As CryptoSlam journeys deeper into Web3, we’d like to invite our earliest supporters, as readers of NFTs On Deck, to participate in our first ever Zealy Quest. We have big plans for 2024, and in many ways, that
starts today. Our Zealy Quest will reward your participation with XP. But what is the XP for?
Stay tuned…
For the Love of the Game (Market Commentary) |
We’re all conditioned to expect the unexpected in NFTs,
but these past few weeks have been something else, with nothing but curveballs hurled our way. Two weeks ago there was a new token standard called the ERC404 that shifted the very approach to how traders are buying and selling NFTs. This past week, new token standards like DN404s and ERCX showed us even
more iterations of that exciting fungible/non-fungible hybrid tech. Trust me when I say these will have a major impact on the NFT market in the future. In the short term though, we saw probably the most unexpected development of 2024, Yuga Labs acquiring Proof. If you’re not familiar with Proof, they’re the team behind one of the top 15 NFT collections of all time, the once high-flying Moonbirds. Truthfully, these birds have been a shell of their former self. Once selling for an average sale price of over $94k back in May 2022, they have since fallen to an average of just $2.7k last month. But really, it isn’t the Moonbirds that Yuga Labs is after. Instead, it’s Proof’s iconic Grails platform, which has collaborated with some of the top artists in the NFT space over the past 2 years. Yuga Labs, who had been shoehorning art into their CryptoPunks
brand, now has a rock-solid pillar to hold up the artsy end of their ever-growing house of Web3 brands. With one of the most historic collectibles in CryptoPunks, the biggest degen NFT collection in Bored Apes, their gaming focus in the Otherside Metaverse, and now one of the best teams in the NFT space for art, Yuga Labs is becoming something like the Disney of NFTs. Let me officially welcome you to NFTs 2.0, a new period for NFTs where tech is evolving and projects are consolidating. It’s actually exactly what NFTs need to be ready for its next run. Better tools, better products, and better teams are how we move forward, and now in our evolved form, we’re more ready than ever for what’s inevitably coming; NFTs in primetime once again. Already NFTs 2.0 is helping to propel the NFT market, which even in a down week, is seeing over $250m in sales. More than $56m of that volume comes from just 2 ERC404 and ERCX projects (Pandora and MINER), along with Yuga Labs’ Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, Moonbirds, Proof Grails, Meebits, and Mutant Apes. Trade profits took a huge hit, falling to a 7-month low, with 2 main factors driving traders to sell NFTs at losses.
1. Traders are exiting their expensive NFTs at a loss because they’re
confident they can find faster gains in crypto than they can in NFTs.
2. The Yuga Labs acquisition of Proof was met by almost universal FUD and saw many long-time holders of each project exiting the communities by selling their NFT. Regardless of their reasons, it’s opportunities that traders saw in the markets that caused them to sell, and those opportunities seem to be growing by the day. Be like water, and stay ready for those opportunities, because there are many more
ahead of us. - Pandora's sales are on a pace that we haven’t seen for an NFT collection in years. The ERC404 token standard allows access to much greater liquidity through fungible
tokens, so the real question is; is Pandora’s $35.6m in sales a taste of what’s to come for most NFT new projects?
- Madlads have gone mad, regaining their 200 $SOL floor price, and along the way accumulated over $7m in sales.
- Bored Ape Yacht Club saw a 69.25% increase in volume, now up to $6.15m. Between the Proof acquisition news and the battle for the highest floor price with the
Pudgy Penguins, there’s buying and selling pressure on this collection like we haven’t seen in a long time.
- Pudgy Penguins finally saw the Flappening, the Flippering, or whatever we call it these days. Simply put, this past Saturday, the Pudgy Penguins floor
price flipped the Bored Apes for the first time ever.
- Moonbirds are flying once again, with sales climbing over 1,495%. How high can these birds soar now as part of Yuga Lab’s ecosystem? They’ll be limited by their CC0
status, but Yuga Labs is surely thinking of a solution to that.
- Ethereum is the top-selling NFT ecosystem this week by a large margin with
$135.56m in NFT sales. Wash sales climbed a massive 85.88% thanks to extra volume in collections surrounding Yuga Labs and Proof.
- Solana’s resurgence was inevitable, as the now juggernaut blockchain holds the #2 spot in the blockchain rankings this week behind $50.22m in
sales.
- Bitcoin had a fantastic week last week even with traders in that ecosystem focusing on $BTC itself more than Ordinals. Still, sales climbed 6.47% to $48.61m, and
sentiment is maybe higher than ever with anticipation of the upcoming Runes protocol.
- Mythos Chain has now flipped Polygon on the Blockchain Rankings thanks to those always popular CounterStrike skins on DMarket. This week DMarket represents 97% of
Mythos Chain’s $6.74m in sales.
- A historic NFT sale has swept the NFT community off their feet when 10 LarvaLabs Autoglyphs were sold to a
private collector yesterday for $14.5m. This is not just the biggest NFT sale of the year, but a milestone moment for the NFT space as a top 5 all-time sale.
- Yuga Labs dominated the news last week, first with an announcement from the ApeCoin DAO that they are
building an ApeChain on Arbitrum, and then Yuga Labs themselves announcing their acquisition of Proof. To cap it off, they then teased an IRL club that will be opening in Miami.
- Magic Eden will be offering rewards not for listings, bids, and sales, but instead for minting NFTs. Rewards
will start with their new Ethereum marketplace on Feb 27, with Season 2 following next with Solana NFT collections.
- Bitcoin art had a big week last week, with Far, the artist behind the Quantum Cats launching a new art collection called FLARES, and then Harto released a free 10k long-form generative art collection called FloraForms. Combined the collections saw $1.45m in sales.
NFTs’ green run continues this week with the Forkast 500 NFT Index reflecting a market gain of 0.29%.
Crypto prices continue to climb, and grail NFT sales are fueling collectors' buying habits. A substantial amount of FUD in Yuga Labs collections, combined with traders not
wanting to miss out on crypto gains led to traders taking $12.5m in losses on NFT sales last week. But if that couldn’t drive the market’s value down, at this point, what can? This is an increasingly spicy time for NFTs, but it does require that crypto continues its run.
Be smart and keep your finger on the pulse of this market, by keeping your eyes on CryptoSlam and the indexes. You can stay plugged in by fixing your vision on our daily NFT
market updates with Inside NFTs.
Have a MEGA GM! The Glenlivet - The Twelve Elements
Date - Feb 20 Blockchain - Ethereum
Price - 14.75 ETH CFW - Palette
Date - Feb 20
Blockchain - Ethereum
Price - TBA Empress Trash - Sharp Objects
Date - Feb 22
Blockchain - Ethereum
Price - .1 ETH Dario De Siena - Flux Date - Feb
22 Blockchain - Solana
Price - .25 SOL
The Wizards of Ord Date - Feb 22 Blockchain - Bitcoin Price - TBA Marvel - Blade Date - Feb 24 Blockchain - ImmutableX
Price - $50 |
FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, and is a term used in the investment world for negative comments. The term FUD may imply that the negative comments are inaccurate or made with the purpose of affecting an asset’s price in a negative way, so these comments are labeled as FUD in a way to discredit them.
These days FUD has become a term used commonly as it has been adopted as internet slang. There’s more to learn about the term and how it’s used, so dive in and see the FUD for yourself.
Happy researching! Watch all of our episodes on Youtube. Don't have time to watch? Listen! All of our episodes are available to listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Received this from a friend? Sign
up for this twice-a-week CryptoSlam VIP newsletter. |
|
