Weekly Alpha Update – #3
(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.)
Gm old frens, new frens, and anons. A lot of new subscribers this week who we’d like to welcome to the Mint Calendar Weekly Alpha Update, where we share alpha on the hottest NFT projects minting each week, give our thoughts on the Macro NFT environment, and discuss undervalued projects. You might’ve noticed we made a transition from MailChimp to Substack – we were getting a lot of feedback from subscribers that they’d like to read previous editions of the newsletter so Substack’s archive functionality will enable us to provide that. We started Mint Calendar with one simple mission: make frens, help frens, sling jpegs, and reduce noise in the NFT space. If you don't know what any of that means, don't worry – you found us which means you're GMI.
Macro Update (for your mental health):
Last week was bumpy, but this weeks been a rollercoaster. We saw a lot of panic selling, people paying 2 ETH in gas to mint a .07 ETH jpeg, a handful of high quality NFT floors came out unscathed, and Steph Curry bought a penguin.
These are truly crazy times and it’s completely normal to feel a bit overwhelmed. Whether you’re refreshing CT to avoid missing out on some alpha or anxiously checking the floor price of your recent mint on OpenSea every 2 minutes - it’s helpful to step back and note that we are generally early. NFTs are still nascent – the talking heads on CNBC still make weekly right-click save jokes. If you’re overlooking the revolutionary creator-first business models that NFTs enable, and you’re overlooking the fact that the creator economy is very real (online creators have more leverage than ever before), then you’re doing yourself a major disservice and likely will miss out on a lot of opportunity over the next decade+.
That said, the days of quickly 10x’ing on a mint flip are temporarily behind us. Before minting anything new, you should ask yourself “would I be happy holding this 3-6 months from now.” If the answer is no then we suggest you move on. Seek out projects that do 3 things well and you should do alright: 1) their big picture strategy (which should be outlined in their roadmap) inherently bolsters community, 2) they leverage game theory, 3) their roadmaps have clearly defined plans for off-chain initiatives with clear commercialization potential (the best nft projects are media companies in the making).
For this week's newsletter the format will be a bit different – we only have one mint to cover because as we mentioned, the space as a whole is very volatile. We’d rather wait for the dust to settle a bit, and in the interim cover more projects that we believe to be blue chips (good bets in this environment).
ImmaDegen Giveaway
Before diving into this week's analysis, we wanted to mention that we’re hosting our first NFT Giveaway (there will be more to come) to give back to the community (you all) for all the support recently. Since we’ve been mentioning ImmaDegen a lot recently, we figured it’d be relevant/fun to give one lucky winner the opportunity to join the ImmaDegen community for free. During the recent volatility, ImmaDegen’s floor proved to be rock solid, staying in the.18-.2 ETH range (2x+ from mint price). The community is growing, discord is active, and they seem to be making significant efforts to launch initiatives in the metaverse.
To enter the giveaway:
Like and RT this Tweet.
Play the free game and score above 1500 for a chance to win this ImmaDegen NFT (see below).
The winner will be announced on October 1st via email & twitter
The Sevens Debacle
Well.. you can’t win them all. The Sevens launch was an absolute disaster. People were really paying 2 ETH to mint these when the original price was .07 ETH. Adding insult to injury, one lucky hacker was able to mint 1000 of these for .07, causing gas to spike for everyone else (LINK).
This person was able to subvert the limiter and send well over the 1 NFT limit, and even over the 7 NFT limit, in a single txn. If you look closely, they aren't interacting with the Sevens contract, they're interacting with their own contract.
This whole situation serves as a strong reminder to stay diligent and trust your gut. It’s always optimal to approach a new project mint with an entry plan and a loose exit strategy. If something seems fishy or the price moves out of your planned entry range, trust your gut and don’t let FOMO guide you. Yeah, the Sevens artwork is dope, and the community was vibing, but it would be tough for us to spend 2 ETH on a mint that was priced originally at .07, especially knowing that they couldn’t effectively manage demand/appropriately distribute minting privileges. Based on the sentiment on Twitter, it seems this really left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. As of writing the floor is sub .4 ETH. There’s still an argument to be made that this is a good time to get in as they still have a massive following and an exciting roadmap, but it’s tough to know if they’ll be able to execute.
New Mint:
BlankFace NFT
Launch Dates:
-Public Google Form Drop: Tuesday, September 14th, 12 PM EST
-Whitelist Pre-Sale Opens: Wednesday, September 15th, 2 PM EST (24-hour window)
-Public Sale of Remaining BlankFace from Pre-Sale: Thursday, September 16th, 2 PM EST
Price: .0888 ETH
A friend of mine was interested in this one so decided to do a deep dive. First thing I noticed was that Cole (founder of pudgy penguins) follows them on twitter. Wouldn’t say this is necessarily bullish or bearish but always interesting to see a notable person in the space follow along with a relatively unknown drop. While we’ve reiterated that the future of NFTs is not pfp projects, there simply hasn’t been high enough quality non-pfp projects that were comfortable covering. There are of course digital word projects like Loot, the n project, etc. but those are still a bit too intangible/speculative (despite their early traction). Anyways, let’s dive into this one.
What we like:
Very cool 3D artwork (unlike a lot of the 2D junk that’s been getting released more frequently). The discord has 20k members and you can barely keep up with the main chat (tons of hype). They do thankfully have a separate chat called “Slow chat” where it’s delayed messaging. Devs are super engaged – you can dm with questions and they’re quick to respond. To keep the community involved, they’ve been doing a few giveaways for people who can decipher cryptic transmissions (leveraging game theory and replicating aspects of the Wanderers which is a positive). Probably most notably, this project is also promoting mental health awareness. With September being Suicide Prevention Month, they’re certainly being timely. To bolster their commitment to mental health, they’ve also created a mental health support group chat room within the discord for community members to vent and share a safe space. With mental health becoming a top of mind concern internationally (as a result of the pandemic and several other catalysts), it’s no surprise that this discord channel is highly active with anons sharing similar stories and finding common ground. The quality artwork combined with a focus on social-good makes this a project worth tracking and a community that will likely remain engaged long after the mint.
What we don’t like:
Some rumors are going around that there’s some bots in the discord. Could be nothing but definitely worth keeping on your radar. Also there’s no website with general information and the roadmap here is pretty vague. While we feel that we’re nowhere near a “top”, the pfp market is completely oversaturated at this point so be careful.
Honorable Mentions:
Cool Cats:
With the overall mania and lack of upcoming quality mints this week we’re going to continue with our blue chip highlights (last week we covered Hashmasks). This week we wanted to touch on Cool Cats. If you’re active on crypto twitter you’ve almost definitely come across a big account or 2 repping a Cool Cat pfp. With a mint price of .06 ETH and the floor for Cool Cats currently sitting at a comfortable ~4.8 ETH, there’s no doubt that this project is a true value creator. While people love to talk about BAYC and Penguins (true blue chips), it feels like Cool Cats fall a bit under the radar (possibly due to the existence of other notable cat-related projects like Gutter Cats). But with 4.5k+ unique owners, a lot of whales involved, an extremely positive community, and one of the best roadmaps we’ve seen, Cool Cats remains extremely undervalued (funny article from July). Take a look at the chart below.
This is not the typical vertical explosion you’d see from a shitty pump & dump – this is slower, more sustainable growth which is something whales look for when determining which projects they’ll drop large amounts of ETH into. If you’re interested in buying a top tier NFT in the 3-7 ETH range, Cool Cats definitely has the MC stamp of approval.
The Wanderers:
We’re going to continue mentioning the Wanderers as long as they continue to show signs of sustainable growth. Without a doubt we feel as though the Wanderers are the next blue chip project that’s still affordable to most. Non pfp, killer roadmap, compelling art/music, and an exceptional team.
With a large percentage of unique holders, the community is diverse and engaged. As we mentioned in our first newsletter a few weeks ago, we own a couple Wanderers (and for good reason). If you’re looking for a reliable value, this might be it.
That's all folks. Thank you for subscribing and making it through the third edition of the Weekly Alpha Report. As we continue on this journey, we intend to revise the newsletter and tailor it to what you want/need, so feel free to slide into our DMs on Twitter with any feedback!
We'll be back in your inbox every Monday for the rest of time, but don't be surprised if you get an emergency alpha report in your inbox in the middle of the week – the NFT alpha never sleeps and neither do we.
Also be sure to tell your frens!
Until next time.