OG collector Pranksy is one of the most prolific figures in the NFT space, yet remains one of crypto's greatest mysteries

Pranksy cuts his teeth with the explosion of CryptoKitties and quickly built up a stack of ETH which he relentlessly poured back into the ecosystem, being dubbed the "King of the Mint"

Pranksy, one of the OG collectors and a key figure in popularizing Bored Ape Yacht Club, is still adding to his primary wallet, pranksy.eth, which now holds more than 45,000 NFTs with Avastars and CyberBrokers two of his biggest current holdings.

Few names in NFTs carry as much weight as his, but ask him who Pranksy really is and the answer might surprise you.

“Pranksy was an individual. In fact, the name ‘Pranksy’ was only adopted a few years into the world of NFTs, when the market started gaining interest in digital art,” Pranksy tells NFT Collector.

“Pranksy now represents a wonderfully diverse team of people; however, ‘Pranksy’ is still an individual voice, who runs his own social media, he just has help running NFTBoxes and our new shiny thing, the House of Pranksy.”

$600 in ETH started it all

Similar to the trajectory of other OG NFT collectors such as j1mmy.eth and Nate Alex, Pranksy first stumbled upon NFTs through CryptoKitties around the end of 2017. He had never even bought ETH at the time.

“A friend told me via Slack that people were paying ridiculous amounts of money for pictures of cats on the internet, and you could breed those cats, and the rest is history,” Pranksy says.

“I bought around $600 of ETH to buy and mint those kittens, I never bought ETH again after this.”

That moment led to years of collecting, experimenting and building up a huge stack of ETH in a space that most of the world hadn’t yet heard of. Long before 2021-22 NFT mania, Pranksy was stacking NFTs and making a name for himself among a tight-knit group of collectors, artists and project founders through 2017-2020.

And the origin of the name “Pranksy”? “Before Pranksy, it was Pranked. I wanted to rebrand when minting my first piece of terrible artwork,” he says.

BAYC Genesis: The mint and tweet that changed everything

One of Pranksy’s most notable moments in his career as a top NFT whale started like any other mint.

On 1 May 2021, he began his mint of 1,250 Bored Apes in a few batches. His initial mint of 250 was followed with a tweet, “No horrible FOMO pricing strategy, each Ape is .08 ETH, + they look great.” Within a few more hours, Pranksy ran his total up to 1,320 total Apes.

Pranky’s multiple large mints and tweets, along with j1mmy.Eth’s sweep of 420 Apes led to the sell-out of all 10,000. At the time, no one, including Pranksy, could predict the trajectory BAYC was about to take.

“It wasn’t very different to many other mints, it was at a time when NFT projects didn’t sell out in seconds with a huge waitlist for minting. Nobody expected BAYC to be one of the greatest returns on initial investment in the history of finance.”

He recalls interacting with his running mate, j1mmy.Eth and BAYC, “Passed the profile picture test.”

What followed was a historic run. A single Ape could eventually net a holder close to $1mil from a mint cost of 0.08 ETH (~$220), if they held their original BAYC and sold their airdrops: BAKC (June ’21), MAYC (Sep ’21), ApeCoin (Mar ’22), and Otherside Land (May ’22). The top coincided with the Otherdeed for Otherside mint at the end of April 2022, almost exactly one year after the mint.

NFT dealer to celebrities and sports stars

The eye-watering run-up of value for Bored Apes didn’t happen immediately. For the first month, Apes were still sitting below a 1 ETH floor price, and Pranksy was still sending large quantities of his collection to friends.

By the back half of 2021, Apes were becoming a cultural phenomenon and they were everywhere: Steph Curry, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, Madonna, Justin Bieber and many more. Everyone wanted a piece of the action.

Pranksy ended up doing deals with some of the world’s most famous people and sports stars, from Gwyneth Paltrow to Tinie Tempah to NBA star Josh Hart, who’s currently playing in the NBA playoffs.

Mystery of Polygon’s missing MATIC: Everyone’s doing it, says ChainArgos

Why Grayscale’s New Digital Currency Ad Could Bring Crypto Investing To Millions

“At