For the Love of the Game (Market Commentary) |
Two steps forward, one step back. Saturday changed the way the world looks at crypto. They already
thought this space was full of scams, but Javier Milei’s involvement in the now infamous Libra token has crypto facing a new type of scrutiny, including from the Web3 community. Now we’re in the midst of potentially a black swan event that could shake the Solana ecosystem to its core and change the way we trade
tokens. It impacts crypto, and it impacts NFTs, but in the end, it’s going to lead to a much more secure and transparent future.
So what happened this past week? Let’s dive in. Libra Memecoin, the Great Reset for the Trenches. On Saturday, Javier Milei along with a team of questionable crypto insiders released a token called Libra. This initially looked like a copycat of the Trump or Melania tokens (and in many ways it was), but just a few days removed from the launch
it has now become one of the biggest scandals in crypto history. When Libra went live, it quickly rocketed to a $4.5B market cap, but within 45 minutes the price collapsed to $150M after the team withdrew $100M. Since then we have learned of multiple insiders who were tipped off to the launch and others like Dave Portnoy who were paid in tokens for marketing.
The team
behind the token was the same team that launched the Melania token last month, and just like the team sniped tokens on the Libra launch, we’ve now learned they also sniped and sold tokens on the First Lady token. More troubling details continue to emerge, including private messages from Hayden Davis (one of the main players in the market-making scam) that show his plans to "max extract” from the launch. We now risk real contagion as we’re learning that the Jupiter DEX’s own team members were possibly sniping
tokens and tipping off their friends to multiple token launches.
Solana’s memecoin ecosystem is in the midst of a great reset, with traders finally realizing how small their chances are at hitting a payday organically trading unless you’re an insider.
The industry
is almost universally calling out this team and launch and is pushing for changes at the platform level. Even Pump Fun’s founder Alon weighed in expressing his disgust.
Libra is a deeply impactful scandal, but as bad as it is, exposing the scam and weeding out the bad actors (some of whom will almost certainly face prison time), will put us on a path to resume this special bull run. In fact, the further we kick this can down the road, the more destructive it will be. It’s probably good that we’re dealing with this now before the masses fully
arrive. OpenSea opened the doors to their OS2 marketplace beta and has
brought incentivized trading back full throttle. Whether you loved or hated Blur farming, that’s exactly what’s going on with NFTs, and with it, a lot of NFT sales volume. For the first time in 2 years, OpenSea trading volume has flipped
Blur.
The community is split with many strongly disliking fake trades, while others (myself included) don’t see a huge problem with it. Ultimately, the stage is being set for OpenSea’s
upcoming SEA token, which was also officially announced last week. Early NFT traders and current platform users will all get in on the token action, so for now we await tokenomics, launch date, and other details. NFT art sales will one day flip the traditional art market. It’s a matter of when, not if, and last week we saw a major milestone on that journey. Sam Spratt, whose previous work titled The Monument Game sold for over $700K, recently revealed his new 1/1 work, Masquerade. Within days the stunning work sold via a private sale for $3M to a private buyer named Kanbas.
Next, we’ll see a public sale for his Mask collection which will let collectors interact with the Masquerade art experience online. Yuga Labs’ Meebits are Yuga Labs’ no more. Last month we heard rumors that CryptoPunks were on the chopping block and being shopped around to a new owner. It turns out that it was partially true, but it was the other Larva Labs-created collection, Meebits, that found a new home with a new company called MeebCo. They’ll be building out the Meebits IP, most likely in the Otherside metaverse to start, but expect to see them showing up around Web3. Doodles officially announced their upcoming token which will be called DOOD. It will be launched on Solana and then in the future will be bridged to the Base blockchain.
30% of the token supply will go to Doodles holders, but the hype around NFT projects’ tokens has fallen drastically after Pengu, Anime, and the new Libra disaster. The MegaETH blockchain minted out their Fluffle NFT collection for 1 ETH each, bringing in over $13.26M in sales. The NFTs are soulbound tokens that will lead to a large allocation of the chain’s native token. - Doodles are the #1 collection in the past 7d thanks to hype for their DOOD token plus bonus XP on OpenSea trading. Sales were up +1,004.63% to $16.17M, with
buyers up +541.49%, and floor at 3.84 ETH.
- DMarket saw $10.03M in sales, up +10.39% from the prior week, while buyers fell -3.48%.
- Pudgy Penguins sales climbed +135.87% to $9.97M on the week, with buyers up +96.08%. The collection’s floor price fell -17.5% in the past 7d to 8.73 ETH.
Pudgy Penguins will be in Hong Kong at Consensus 2025 starting today, driving their brand recognition IRL.
- Azuki sales came in at $8.45M, up +121.53%, with buyers up +92.75%. Anime Coin announced a partnership with Parrot Analytics and will publish a Global Top 40 Anime Chart monthly on their platform.
- Bored Ape Yacht Club sales are up +115.42% to $5.18M with buyers up +93.02%. The collection’s floor price fell -4.1% to 13.25
ETH.
- Ethereum sales rocketed up +91.30% to $99.36M in the past 7d, and you
can thank OpenSea’s new farming for the extra volume. But where you really see the farming is in wash sales, which were up +477.86% on the week.
- Bitcoin sales are down -32.26% to $20.97M as the ordinals ecosystem continues to struggle. No bitcoin collections made the Top Ten this week, and
key collections like Bitcoin Puppets are hitting an all-time low floor price of .047 BTC.
- Mythos Chain sales climbed +6.40% to $15.19M with buyers up +146.39% on the week.
- Solana NFT sales are up +12.58% to $11.39M in the past 7d. Buyers are up +172.85% and we’ll keep an eye on this ecosystem as it suffers from the
Libra scandal.
- It was a mixed bag across the NFT market last week, although sales volume is now up for the 2nd week in a row.
- Wash sales are up tremendously too, but while OpenSea farming did drive some volume, a change to the farming formula might put an end to the extra volume just as soon as it started.
- Trade profits are still deep in the negative, coming in at -$9.18M. It doesn’t matter what chain you’re focused on, here’s not a lot of winning trades out there.
The CryptoSlam 500 NFT Index fell -0.78% in the past 7d. Bitcoin is down -2.3%, ETH -4.6%, and Solana -9.5% over that period, which impacts the USD value of NFTs. Luckily some of the top NFT collections saw floor price increases in the
past week.
We’re in a precarious time for the markets with the Solana Libra token and the fallout that extends to the Jupiter DEX (and Moonshot, Meteora) possibly being a black swan event that puts this bull market on pause. There’s breaking news almost on an hourly basis that could further sway the direction of the markets.
Still, crypto adoption is only growing, and eventually, it will fuel a run that
will make this past week look like a small blip on the radar.
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 - Pump Fun has launched a mobile app for launching and buying memecoins.
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Sniping in memecoins is the practice of using bots or insider knowledge to buy newly launched tokens the moment they go live, often before regular traders can react. Snipers front-run the market by paying high gas fees or exploiting contract
details, securing tokens at the lowest prices. They typically sell quickly for massive profits, leading to extreme volatility and often leaving retail investors holding the bag. This tactic, while lucrative for insiders, is widely criticized for creating unfair advantages and market manipulation. Received this from a friend? Sign up for this CryptoSlam VIP newsletter. |
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