Moonbirds NFTs Rocket Back to Life: The Hidden Forces Fueling Their Resurgence
Pixelated owls are back in vogue—and this time, they’ve got institutional money whispering in their ears.
### From Floor Price to Flight Path
Moonbirds aren’t just flapping their wings—they’re shredding resistance levels. The collection’s floor price just punched through its 2023 ceiling, leaving skeptics scrambling for explanations (and their checkbooks).
### The Whale Effect
Three wallet addresses snapped up 17% of the circulating supply last week. When crypto’s shadow bankers start treating NFTs like collateral, you know we’ve entered a new phase of financial absurdity.
### Utility or Unicorn Dust?
The team’s ‘nesting’ rewards program finally delivered tangible perks—discounted gas fees, exclusive IRL events. Or as traders call it: ‘enough hopium to justify another pump.’
As always in crypto, the real question isn’t ‘why now?’—it’s ‘who’s left holding the bag when the music stops?’
The power of “birbish”
One of the more surprising drivers of the turnaround wasn’t a major tech integration or celebrity endorsement—it was a linguistic shift.
“If I had to attribute our momentum to one thing, it’s the decision to consciously introduce the word ‘birb’ into the vernacular around the collection,” Spencer said.
"Birbs and 'birbish' are just deeply mimetic," he added. "'GBirb' is the calling card of the community. 'Birbish' is an easy, meaningful, and effective response to any question. It’s given a brand new life with a younger, fresher, more memetic feel."
ALL TIME HIGH pic.twitter.com/3o0vVGsryG
— beeple (@beeple) August 14, 2025
On Wednesday, after Bitcoin reached all-time high, famed crypto artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann posted a new piece called “ALL TIME HIGH,” with a clear reference to Moonbirds. The piece depicts a defaced McDonald’s counter littered with crypto graffiti, including the word “birbish” scrawled across the front.
This kind of identity reframe has helped Moonbirds reconnect with NFT Twitter culture, where memes often make or break a brand.
Looking ahead, Orange Cap Games has a simple vision: “The long-term goal is to take the birbs to Birbhalla,” Spencer said.
Orange Cap, known for bringing IP to life through its Pudgy Penguins-themed Vibes trading card game, sees Moonbirds as a cornerstone for broader entertainment and gaming initiatives, similar to how Labubu giant Pop Mart develops both collaborations and its own characters like Hirono. But they aren’t sharing concrete plans just yet.
“We have a lot of cool stuff we are working on, but we have [never] made specific commitments about it in public, and that's very much on purpose,” said Spencer.
“If you want to ride with us, ride with us,” he continued. “We will do cool stuff on this ride, but when teams make specific commitments prior to being ready to deliver, this is typically what puts them in tough situations if they need to pivot or anything. That's why you see a lot of teams stuck delivering old promises.”
Are NFTs back?
It’s not only Moonbirds that are flying again lately. The influential CryptoPunks also recently hit a more than three-year price high in U.S. dollars, trading for nearly $250,000 a pop, while other “blue chip” NFTs—like Tyler Hobbs’ “Fidenza” generative art collection for Art Blocks—have also posted multi-year highs of late. And NFT trading volume ROSE in July compared to June.
But Spencer is quick to temper the hype. There’s more buzz around NFTs than there has been in a while, but he cautioned against assuming that another wild boom is imminent.
“Yes, but it’s not every NFT collection,” he said about the current upswing. “It’s exactly like the dot-com bubble—tons of things went public just on a domain name, but when the water went out, you saw who was swimming naked. Out of that came Facebook, Amazon, Google.”
“The same thing is happening here,” he said. “The next cycle is now. It’s not as frothy, but real brands and real businesses can rise to the top.”
