For the Love of the Game (Market Commentary) |
Crypto Rebounds, NFTs Hold Steady: Gary Vee, What’s Next? A quick rebound from last Monday’s sudden market crash has the crypto and NFT markets settling into a bit of a waiting period. You can look at this as another calm before the storm, because market volatility is certainly not over yet. Coming up this week are some key market metrics that will help set the pace for the next couple of months. The US and UK both will be releasing CPI readings, Hong Kong and Taiwan’s updated GDP will be announced, Japan will reveal their latest Producer Price Index numbers, and then later this week we’ll see Alibaba and
Walmart’s latest earnings.
It’s expected that we’ll see CPI higher which could lead to early rate cuts, but the more likely scenario is that rate cuts come in September. An early surprise cut could send the markets soaring.
In the meantime the Web3 community was busy over the weekend with 2 major conferences - VeeCon in LA, and PepeFest at Beeple Studio in Charleston,
SC. Gary Vaynerchuk’s VeeCon made a noticeable shift away from NFTs, with no dedicated NFT Land for top projects to share their brand updates. To be fair, those are better served up at NFT NYC, Art Basel, or one of the many other NFT focused
conferences. It would be a mistake to say there was no NFT representation at VeeCon 2024, though. Greg Labuz, Head of NFTs at Polygon Labs, Steve (NFTBark), author of The Everything Token, Threadguy, one of Web3’s top content creators, and plenty more individuals from across the industry represented the
best of NFTs and fit in perfectly with the more traditional business personalities that had the spotlight at VeeCon this year. Now Gary Vee’s VeeFriends NFTs have mostly run out of utility after their 3 years worth of utility (VeeCon passes) are now used up. So what comes next? As Gary predicted, 99% of NFTs would be worthless, but have we really hit the bottom? Personally, I’m itching for an NFT State of the Union by Mr Vee to find out where on
the roadmap are we now, and what do the next 3-5 years look like for NFTs.
Moving on to Beeple’s PepeFest, this is where the degen side of Web3 partied over the weekend, and it represented the core culture of the space. The day featured speakers, artists showcases, gallery, costume contest, and even had a CyberTruck giveaway during a live drawing contest. We saw the best of both worlds across these 2 conventions, the technical builders, and the builders of culture. While the market isn’t anything to write home about, the people and what they’re up to sure as hell is.
As you’ve probably felt, the NFT market has been treading water for the past week, with most metrics down or flat. Global sales fell -7%, txns -5%, while sellers climbed nearly 17%. Trade profits fell to their lowest point in 2024, and the 2nd lowest since last July. Traders are taking losses, but maybe smartly getting liquid for a much hotter end to the
year. With memecoin’s energy fizzling out and a strong desire for NFTs to have a major rebound, we just might see some magic in the market this year. My fingers remain crossed. - DMarket is the king of NFTs this week with a whopping $9.4M in NFT sales. Over 27k unique buyers collected gaming skins from CounterStrike, DOTA2, Rust and other AAA non-crypto games on the Mythos
Blockchain.
- Sorare sales are still cooking ahead of the Sorare 2024-25 season kicking off this Friday. Collectors are scooping up the fantasy sports collectibles and spending $3.17M in the process as they set
their perfect lineups and compete for prizes across soccer, basketball, and baseball.
- DeGods are reborn again after re-imagining themselves as less of an NFT project and more of a memecoin alpha group. Sales are up over 367% in the past week to $2.63M and all it took was locking
their Discord server and opening a Telegram group.
- Ethereum is yet again the top blockchain for NFT sales with $25.55M in sales in the past 7d. Buyers fell
55.19% which was the lowest decline across the top 5 blockchains.
- Solana sales fell just 2.11% to $17.38M, while buyers plummeted 82.78%. Memecoins are cooling off as are NFT sales, but news that PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin supply is now larger on Solana
than on Ethereum shows that the best is yet to come on Solana.
- Bitcoin collectibles continue to struggle in the slow NFT market, with sales falling another 10.44% to $13.66M. As OP_CAT nears implementation, will more liquidity enter the ecosystem
and bring life back to ordinals?
- Kanpai Pandas were one of the week’s worst performing NFTs after one of their team members, Ice Bagz, helped launch the semi-rugged Restore the Republic token. $RTR collapsed following a
tweet from Donald Trump Jr distancing himself from the token, and then Kanpai Pandas floor price collapsed. Their price is now down 27% on the week with $696k in volume.
- Courtyard NFT sales are on the rise, now up to $1.13M this week thanks to their Brinks-backed collectibles that live on the Polygon blockchain. In the past couple of weeks Courtyard has worked
with The Collectibles Guru to promote a $25 buyback program on their virtual vending machine, which offers a variety of Pokemon and sports collectible cards.
- The Doodles remain one of the hottest stories in Web3 IP, and continue to bring the summer heat with some limited edition Adidas physical and
digital merch.
- Magic Eden has added a new layer of mempool projection when buying ordinals from their marketplace. You will now be alerted if your purchase has been “sniped” by mempool snipers,
and you’ll be given the opportunity to 1 up their fee.
The CryptoSlam 500 NFT Index is almost a mirror image of last week on its way to another -1.46% decline. Crypto has found some stability but NFTs have been steadily losing value as volume dries up this summer. The thesis remains the same, we
must find new ATHs in crypto to see the NFT markets roar back to life. It’s a matter of “when”, not “if”, so for the time being, we remain patient and ready.
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 Forsaken
Date - Aug 13
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A smart contract is a digital agreement written in code that automatically executes and enforces itself when certain conditions are met. It runs on blockchain networks, like Ethereum, and doesn’t need any middlemen to make sure the terms are
followed. Smart contracts power almost everything across blockchains, and soon may become a staple of bitcoin. Dive in to learn about why smart contracts are so important, and why they’re one of the most important aspects of decentralization. Happy researching! Received this from a friend? Sign up for this CryptoSlam VIP newsletter. |
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