff policy plans late Tuesday evening