After selling out its pre-orders in the United States and Europe, Solana’s Saga Phone has been selling for high prices on eBay—units were even selling for $5,000 over the weekend of Dec. 15-16. At the time of writing, one unopened Saga phone unit is even on offer for £6,000 as a Buy It Now price on eBay.
Although the Saga sale at $5,000 and the high listing at £6,000 have caused excitement and attention on social media, the more realistic eBay “floor price” for Saga phones is more like $2,000-3,000 as of this writing—a tempting arbitrage opportunity for anyone looking to capitalize on meme coin hype.
The Saga phone frenzy can be explained in the context of strong bullish sentiment towards Solana, with NFT trading volume on Solana marketplace Tensor flipping Blur volume and Solana DEX trading volume flipping that of ETH for the first time.
The Saga phones have not yet been shipped—any eBay sale would mean trusting the vendor to send the sealed phone on to the buyer. The phones, which do not yet have a confirmed arrival date for their recipients, come packaged with 30 million $BONK, which can be claimed by the phone’s owner once they install the BONK app from the Solana Mobile App Store.
Anyone purchasing a Saga phone via eBay or similar sites bears a significant risk; the person who ordered the device from Solana could have claimed and transferred the $BONK, then re-sealed the packaging to send to the eBay purchaser.
To claim their $BONK, Saga phone owners, whether original purchasers or resale buyers, will need to set up the Seed Vault—a secure way of handling seed phrases and private keys—on their new device. Then, they need to mint a Genesis Token, a special NFT, following instructions in a pre-installed app on the phone. Once they’ve done this, users can install the BONK app and claim their free $BONK. A handy video walkthrough on how to claim your $BONK is linked in the Solana Mobile discord.
Alongside the free memecoin, Saga owners receive several other benefits, including a month’s free access to crypto-friendly phone service from Helium Mobile, and a free toy.
If you bought a Saga, should you hold—or sell? Alongside the risks of fraud, chargebacks, and other scams posed to buyers and sellers on eBay, it’s also important to consider that Solana aims to partner with other companies to offer apps in its App Store—not just $BONK. In time, further airdrops and gifts may become available as their ecosystem develops.
Source : nft now by Lorepunk / Dec 18, 2023