For the Love of the Game (Market Commentary) |
2024 is now past the halfway point, and to be honest, expectations for a big year in NFTs have not been
met. That’s not to say the year hasn’t been solid. In fact, 6 months in, we have seen $6.46B in sales compared to $5.32B last year. It’s just that we were expecting a repeat of the 21/22 market.
Blast’s TGE last week was supposed to be a defining moment for
traders this year, and in a way, it did end up being that. Not for good reason, though, as it ended up not being the rocket fuel we needed to get this market in motion. Instead, Blast highlighted how weak many of the products traders spend time with actually are. For the most part, traders were wrecked, and now are swearing off farming platforms made by Pacman. The feeling from Pacman is mutual, as the rewards were revealed to be a measly 500 million $BLAST tokens for the new 12-month Blur farming season
4. Somehow NFT prices and volume ended up being up last week with traders actually getting more bullish on news that gamified NFT trading may be a thing of the past (for now..). Pudgy Penguins flipped BAYC again, now with a record 2.5 $ETH separation between them, Milady’s reached a new ATH of 5.8 $ETH, MadLads climbed to a
100+ $SOL floor, and for at least 1 day, OpenSea regained its crown as the top NFT marketplace in the world. Most of the action in the past week comes from big news, like Solana ETF filings, new Blinks and Actions, and Ethereum’s Pudgy Penguins announcing that they’re launching their own blockchain called
Abstract. After getting burned by Blast, traders are hyped for some real building. The type that sets the stage for the mass adoption that we have been preached about for years. The announcements last week, are the building blocks that will get us
there. Diving into last week’s numbers, we broke a 3-week streak of declining sales volume. Global NFT sales climbed 8.53% to $101.8M, but nearly every other metric fell. It’s the 12.31% rise in average sales price that gave us the boost we needed to see sales up on the week. The most striking data point is
that wash sales fell -61.03% thanks to farmers calling it quits on Blur. This is the lowest week of wash sales we’ve seen in 2024 and at this point a fresh 38-week low. The second half of the year promises to be another learning experience. Will we see NFTs bounce back in late July like in 2021, or will the run come later in the year like the previous two years? And will loss harvesting be greater this year
than last, given that so far this year traders are up $139.19M in profits, while at this time last year, sellers had accumulated $142.75M in losses? We’ll find out soon, but for now, back to collecting. - Pudgy Penguins are officially the face of NFTs (no disrespect to CryptoPunks). They recently announced their parent company, Igloo Inc, and on Friday revealed that they are acquiring the Frame blockchain. Frame is now renamed to Abstract, and its testnet will launch as soon as next week. Pudgy Penguins ripped on the news, finding a 12.5 $ETH floor and speculation from their founder Luca Netz that the collection will hit 200 $ETH this cycle.
- MadLads benefitted from all of the bullish Solana news last week like ETFs, Blinks, and Actions, and saw sales rocket 296.65% in the past week.
- DMarket remains one of the most consistent collections here in Web3. If you’re a gamer, you almost definitely play games with skins traded on their marketplace, like CounterStrike, DOTA2, and
Rust.
- NodeMonkes and Bitcoin
Puppets saw some life this week after the broader NFT ecosystem finally started seeing some action. Monkeys saw sales climb 16.44% while Puppets are up 47.52%.
- Ethereum is again the top blockchain by sales volume, thanks to strong sales in Pudgy Penguins,
CryptoPunks, BAYC, Milady, Lil Pudgys, and other top-tier collections. New mints so far aren’t showing up here yet, but if sales continue like this, it may not be long until the new mint season kicks off.
- Solana is really the story of the week, with its big ETF news and Blinks/Actions products. The NFT ecosystem was the biggest winner of the week, though, with sales up 108.29%. NFT summer
is maybe almost here.
- Bitcoin needs to find some life, but since $BTC itself is struggling to maintain its price, it’s easy to see why traders have held off on buying ordinals. Still, there are significant
collections over here that are near their 2024 lows, and believe me, some people are taking full advantage of that.
- It has to be said again, Pudgy Penguins are the face of NFTs. Now with the Frame blockchain being announced as the third pillar next to Pudgy Penguins and OverpassIP, Luca Netz is on a mission to drive consumer crypto to the masses. Frame, now renamed to Abstract, was supposed to go live in January, but now we know the reason for the delay. This layer 2
blockchain will bring a token into the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem, and the blockchain, if it remains the way Frame advertised it earlier in the year, will enforce royalties at the blockchain level.
- Solana made the biggest waves in Web3 last week, as their ETF and Blinks/Actions news kickstarted an NFT frenzy. In fact, 2 brand new NFT collections called Sensei and GigaBuds had their mints and quickly shot up into the 24-hour top ten. On the week they’re sitting at #14 and #20 with $2.15M in sales and $1.44M. Keep your eyes on more new mints on Solana…
- Solana Monkey Business and Froganas on Solana were two of the week’s top performers, with sales ripping 358.26% and 1,476.13% respectively. Yet again, the Solana ecosystem is feeling primed to explode with all of the bullish news last week, and these collections are proof.
- NFTs top-selling artist Pak returned to X this week after a 2-year absence following the release of Julian Assange from prison.
Pak’s Censored collection saw its metadata updated to remove the line through the words on each NFT’s image. Pak may not be back full-time, but seeing an artist of this magnitude return certainly brings some buzz.
How about that, a green week for NFTs! The CryptoSlam 500 NFT Index reflects the action we’ve been feeling in NFTs which has pushed the index up 0.72% to 1,399.85. Crypto has stabilized, and traders are clearly enjoying collecting NFTs in a less
gamified environment. Right now there’s a lot of optimism around Solana in particular thanks to the liquidity that arrives with ETFs. They won’t help much in the short term, but the writing is on the wall that Solana is the juggernaut many people believed it to be. 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 |
A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value by being pegged to a reserve of assets, such as a fiat currency like the US dollar, a commodity like gold, or a basket of cryptocurrencies. The goal is to minimize price volatility and provide a reliable store of value and medium of exchange.
In a way, they’re becoming the backbone of crypto, as traders move between their positions in tokens, back to stablecoins, and then onto other assets. Dive in to find out what the world’s top stablecoins are and why they matter so much.
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