For the Love of the Game (Market Commentary) |
Houston we have a problem in NFTs. We thought we were heading to the moon this year. Heck, I thought we
were heading well beyond. But a massive problem that needed to be solved in the bear market has reared its ugly head again this week, and it’s a problem that will keep us from lifting off until it’s solved.
That issue is, what is the value of NFTs? We never found the true bottom for NFTs in the bear market, even with the public declaring that NFTs were now finally worthless. The truth is they weren't. While they weren’t liquid, many of the top NFTs
like Bored Apes still commanded a 25+ $ETH floor. Fast forward to today and Bored Apes are now listed for under 9 $ETH. It’s not just FUD that’s driving down prices, and it’s not entirely a lack of faith in NFTs. Now it’s a complete lack of liquidity that has evaporated from the market, specifically on the Blur
marketplace. Yesterday, the top farmer on Blur named CBB0FE, announced that he was ending his farming, as the end of Season 3 comes to a close.
CBB0FE, which is a small team of traders, was responsible for nearly 40% of all loans and liquidity on the Blur marketplace. With their abrupt halt to trading, the NFT market has suddenly entered a freefall.
Now we’ll see a cascading effect as the sudden drop in prices is sending many loans across multiple platforms underwater, which will trigger auctions to hit the market and drive prices down even further.
What will end the bleeding? Collectors finding value at low prices, crypto hitting new ATHs and getting traders in the spending spirit, or maybe other whales coming in to support the collections they are invested in can turn this right around,
but truthfully, it’s probably not going to happen in the short term.
Regardless, price discovery is much needed to reset the NFT market, and really, to reset traders' expectations. The silver lining is that during this phase of price discovery, savvy traders will find some major bargains. Don’t sleep on this
market. Speaking of the market, last week was a return to declining sales. In fact we yet again found another 2024 low for sales, and even worse, the lowest in 32 weeks.
Wash sales saw an increase, likely to do with the end of Blur Season 3 and traders looking for last-minute points to earn more $BLUR. To end on a bright spot, trade profits did finish in the positive for the first time in 2 months. It may not
move the needle or even mean anything in the context of this market, but we’ll take that one shining bright spot in this otherwise pretty awful market.
- DMarket is your top NFT collection in the past week as the rest of the NFT market is taking a beating. Like in the bear market, DMarket’s gaming skins are a consistent performer because their
assets are less focused on speculation and more focused on actual utility and demand.
- $PIZZA BRC-20s dropped to the #2 spot but still outsold every PFP on any blockchain with its $4.2M in sales. Don’t take the high ranking as an indicator that fungible tokens are doing
well though, because they’re down just as bad as NFTs.
- CryptoPunks are in a very interesting spot as their floor price heads to the mid-20 $ETH range. Where will they find the support of collectors? It seems like that’s right around this level,
evidenced by the 83.49% increase in sales.
- Bored Apes also are seeing an increase in sales this week as their floor price falls below 10 $ETH for the first time since June 2021. Liquidity from Blur farmers has dried up, and
it’s the most expensive PFPs that are taking a hit first.
- Mocaverse continues to climb both in price and sales. Last month the collection average sales were as low as $8,748, and now are up nearly 2x to $14,349 today.
- Bitcoin Puppets, NodeMonkes, and OMB are still some of the top PFP collections in the world, even with sales stagnating. Puppets floor prices have fallen -21.7%, NodeMonkes -19.3%, and OMB just -1.3%.
- Ethereum reclaimed the top spot in the blockchain rankings this week even with sales down 3.46% to
$37.5M.
- Bitcoin was one of the biggest losers of the week, with sales down 53.92% to $21.9M. Ordinals volume was already low the past few weeks, but BRC-20s now pulling back was the biggest
factor in the Bitcoin ecosystem’s tumble.
- Polygon saw over $20.5M in NFT sales as the ETH layer 2 continues to outperform the Solana NFT market. It was the only top 5 blockchain to see sales increase on the
week.
- Solana sales fell 14.35% as both its NFT and fungible token ecosystem cooled off over the past week.
- The Doodles are moving their Stoodio (this is their ecosystem that was on Flow) to the Base blockchain. They’ll be in good company on Base, joining Adidas, and the legendary Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which just released on Base last week.
- Milady Maker sales stand out against the rest of the pack, with the collections floor price not budging in the thick of an NFT market crash, and then sales ripping over 146% on the week to
$1.9M.
- Pirate Nation had their TGE last week and saw sales rip 68.57% to $1.8M. The P2E game has an army of content creators and players who insist that we’re looking at one of the best Web3 games,
period.
- Pudgy Penguins are ramping up their Pudgy summer, but like the rest of the NFT market, their prices are plummeting. Today their floor price is just above 8 $ETH, while hundreds of underwater
loans threaten to dump even more supply on a market with few collectors waiting for them.
Crypto is struggling, and liquidity in NFTs is drying up faster than your front yard in the summertime. These factors combined are driving the NFT market down -1.94% in the past week, and there’s no relief coming anytime soon. Now we wait for the crypto market to turn around, and to be clear, it undoubtedly will. But the NFT market moves on its own and is waiting for other more significant factors, the most important of which is still - do collectors even value NFTs like they used to? Price discovery is here, and it’s going to get ugly in the short
term. 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
- The Vatican Library is launching a soul-bound NFT collection this July.
Disney and Pixar - Cars Date - June 19 Blockchain - ImmutableX Price - $20.00 USD FineTurtle Date - June 19 Blockchain - Ethereum Price - 0.02 $ETH Bjorn Staal - Entangled Date - June 20 Blockchain - Ethereum and Tezos Price - 0.145 $ETH or 600 $XTZ
ElmonX - Pure Evil Genesis Bunny’s Date - June 21 Blockchain - Ethereum Price - 0.02
$ETH |
In the world of Web3, NFTs, and crypto, "liquidity" is all about how quickly and easily you can convert an asset into cash or another asset without causing a significant price drop. High liquidity means you can make moves fast at stable prices, while low liquidity might leave you stuck or force you to accept a
less-than-ideal price. Being liquid is key to being able to take advantage of opportunities in the Web3 space, so dive in to learn about why liquidity is king in crypto.
Happy researching!
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