Acquiring Friendships

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 everyone. Another week in the books and hopefully you participated in this week’s 10x - buying the top on friend.tech only to watch the price continue to grind up. Tune in next week to see which 10x you missed.

On the real, doing things where people are having “fun” in the bear market has been a recipe for success. There hasn’t been much fun, but dumping your friends and ruining relationships with anonymous internet people surely has been a decent time. Outside of Banana and the daily 10k to 500k pump and dump, on-chain has been bleeding and influencers who spend all day CEX trading aren’t doing much better. And of course, don’t even get me started on the NFT market. Which does bring us to new things, and especially ones that are incentivizing our “gambling” with airdrops that may or may not be worth anything in the future.

Last week I spoke about ‘Time Capitulation’, or the idea that ”investors surrender after a long and exhausting struggle, as their interest in the investment shifts to other things.” Most have been holding their down-80% bag for a year at this point; it hasn’t really gone any lower but it also hasn’t moved, so instead they finally sell based on the fact that they either A) think they can outperform in another asset with the remaining capital, or B) lost interest and stopped caring. I expect this to continue throughout the market for the next 4-6 months and when new trends like friend tech emerge, they accelerate the sucking of liquidity from these old “boring” assets.

This brings us back to NFTs, which continue to grind down for the most part. Captainz, Azuki, DeGods, and MAYC are all floating around their all time lows and seem to slow bleeding their way to 0. There’s just really no incentive at the moment to hold assets like these with few catalysts on the horizon and a narrative that’s so far away from NFTs. Most of the remaining participants are aware that whatever sort of cycle comes next for NFTs, whether it’s gaming or not, will be something new. These winners of the past won’t make it to the next bull (in my opinion).

There’s a few bright spots on the horizon in the market. Sugartown, which I called out a few weeks ago, has been absolutely ripping. This is the first web3 branded gaming project I’ve seen from a web2 company, Zynga. What started as a free mint is now at a .4 ETH floor, which is pretty solid in what seems to be the depths of the bear market for NFTs. Of course, I faded sweeping at .1 and have been coping on the way up. Still, new projects and narratives like sugartown succeeding is good for the space. Out with the old and in with the new.

Another interesting web3 gaming launch is SOMO…

Both trailers and the website are sick. This was produced at an extremely high level and the idea of it gives me a sort of Pokemon-Go vibe. This project is a free-to-play game with NFTs and an associated token. If successful, it should bring a ton of new eyes to the space. Without shilling my bags too hard, it’s quite obvious that this project is connected to Overlord (Cold Blooded Creepz).

I’ve stated this a bunch but Creepz has always been an under-followed project compared to what they’ve produced and the community they’ve built.

I’m in a lot of discords (some of the few that are still active), and let me tell you – not a single person is talking about this. Which of course, is good news to me as I prefer to fade the crowd (Remember Art Gobblers). Mostly including this so I can revisit this take in ~November, but I expect this to be a massive launch going into the end of the year. Anyways, if you’re active and not a creepz holders, it’s worth following SOMO in general since it’s an upcoming web3 gaming project which continues to be a hot narrative.

Finally, I’ll share some thoughts on Penguins. If it hasn’t been obvious by my last 2 years of writing, this is my favorite project. They’ve been a stablecoin at 4 ETH for months now and have some very big make-or-break announcements coming up. I am expecting a decent move within the next 2-3 weeks. Lil Pudgys have been steady grinding up and everyone is waiting for this “huge announcement”. It’s smart to be skeptical, I mean look at what happened to Azuki and DeGods. That being said, I don’t really see a world where this falls flat on it’s face, and the worst case scenario to me is a lackluster announcement where the floor remains flat.

We don’t really give Luca and team enough credit. When they bought Penguins they were a sub 1 ETH floor, most influencers called them a fully “rugged” project, and they had little respect in the space (CT OGs always knew it was Penguins). In the last year, they’ve gone from “dead” to a top 5 floor price project and have been referred to as the “only hope” for saving NFTs. In no way shape or form am I expecting these to simply rocket up to 6 ETH (or more) right away, but I am truly looking forward to what they surprise us with. I think the end of September and October in general, will be fun for NFTs and before the end of 2023, we’ll have a new class of projects that should be the ones dominating 2024.

Overall, much of the same week-over-week. I’m simply watching Lil Pudgys, crafting my runes for SOMO, and messing around on Friend Tech. Feel free to dm me on twitter if you need codes. With that, have an awesome week everyone.

Cheers,
Wilson