For the Love of the Game

(Market Commentary)

“Germany, stop it”, our bags are begging you. 

There were fireworks on the 4th of July, and it wasn’t just in the nighttime sky. The German government has been selling off their bitcoin holdings at an unprecedented pace since June, and it’s now apparent they were saving their grand finale for July. Last Monday was the start of the country’s massive BTC selloff, which so far has seen over $1B worth of bitcoin liquidated and bitcoin’s price down to levels last seen in February. 

Their motive for selling over half of their holdings (and counting)  isn’t clear, but it might be safe to assume they are front-running the MtGox liquidation. Remember, MtGox is returning $9B worth of Bitcoin to creditors beginning as soon as this month. The market’s reaction to Germany liquidating a fraction of that should help you see what may be on the horizon for crypto.

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NFTs live and die by crypto (which comes down to Bitcoin), so the potential for the NFT market this summer seems capped. 

There is some good news that could turn the tide though. ETFs have brought some stability to the market as we saw yesterday with $294M in BTC ETF inflows. This was the single best performance for the ETFs in 1 month.  

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You could easily say it’s bullish that Bitcoin is sitting at $57K, so I’m going to do exactly that. It’s a bullish indicator. 

We also saw a record number of Ordinals wallets created last Tuesday when nearly 55k new Ordinals wallets were created. Today the total number of ordinal wallets stands at over 2.7 million.

Source

I’ve said in the past that the next NFT bull run would happen on Bitcoin, and that still holds true today. More liquidity in the market from ETFs, and more users in the ordinals ecosystem than ever before has us primed for a truly special run.
 

The NFT market surprisingly had its second week in a row of increasing sales. More importantly, wash sales fell to their lowest total since the week of October 2 ($17.16M).

The trading we’re seeing in the NFT market now feels like genuine collecting and less gamification of assets. 

It’s safe to say we’re in an accumulation phase for NFTs as traders so far this year have barely been rewarded with any profits. The fact that they’re still engaged and still buying NFTs should be very telling of how they view the future. While the short term is uncertain, the belief in Bitcoin, crypto, and the NFT market in the long run remains steadfast. For now, they’re just having fun collecting.

Peep the charts

• DMarket wears the crown as your top NFT collection this week with $4.08M in sales. Its 168,958 transactions beat all of the other top 10 collections combined too, as the mainstream gaming skins continue to cook this summer.

• Pudgy Penguins are the top PFP of the week, even with sales falling 42.66%. They’re the biggest builders in NFTs at this point and their steady sales volume reflects that status.

• Froganas are cooking and are also a sign that Solana NFTs are maybe coming back to life. In the past 7d, the collection saw a 102.21% increase in sales, now up to $2.36M on the week.

• $Pizza BRC-20s are hot once again, somehow bucking the trend of other fungible tokens on bitcoin, and actually gaining value since July 4th.

• Ethereum is the top blockchain by NFT sales volume for the 4th week in a row. Its $35.3M in sales is up 6.16% from last week, as traders get back to genuine collecting after the Blast and Blur chapter comes to a close.

• Solana sales fell 27.36% to $17.5M. Don’t let the declining volume fool you into thinking Solana is cooling off. Sentiment in that ecosystem is high thanks to plenty of ETF speculation, and Solana NFTs will be a major flex once the blockchain reaches the masses.

• Bitcoin saw the highest percent increase in sales volume out of the top five blockchains thanks to BRC20s and collectors finding value in some of the top collections. Sales came in at $17.1M, climbing 7.29% from the prior week.

Noteworthy Happenings

• Mocaverse’s $MOCA token is coming on July 11th, and you better believe the broader NFT community is hyped. Their NFTs and open metaverse aim to be one of the premier metaverse experiences, along with a platform that connects thousands of collectors around Web3. Sales are up 30.80% on the week to $509K.

• Blast had its first gold distribution of the new year-long season, which saw platforms like Thruster and Fantasy Top receive over 1.1m gold each. Each platform will disturb the gold to its users, who now have tempered their expectations for the value that might be driven back to them.

• The Quantum Cats are back to delivering golden capes to some lucky holders, who will have the option to swap their cat for a highly desired Taproot Wizard. The collection is now up 21.77% on the week to $1.17M in sales.

NFT forecast

The CryptoSlam 500 NFT Index shows a resilient NFT market that lost just 0.76% of its value this week. While crypto prices have fallen, the value of NFTs has mostly remained stagnant and actually is up in the past few days. Lower crypto prices are the primary driver of the weekly decline, but cheaper prices might be driving some collecting by a community that still believes that the NFT cycle hasn’t even started yet.

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

News Headlines

• Threadguy interviewed Andrew Tate, drawing big eyes from a non-crypto audience

• 3AC purchased a 20 ETH NFT by accident, thanks to a bid left nearly 3 years ago.

• Shatterline game will feature former Yuga Labs assets, HV-MTL.

• DraftKings lawsuit will continue as Judge will decide if they are a security.

• Sei’s v2 mainnet beta is now live as the EVM blockchain airdrops token rewards to NFT collectors. 

Upcoming Drops

ElmonX - Girl with a Pearl Earring
Date - July 11
Blockchain - Ethereum
Price - .038 and 0.21 ETH

Hybrid - Hybots
Date - July 12
Blockchain - Solana

Price - .05 SOL

Marvel Mightys - Spider-Man: Series 2
Date - July 13
Blockchain - ImmutableX
Price - $15 USD