Cartoon Lizards – A Safe Haven Asset
Cartoon Lizards – A Safe Haven Asset
😂🦎😂🦎
(Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)
Good morning, good evening, and welcome all. Seems like this has been one of the craziest weeks in a while. Equities and crypto continue to take a beating but hopefully you’re sitting pretty, cozy, warm, and bundled up in your nice comfy bag full of jpegs. As the rest of the world burns, there’s a lot of positivity in the air right now in NFT land and we’ve come a long way from the right-click savers dunking on all of us back in November. As the market heats up, we want to welcome the new 100+ subscribers this week – very exciting times and we’re glad to welcome you aboard our rocket ship. Some quick housekeeping before we dive in:
Big shout out to our discord community of 230+ members. Some of the best alpha in the space being generated in here, and as requested by our community members, we will be closing this off to new members within the next 48 hours and making it invite-only.
We have a lot of surprises for our community this upcoming Feb so stay tuned. If you are currently worried about being a “ngmi”, do not fret, this update in Feb is for you.
With all of that out of the way, it’s time to do what we do best – reflect on how absurd this moment in time is, and provide you with some alpha along the way.
“I legit had to go out for a walk yesterday to process I own a house deposit worth of lizard JPEGs from the analysis of a friendly cartoon Penguin” - @BowTiedDropBear
Meme Credit: @themikesteez
Macro Update
ETH down, NFTs up. We all knew this was the general correlation, but we didn’t expect it to hold up as strongly as it has in times like these. About to double-quote Jebus here because he’s been on-point throughout this drawdown.
We thought a 50% ETH drawdown would hurt the NFT market due to overall fear, but the whales continue to pile into jpegs at a rapid clip, and mass adoption is picking up. While the general consensus of CT was that defi would “kill” the banks and drive mass adoption to crypto, it seems that instead the dark horse here was cute animal pictures and monkey’s smoking a blunt.
CT anons are not the only ones recognizing the staying power of NFTs – large blue chip legacy corps are recognizing this as well, which is why you’re seeing monster partnerships formed like we saw with Mastercard and Coinbase. While we would NEVER in a million years recommend buying NFTs with a credit card (you would literally have to be on crack), when giant corporations who generally face major scrutiny when pursuing new initiatives, jump into a new space as controversial as NFTs, you have to imagine they’ve done their homework, at least to some extent.
Finally, to round out this macro update, we wanted to touch on what is probably the most interesting trend taking shape in the NFT world right now, which is NFT staking (shoutout to the Creepz for really showing how successful this could be). We have absolutely no idea how this will play out in the long run, but there are a couple things to note which lead us to believe that this has massive promise. 1) The fundamental idea of staking to generate passive income is revolutionary and deserves to be adopted by the mass. Community-led growth is the future whether you like it or not, and as a result, communities will be seeing larger and larger shares of the profits from the projects they support (as they should), with staking being a key mechanism to transfer this value to supporters. 2) NFTs have proven to capture the hearts and minds of the masses in a way that DeFi (which is where staking was initially rolled out) can never and will never be able to (besides Frog Nation which is a unicorn), likely due to the complexity, lack of sexiness, and reduced ability to form a tight knit community around.
TLDR, we’re early, anon.
Under the Radar: Fury Bandits
Collection size - 8,888
Price - Probably .088 ETH
Mint date - Mid Feb
This week’s sponsored project is the Fury Bandits. We connected with the founder here through the BTB community and we think this puppy might have some legs. Right now we think this project is pretty under the radar with only 2300 discord members and a bit over 3K on twitter. Project has a good ethos and is looking to be a part of the “gen-2” NFTs that will incorporate various games and gamified experiences throughout. We also like the art here – gives us pudgy penguin / chubbifren vibes and the traits we’ve seen so far are pretty hilarious. Anyways, let’s dive in to the bull and bear cases:
Bull Case:
They’re looking to build out something called the Bandits Heist, where holders will be able to participate in skills-based competitions in order to win NFTs and ETH prizes. Haven’t seen much of this around and it's something we think should keep a community engaged.
Team is doxed and the artist / devs are both part of the team (a lot of these PFP projects get an artist on Fiverr and as well as a dev so this is very positive). Side note: One of the most underrated positives about having a talented artist on your team can be seen with Sprites – they are constantly able to collaborate with other projects since Ofelia can design various 1/1 rapidly.
Devs are clearly talented, working to build out an extremely low gas mint, similar to what the Creepz did.
Funny and cute animal art that appeals to the NFT community.
This is a woman-led project. Women-led projects have been selling out left and right. It’s common knowledge that the NFT community is male dominated and as a result woman-led projects have been getting additional attention recently.
Bear Case:
The Bandits Heist concept is ambitious so there is definitely an inherent execution risk. We also don’t know how much of this is already built out vs. post-mint. Project will most likely sell out but runs the risk of lack of funding if it doesn’t.
Would love to see a bit more upfront validated demand for the Bandits Heist – if they can build a compelling gamified experience then the potential upside is massive, but that “if” should be bolded and underlined.
Art is a double edged sword. During this bull market we’ve seen that animal pfp projects are still leading the way. Eventually this will get oversaturated, and we may be getting close to that – only time will tell.
Conclusion:
Definitely worth joining the discord and checking this project out for yourself. Another project with unique mechanics that can lead to great success as long as the team executes properly. While the majority of projects we’ve seen run on empty promises, we think the risk/reward proposition is quite strong here. DYOR.
Weather Report NFT
A lot of interest from our community in this project. We’re still unsure how to feel about this since it seems massively overhyped at the moment. Also, unable to find any sort of roadmap. From the discord regarding the roadmap: “We are planning on delivering on some things that have never been seen before in the NFT space. With the community's involvement, we will release this when the time is right.” Hm. Keep an eye on this, it should definitely do well in the short-term due to hype, but wouldn’t be surprised to see a post-reveal dip. If you can get on the WL here, you will likely profit (DYOR, NFA).
Edenhorde
We’re being drawn in due to the mystery around this project. Still relatively unsure where this goes but from this thread from Pentoshi it looks like it “is an exercise in world building that will be directly tied to its audience and holders” created by Merit Circle. Think this is worth staying on top of, especially if it has any similarities to Metroverse, which has been performing really well post-mint.
Ali and Friends
Shoutout to our community which is amazing. One of our members is based in Hong Kong and has been sharing some Chinese NFT projects with us. We all saw what happened with PhantaBear the other week which reached a 7 ETH floor. Their Twitter following is small but Ali & His Friends has over 3 million followers on Weibo, which is much bigger in China, and 18k members in discord. Will be a tough one to get on WL but worth checking out as well – it’s new so we may have a chance.
A Creepz Update
Image above is from early November. Yes, we’re going to pat ourselves on the back. Joe and Dom are pushing the boundaries of what an NFT project can become. In ~3 weeks, Creepz has solidified itself as a top 15 NFT project of all time. We would not be surprised if by next week we’re saying that this is a top 5 project of all time. If you think we’re being euphoric, take some time to look into what they have built and spend time in the discord. It blows us away that still almost nobody knows about this project. Creepz remains NFTs best kept secret, but not for much longer.
In its short lifespan thus far, they already have 2 collections in the top 10, an achievement that only BAYC can usually claim. This includes the reptilian armory which was an in-game mint using the in-game $LOOMI token. Beyond excited to see where this goes with Shapeshifters opening this week. Right now there are ~100 Creepz out of 11,111 listed for sale and ~180 Reptilian Armory’s out of 20,000 listed. Please re-read this. Talk about the potential for a supply shock. At a 6.5 ETH floor right now and a solid ~100x from mint price we are still hyper-bullish on the lizards. Excited to see how this progresses.
Side note: If you missed Creepz, we understand it may be too expensive to enter now (albeit you can earn the initial cost of your Creep back in a short period of time when staking for $LOOMI). Do not fret and do not FOMO buy. We’re still here to provide alpha and uncover hidden gems for you, and there will be plenty more wins to be had.
Conclusion:
Exciting times we’re in right now. A lot on the horizon for both MC and the NFT space as a whole. We’re just dipping our feet in the water with mass adoption – we can taste it on our tongues.
As the broader crypto space continues to get increasingly fragmented into different more targeted categories, look toward NFTs to truly shine as their merits will be weighed separately from defi/crypto, and people fully recognize the value that NFTs provide toward the digital future of art and culture.
Have a wonderful week,
Wilson & Paul
Web3 Careers:
GM all! The market is down bad but there’s no need to start working at McDonald’s like the President of El Salvador because you subscribe to Mint Calendar! So hold off on the fast food applications and check out the phenomenal jobs we found this week. My personal favorites from this list are the engineering roles from LooksRare and the internships from Binance, Coinbase, and Ledger.
We’re always trying to improve so we’ve started highlighting job locations when we can. Feel free to flag countries or cities we should be paying special attention to!
Let us know if you’re hiring for incredible roles or if there are other types of opportunities you’d like to see in this section! Tweet/DM us @MintCalendar, @TheChild1996, or send an email to officialmintcalendar@gmail.com.
Community/Marketing:
Marketing and Community Manager, NFT (Strata Gallery; Remote)
NFT/Metaverse/Gaming Marketing Manager (Binance, Remote Global)
Chief Marketing Officer (Rarible, Remote US)
Strategy/Miscellaneous:
Associate General Counsel, Crypto (a16z; NYC)
Chief Operating Officer, NFT/Digital Assets (Unknown Company; Singapore)
NFT Analyst Intern (Binance, Remote Global)
Product:
Senior Product Manager, Crypto (Twitter, Remote US/Germany)
Product Design Intern (Coinbase; Remote US)
Lead Producer – Blockchain/NFT (Zynga; Remote US)
Software Development/Data Engineering:
Scrum Master (Kado; Boston/NYC/Remote US)
Data Analyst/Analytics Engineer Internship (Ledger; Paris)
QA/DevOps/SecOps/Backend/Frontend Engineers (LooksRare)
That’s all folks! Hope you all enjoyed this week's addition. Feel free to shoot us a DM on Twitter or email us with what you’d like to see more of! We’re super active on twitter so also feel free to tag us in anything interesting.
If you’re feeling friendly feel free to share this with anyone who you feel might otherwise fall into the NGMI category.
Most of all, have a wonderful week!
--------------
Disclaimer about sponsorships: We’ve been getting A LOT of dms about sponsorships and upcoming drops. Many are NGMI but a few projects stood out and have teams that we’ve taken the time to speak with and are excited to share info on in the near future. If you're launching a new project and are looking to work with us on promotion and/or consultation on how to plan a successful drop, feel free to slide in the DMs in Twitter.