Battle of the Farmers

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. I’m coming to you live this lovely morning at 5:34am on the East Coast and I’m listening to Nocturne No. 19 in E Minor by Frederic Chopin. Nothing like the feeling of waking up to your bags pumping and seeing a genuine coil on the Penguin 30 day chart. Despite most of the infighting and toxicity of CT, if you’re able to avoid the noise and keep your tunnel vision on, it wasn’t that bad of a week. If you didn’t already hear, BlackRock is coming to buy our bags. Now, I spend about 14 hours a day in the cesspool we know as twitter, but depending on who you follow you’re either currently a giga bull or preparing for the end of the world. I prefer to live my life as the 80 IQ bulltard, it’s more fun and I don’t see a future where by 2025 our internet coins aren’t much higher than they are right now. That said, you subscribe to this newsletter to hear Chuck and I rant about pictures on the blockchain - so that’s what I’m here to do.

So where to begin? Volume ticked up overall on Blur this week, but it’s really a whole bunch of nothing and the NFT market feels as dead as ever. Plenty of infighting, most discords are a ghost town, and basically all the volume is the same 10 farmers dumping apes on one another. At this point, most farmers PNLs are in the -1000 ETH range and it turns out, the rumor is we’re about to wait another 3-4 months to get our airdrop. By then, it will be quite diluted and who knows what Blur’s price will be. Unless you’re farming on low risk loans with blend or bidding/flipping on high-vol collections in an uptrend, I do think most of farming is -EV at this point.

Moving on, over the last week or two there have been some paid mints selling out. Many of the Milady/Remilio derivatives on Scatter.art are selling out quickly. Kwamii teens sold out a 3000 collection in basically a minute at .05 ETH, did a 3x, and is still above floor. TimeTrav3lers and Bammers also sold out paid mints as well earlier this week.

I don’t really have any opinions on the above, but more so am observing. Paid mints haven’t sold out in months, and if they have sold out they weren’t selling this quickly. While these aren’t new participants minting, it’s something to follow aggressively over the next couple of months. Paid mints selling out every single day will be the sign that the bull market is on it’s way back. Is this a flash in the pan, maybe, but worth watching.

Next up, let’s talk about what’s going on with Yuga Labs and as always, some bold takes. To be clear, I do not have an educated opinion on Otherside. It can be the greatest game in the entire world. This does not mean Monkey pictures will be $70K+, it makes no sense to me. One of the worst takes I see is people who say BAYC going down is bad for the space. I completely disagree. Most holders/flippers who write long threads trying to act like they’re smarter than you are not some genius with superior psychological morals, but instead are degenerate gamblers. This capitulation, whether it lasts or rebounds and comes back next month, is normal. BAYC has the potential to turn into a NEO, EOS, IOTA, but most likely will not be the new shiny object next cycle. The thread below has been trending and I tend to agree with most of the points here.

Finally, want to give a huge shoutout to BowTiedGolem. We chat a lot in discord but I think he’s got some very reasonable and sobering takes on the market (and less aggressive than mine). He wrote this article (definitely check it out) and posted what I think will be controversial chart:

We spoke for a while on the above and I actually think this makes a ton of sense. While I’m not going to go into how he defined a “blue chip”, the main gist is that the rubric is built around potential ROI. If you buy the project/ecosystem today, at current prices, which will give you the greatest/worst return. In the bear market, Punks/Penguins/Azuki are all still in “bear market” uptrends, while projects in the D/F category continue to be down-only. Personally, I’d move BAYC to C and prob combine D/F saying they’re all 0. However, with my strong opinions I rarely find many who see eye to eye, and this chart really speaks to me. Anyways, sorry if this upsets anyone. I’m almost done writing and will soon go back to enjoying myself in Pudgyworld.

I do think sentiment can’t get much worse. As Chuck said last week “It’s time to get back in the game. It’s time to pay attention. The next 6 months will separate the men from the boys like oil from water.” After a year of down-only, most have given up. Plenty of the moon boys and grifters are out and there’s a few left standing.

In some communities, some of the biggest NFT bulls and whales are selling and saying that we’ll never have another NFT bull run again. I even watched about half of the above youtube video, and not going to lie agreed with a lot of what was said. Buying jpegs feels gross right now (especially in this economy!). And, for what it’s worth, I’m definitely not recommending doing so. But, I would try to remember what this feeling feels like. Because there will be a time down the road when a collection gets minted out, does a 5x, and is called the “next blue chip”. And while all of the new bright eyed participants and old grifters come back in the game, you’ll know exactly how to play the situation, and know how the story ends.

Have a great week.

Cheers,
Wilson