For the Love of the Game (Market Commentary) |
We just had yet another milestone week, not just for
2024, but for the Web3 history books. Let’s break down what’s unfolded since we last met. The political landscape around crypto has dramatically shifted, with Trump doubling down again on his pro-bitcoin and crypto stance. Now he’s also advocating for self-custody, opposing CBDCs, and even suggesting he would
free The Silk Road’s founder, Ross Ulbricht. Not to be outdone, Joe Biden also expressed support for crypto guidelines and regulations. Last week the US House passed FIT21, which aims to shift some crypto regulation from the SEC to the CFTC, and then the SEC did a surprising 180 on Ethereum ETFs, taking the first steps towards approval. This is a new era for crypto and NFTs, the era of mass adoption.
It’s not just politicians who will be ushering in millions of new crypto and NFT users, but now some of the world’s biggest celebrities
have found their way to the blockchain.
This week Caitlyn Jenner launched her own token on Solana called $JENNER. As you’d expect, it was a rocket, and more than that, a sign that a run like 2021/22 is definitely heading our way. While crypto is getting ready to cook, NFT sales fell to another 2024 low, and now a 29-week low. We also saw a decline across the board in sellers, buyers, transactions, sales prices, and profits. There’s really no bright spot here in NFTs, but given that we trade in cycles, it’s hard to not be excited for what might come after the memecoin supercycle. - Sales in the general Ordinals collection fell another 15.20% to $13.45M this week as the Runes ecosystem
cannibalized sales and Ethereum NFTs also gained traction.
- DMarket was the top individual NFT collection this week with their Rust, DOTA2, and Counterstrike gaming skins seeing over $5.57M in sales.
- Guild of Guardians Avatars on Immutable-zk, like DMarket, shows the power of gaming NFTs as its $5.33M in sales beat every PFP collection across all
blockchains.
- Nodemonkes are at a steep discount now as are all of the other top ordinals collection. While Nodemonkes’ prices are now down to .2 $BTC, collectors are smelling an
opportunity and pushing sales up 4.11% from last week.
- Fantasy Top was the flavor of the week in NFTs the past few weeks, but is cooling off as the rewards may not be balanced quite right. Perhaps the biggest factor is the
unrelenting pace of tweeting the “hero” influencers were needing to keep up, and as they throttled back, so did this collection’s NFT sales.
- CryptoPunks faced some of the most unrelenting FUD the collection has ever seen last week, following the disastrous Super Punk World collection by Yuga Labs and Nina
Chanel. In the end, the collection’s auction was canceled and the NFTs are now being air-dropped to random Super Cool World holders, but if you’re in the community you’ve felt that the damage may be long-lasting.
- Ethereum is the top blockchain for NFT sales now 2 weeks in a row. ETH ETF
approvals have collectors hopeful that a turnaround for the ecosystem is near. But at least in the short term, sales still fell 1.01% to $39.76M
- Bitcoin saw the 2nd biggest loss of sales volume out of the top ten blockchains last week with sales falling 16.79%. There are plenty of reasons why, ranging
from Ethereum’s grail collections doing numbers, to Solana and Blast’s gamified ecosystems stealing the show.
- Solana’s NFTs continue to struggle while the fungible token side of that ecosystem booms. Ethereum ETFs have re-ignited the memecoin craze, and now celebrities
like Caitlyn Jenner and Iggy Azaela are releasing their own memecoins. Pro tip - this is likely bullish for NFTs on Solana too.
- Polygon outperformed Solana, Bitcoin and Ethereum when it comes to the 7d change in volume, with its $7.31% gain compared to losses that the top 3 chains
faced.
- Pudgy Penguins’ Luca Nets is betting that his collection will see a $100K floor price in the future. Sentiment in NFTs is at an almost all-time low, and as traders
voiced their opinion that we’ll never see 6 figure floors again, Luca swept right in to take that bet. I’m with Luca on this.
- SKGirl has been the top Polygon collection in the past week thanks to its rewarding infused NFTs. Holding multiple NFTs, earning USDT is an easy sell to plenty of
collections, and has driven over $1.71M in sales volume this week.
- Pixelmon launched their $MON token this week which will power the massive MON Protocol gaming ecosystem. Holders of Pixelmon NFTs received an allocation of tokens depending
on the rarity of their NFT, so rarity hunting was the name of the game in the past week. The Pixelmon collection traded for over $1.89M on secondary markets this week.
- Animoca’s Mocaverse announced details of their token allocation for their NFT holders, sending the collection soaring on the
positive news. Sales were up 27.27% in the past week to $1.64M, though it was largely unique sellers (24.56) driving this volume to existing buyers (up just 4.55%).
It’s no surprise that the CryptoSlam 500 NFT Index is flashing red again this week, given the sentiment around NFTs in the community. Some feel that non-fungible
tokens will never come back, and it’s easy to understand why when the top dogs like CryptoPunks continue to alienate the community. Still, crypto is primed for new ATH, and when that arrives it will send NFT prices flying. That is unless traders don’t think they’re worth an even higher asking price. It’s an
interesting scenario we’ll watch play out this year, and it’s likely the time that we’ll start seeing traders demonstrate that they price their NFTs in USD.
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 new daily Web3 live show called Chain Reactor.
Have a MEGA GM! — Yehudah Petscher Marvel - Fantastic Four #49
Date - May 29
Blockchain - ImmutableX
Price - $6.99 USD Jhekub - Get Based
Date - May 28
Blockchain - Base
Price - .00125 ETH |
In the world of NFTs and Web3, a "rug pull" refers to a malicious action where developers abandon a project and run away with investors' funds. It typically happens after a significant amount of money has been invested into an NFT or crypto project, and it leaves investors with worthless assets. As we ramp up to a
wild bull market, make sure you understand how and why rug pulls exist so you can protect yourself from them.
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