For the Love of the Game (Market Commentary) |
There’s never a dull moment in crypto. From the scare of tariffs last week and hope that the Trump
administration would announce tangible plans for crypto, to new memecoin madness from Hawk Tuah, Dave Portnoy, and even Kanye West, this past week was one of the craziest we’ve seen yet in 2025. Let’s dive into some of the most noteworthy happenings of the week. - Dave Portnoy is no stranger to crypto. He has long talked about his bitcoin trades and his experience in SafeMoon, but this week he found his way into the memecoin trenches. It started with the Barstool sports legend buying and tweeting about random memecoins and devolved into Dave basically taking over a token called Jailstool and promising to push the token to a $500m market cap. Will it actually materialize? It’s hard to say after alienating some of his biggest supporters like Choose Rich Nick. But Dave is a force to be reckoned with and has massive connections. Keep your eyes on this one.
- Hawk Tuah made her highly anticipated return to the blockchain via a podcast she recorded with
Threadguy and Faze Banks. In their episode, she revealed what happened with her memecoin and how her team scammed traders, and she explored ways to make it right. The only problem with the interview was that it wasn’t supposed to be released,
and as we’ve come to expect from her team, they leaked info about the podcast, traded on the speculation, and then released the podcast without Threadguy’s approval. Yikes.
- Kanye West returned to X this past week and tweeted many awful things that cannot be repeated. But at one point he questioned if crypto is real money, fueling speculation that he would be releasing a token. West quickly pivoted and stated he would not be dropping a token before deactivating his X account, but if I were a betting man I’d wager that we’ll see a Ye token before the end of this cycle.
OpenSea’s upcoming token has spawned rumor after rumor about when it will arrive and how it will work ever since they revealed their OpenSea Foundation website. They’re adding fuel to the fire as well by making multiple mistakes along the way including a big one this week when their Foundation website went live accidentally. Their site stated that US residents cannot claim the OS token and that VPN users will be ineligible to claim, and as you might expect, this led to major FUD.
Devin Fizer, the CEO of
OpenSea, posted on X and stated that the text on the website was generic legal text and is not the true criteria for the claim. We’ll find out who is telling the truth in the near future once token claim details are live. Berachain Launches and Is Actually Bearish The highly anticipated Berachain launch went live late last week, and while there was some hype ahead of the launch, reality set in that this is just another blockchain. Their Bera token launched with an initial market cap of $1.3b and has now fallen to $577m, while NFTs in the ecosystem can’t seem to find any traction. Still, people who minted Bong Bears last year for .069 ETH could have realized $2m of profit from their NFT and token drops. For those select few, it would be hard to call this anything other than a win. We’ll keep our eyes on the Steady Teddy mint this week to see if Berachain is ready to really wake up, or go into deep hibernation. - Some sad news hit the art community yesterday when we learned that an artist named Rutherford Chang
passed away. He was known for creating one of the top art collections on Bitcoin called Cents, which saw 10k pennies each inscribed on 1 sat, and then the physical pennies melted down and auctioned at Christie's. This coincided with news that Donald Trump ordered the discontinuation of penny production, and both stories combined to send the Cents collection up over 140%.
- The iconic artist Beeple also had some big news in the past week when he announced that his HUMAN ONE
digital work received an update. The big surprise was that 24 words that make up a seed phrase were hidden somewhere in the HUMAN ONE video, and the first person to find them would be able to claim 2 free Beeple NFTs from the corresponding
wallet. It took a few days but the NFTs were claimed earlier this week by a very lucky NFT collection.
- DMarket is the #1 NFT collection by sales volume this week with $8.79m in sales. Sellers climbed +7.53% as gaming skins
continue to find buyers in any market conditions.
- Courtyard NFT sales are up +25.78% to $7.35m with buyers up +122.44% on the week. Some rare sports and collectible cards have been pulled in Courtyard packs
this week like this $7,500 rare Pokemon card.
- CryptoPunks sales fell -30.01% to $5.26m with buyers down -40%. The collection did have a feel-good story when one of the rarest zombie punks in the
collection was returned to its original owner after being stolen just a few weeks ago.
- Pudgy Penguins saw $5.12m in sales in the past 7d, down --55.29% from the prior week. The top Web3 brand burned over $150M worth of their $Pengu token last week and is gearing up for big announcements on Abstract chain, along with their own new partnerships.
- Ethereum was the top blockchain by NFT sales volume with $62.71m in
sales, though buyers fell -60.75% on the week.
- Mythos Chain sales were up +4.66% to $13.97m as DMarket carried the hot blockchain to the #2 spot on the week.
- Solana sales fell -32.56% to $11.08m with buyers down -90.55% on the week. There wasn’t a single Solana collection in the top ten this week, but the
top SOL collection was Mad Lads with $1.51m in sales.
- NFT sales fell to a 14-week low, coming in at just $94.45m in sales. Across the board, the NFT market was down, but nothing stands out more than unique buyers and trade profits.
- Buyers fell to their lowest level in almost 16 months, with just 164k buyers. This is the lowest since the week of October 23 2023 when we saw 144k buyers.
- Trade profits also fell to their lowest point in almost 34 months, with -$23.87m in profits. This was the lowest since the week of Dec 26 2022 when we saw -$52.59m in profits.
The CryptoSlam 500 NFT Index is down -3.31% in the past 7d as the NFT market continues searching for a bottom. So far in this short year the market is down -16.38% during a time that’s supposed to be the hottest few months for
NFTs.
Traders continue to search for any signs that the crypto market will find stability and begin its next leg up before they’re willing to collect NFTs at their current prices. The only problem is, they’re not holding while they wait, instead, they’re selling to lock in any liquidity they can in case the market falls further. In the short term at least, it seems like that’s the only direction for us.
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 Bm2c
Date - Feb 11
Blockchain -
Berachain
Price - 16.17 BERA
Emmy on Berachain
Date - Feb 11
Blockchain - Berachain
Price -
Free
Baseheads
Date - Feb 12
Blockchain - Bitcoin
Price - .0016
BTC
Typical Tigers
Date - Feb 21
Blockchain - ApeChain Price -
Free Based Bulls
Date - Feb 22
Blockchain
- Abstract
Price - .037 ETH |
A wrapper is code that is written to be applied to other blockchain assets, that lets you move that asset to a non-native location, like another blockchain. Ethereum can be wrapped and turned into WETH, then used on blockchains like Polygon.
NFTs like Ordinals can be wrapped and then traded on Ethereum. Wrappers can typically be removed and will leave the original asset intact with its provenance. It’s a useful solution for all types of blockchain assets, so dive in to learn more about its many use cases. Happy researching! Received this from a friend? Sign up for this CryptoSlam VIP newsletter. |
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