Weekly Alpha Update – #7
(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. Gm. Gm. Gm. Vibes were extremely high last week as the NFT mania continued to roar. There is A LOT to cover this week so we’ll waste no time. Before we jump into it, please visualize in your head a bunch of boomers and Gary Gensler discussing taxing the below image as a security. New levels of the simulation are being breached daily (this image sold for 17 ETH last week).
Macro Update:
If you thought that three weeks ago everything was moving fast and it was impossible to keep up, it's not going to get any easier moving forward. Luckily for you, our sole mission is to cut through the noise in the NFT space, which is why we're here to provide a clear and concise overview of where you should be directing your attention in the upcoming week.
ETH has been ripping over the last couple of weeks. Historically this has actually been pretty bearish for NFTs, since NFTs are priced in ETH and must come down as ETH value rises to maintain a consistent USD value. In times like these it actually makes more sense to hold ETH vs your jpegs to arbitrage the value gaps. As a result of all of this, non-blue chip NFTs are being panic sold with holders looking to get back into ETH to capture more value. As you know we're not fortune tellers, we're simply vibe collectors, but Q4 has been an extremely bullish time for ETH. Note: this guidance is not relevant for blue chips like BAYC or Crypto Punks as these are in themselves actually a bet on the price of ETH rising.
Now not to really sound the bear signal, and this isn’t really the hottest take in the world, but a few weeks ago we mentioned how the PFP market is already extremely oversaturated. If you follow accounts like Tik-Tok investors, we’re getting to the point where 16 years olds are piling onto the PFP dumpster fire, bragging about how easy it is to flip $400 jpegs to $100k overnight (which has sort of been true). The mania here is pretty insane, and while we’re so beyond bullish on NFTs, DAOs, and a generally community-driven future (the real epidemic that people aren’t speaking about isn’t COVID, it’s adult loneliness – it’s underrated how many adults will pay to join online communities) we want to underscore that the days of blindly minting Retarded Chickens for a 10X in 48 hours may be coming to a halt (not an end) for the remaining leg of this bull market.
When conditions get to where they are now with madness and rugs everywhere you look, it’s crucial to be extra discerning. If you look at projects like Cool Cats and Penguins that have exploded, their mint prices were under the .1 average that we see. Projects that charge .1 ETH and mint 10k pfps are raising 1,000 ETH ($3.5 million at $3500 ETH) in a matter of minutes. While this is NOT always the case, it seems that these projects are more likely to run away with the money than a project that mints 5-7K nfts at a .02/.03 ETH price, as these projects rely more heavily on secondary market sales to drive revenue, meaning they’re in it for the long haul and inherently aligned with their communities.
Separately (and we’ve mentioned this a few times now) it seems that every day a new celebrity influencer or institution is joining the party. While this could be misconstrued as some sort of a top signal, we see the opposite. We doubt Shaq, Steph Curry, and Snoop Dog are going to panic sell if things start to look a little dreary for a few weeks or months – these aren’t your classic pump and dump celebs, these celebrities are institutions themselves. We’re also starting to see “NFT celebrities” make a real name for themselves in the normie world. Take 0xb1 for example who just signed a deal with monstrous talent agency CAA. This phenomenon draws some comparisons to the early days of streaming, where the general public was absolutely shocked that people who played video games could be deemed celebrities with significant followings and recognition from Hollywood, but as they say, the riches are in the niches. NFTs are niche, but growing steadily toward mainstream adoption, and these popular NFT influencers/curators will only grow in popularity alongside this mainstream adoption – great foresight by CAA.
Follow up on PixelBeasts:
While we added in a disclaimer at the top of the emergency alpha post and shared a tweet on this, everyone should be aware that the PixelBeasts post was a sponsored post. We're super excited about our first ever sponsor, and only 6 weeks after Mint Calendar's inception no less. To be transparent, we receive countless DMs requesting sponsorship every week and up till now we have denied every single one. PixelBeats caught our eye and we're super excited about this one, so it's only fair we do a follow up here.
For those of you who looked to get in on the Pixel Beasts mint it was clear that a lot went wrong at the start. We're not experts but apparently what happened was the code leaked during their early access mint and more buyers than originally anticipated were able to get in before the general public. When they hit the secondary market pricing was all over the place with the floor going from .08 ETH to .012 ETH to .04 ETH and now it’s sitting pretty steady around .07 ETH. The good news is that you were able to pick up a PixelBeast at or pretty close to the mint price if you monitored the secondary market for a few hours afterward and we are pleased to see that the price has stabilized pretty heavily above the mint.
The volume is also still pretty heavy, and the discord is super active – it's clear Yohei (the artist) is in this for the long haul. We actually spent some time in Beastopia and while not perfect, it's cool to see a functional beta of a metaverse project. Yohei seemed to have spent hours reading Discord messages and has been pretty responsive to people in the chat too. What we don’t love is how low the % of unique holders is right now (though increasing at a solid rate over the last 24 hours).
On the bright side the team seems to be working super hard to remediate everything and is very responsive to the questions and concerns in the chat. They're looking to build Beastopia around the desires of the community which is crucial to succeed in this space. If you're interested, it's still a solid time to get in at the ground floor. We picked up a Pixel Beast but not as many as we had originally planned due to the gas wars and fall out of the actual release. If this team can execute correctly this project has moon potential. We remain cautiously optimistic on PixelBeasts and are excited to see where the next few weeks take us.
New Mints:
Wooshi World
Pre-Sale is open right now for discord members who are on the whitelist, 3666 available. 11,111 total, .11 ETH to mint.
Interesting project here. It seems that if you own a Wooshi there is a way to claim a physical version. This is something that we think can become a trend in the future (having a physical version of your digital asset). There’s a rabbit hole to go down here but that’s for another time. It also seems that they’re trying to emulate what Axie Infinity has done by creating their own play-to-earn metaverse.
What we like:
Let’s start with the basics. Aesthetically, these are awesome. Can see these having mass appeal as they hit the “funny and cute” mark. Kind of gives off a similar vibe to a 3D AxoLittle. The website is absolutely packed with information and some ambitious plans. They seem to be backed by a pretty legit company with experience growing large business verticals. Here’s a paraphrased excerpt from their website:
Company is H4X. H4X’s parent company, Moniker, was founded in 2015, run by legit industry executives. As a leading company in esports, we have generated more than $1 billion in revenue since our inception. Moniker’s comprehensive approach is built to empower its partners, enabling them to focus on their core business while we help to develop new paths to revenue for them. Moniker itself is part of JCorp, a Canadian company with a long history in supplying apparel, accessories and other merchandise. We have developed merchandise for some of the world’s most iconic brands, including Star Wars, Disney, Sega, Sprite, Marvel, Coca-Cola, Jurassic Park and Major League Baseball.
What does this all mean for you? Probably nothing, but it should help you sleep better at night knowing that the team building this play-to-earn game has years of experience in the eSports world.
What we’re not major fans of is how buzzword-heavy all their materials are (it seems that every project these days wants to create a metaverse). Do we really think that the 100 new projects everyday are going to all survive once we enter a bear market? Absolutely not. But this discord is super active and people seem very excited to get involved. Engagement on twitter is solid as well. Team is pseudo-anon. While we like a fully doxed team, as we’ve seen with the Richies, it doesn't always mean they won’t rug. As always, DYOR. Like a lot of these projects with big dreams, if they execute as we’ve seen, the moon is only the first stop.
Jungle Freaks
Mint details: PRE SALE: 10/13-10/15 4PM EST // PUBLIC SALE: 10/15 5PM EST. Price TBA.
Super interesting project. Honestly one of the more sexual PFP projects we’ve come across since starting Mint Calendar, but the artist is a 30+ year veteran from Hustler Magazine named George Trossley so it kind of makes a lot of sense. Sex sells, so don’t underestimate the sexual nature of Jungle Freaks as being childish. Pulled from their website: every single Freak and trait you see has been 100% hand drawn in Trosley’s studio (with no assistance from AI or computers). Once sketched, the trait is inked and then colored with markers, color pencils, etc. The physical pieces are then scanned, white space removed and positioned for your viewing pleasure.
Another really interesting (weird) aspect to this hyper sexualized project is that it’s a father-son tag team (no pun intended). If you’re a super freak then really there is probably no better project for you to ape into than the Jungle Freaks 😂. This feels like it has a ton of memetic potential as well so DYOR but keep this on your radar.
Check-Ins:
Golden Pups: These are minting today at 2pm EST for the public. We covered these last week. 10K supply at 0.03 ETH. Very cute, we will be minting these.
Mutant Ape Yacht Club: We haven’t covered this project yet. Say what you want about the art but it’s technically part of the BAYC community. Been trending down pretty heavily in price lately, but with a floor under 4 ETH at the moment, we feel like this is a pretty solid risk/reward bet.
Pudgy Penguins: You all know how much one of us loves these (hint hint). One of the highest ratios of a holder base (4.7k / 8.8k) and some of the best memes on twitter. A lot of FUD recently and penguins can’t seem to break above the 3 ETH floor. One of the biggest reasons for the FUD is the founder Cole who has come under a lot of scrutiny over the past month with people saying he may not have ~the best~ moral compass. Penguins will be a true test of community vs. founder/roadmap. None of the whales have sold (and actually seem to be accumulating more) and the discord is active 24/7 with the community driving most of the value here. A lot of airdrops on the way and pudgy presents reveal on Christmas. There is an argument to be made that penguins are in a consolidation period before the next leg up. Anything under 2 ETH is a gift at this point (we’re VERY biased on this one).
The Yakuza Cats Society: We put a bullish rating on this one a few weeks ago. Have not been following too closely and regretfully didn’t pick one up. The floor is pretty solid above .5 ETH with an average sale price of .7 ETH. We took a quick look and the volume is pretty heavy, with 3.6K of ETH transacted and 300+ sales per day over the last 2 weeks. Things look solid here.
MoonDucks: Absolute flop with barely any volume traded. Mint was super low so too – just goes to show that mints are having a lower and lower hit rate as the market continues to saturate.
Creature World: Floor has dumped a bit since the Shaq purchase but still pretty solid above 2 eth. Remains a solid Tier 2 project on the same level as Penguins, and MAYC. Not sure if this one has Cool Cats potential, but time will tell.
HashMasks: Announced an air drop and floor skyrocketed. After 6-8 months of being flat, the Hashmasks are back. What had originally kicked off the NFT bull market in Feb, this “forgotten” project is back in the spotlight. This LINK describes the details of the air-drop but essentially you have the option to claim 1 of 2 pfps, or burn your original mask and claim both. Shout out to BTB for championing the clown masks and driving major value for this project.
The CryptoDads: One of our best picks yet. Super solid above a 1 ETH floor, hilarious yet strong community, and getting ready for the Crypto Mom airdrop. 80% unique ownership on this project which is absurd, have not seen anything else like this. Love all of our Crypto Dad PFP followers here.
That's all folks. Thank you for subscribing and making it through the fifth 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.
I know you guys said you mentioned on the last emergency post that it was a sponsored post but I just looked again and it really wasn’t clear at all that it was. No issue with you guys making money, you are providing a free service but can you possibly be a bit more explicit on your sub stack posts that it’s an endorsed post?