If You Build It, They Will Come

(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. Hope everyone is having a good week so far. I’ve been fairly busy IRL as the holiday season is upon us. Turns out that gift shopping for your family and significant other is harder when most of your net worth is tied up in illiquid JPEGs. Hopefully that’s not just me…

Before we get into it, if you’re prominent in the AVAX NFT community or a project founder / builder, I’m starting to bring in some guest writers over the next couple of weeks to bring some fresh, non-Chuck perspective. We have a solid lineup on deck and I don’t plan on stopping this train anytime soon, so hit me up on Twitter if you think that’s something you’d want to get in on.

Market Update

If in fact your bags are down and you can’t buy your imaginary girlfriend something for the holidays, take comfort in the fact that SBF was finally taken into custody this week and AVAX NFTs had some decent volume.

Looks like we’re starting to head in the right direction. Week over week, Joepegs did about $100k USD volume compared to last week, which was only $60k. These are smol numbers, but I’m glad we’re starting to see more money move around and NFTs changing hands.

Plague Game doctors and Potions have been leading the charge on volume given that the game is starting to wind down and demand for potions is heating up. My doctors died 3 days into the game, so I’m purely a spectator at this point. An interesting wrinkle as of this morning was introduced:

Given this update, I expect doctors to start trending downward given that they’re no longer able to be converted to potions, and for potions to start creeping up over the next few days here. It’s going to be very, very spicy over the weekend.

Here’s the leaderboard as of this morning:

Some really interesting names… personally I think Caroline’s Grippy 5000 takes the cake. Some of you need help. Not sure who “Waiting for VQ Apology Video” is, but they have a stranglehold on the lead with 25 doctors alive. Interestingly enough, they only bought 90 doctors in total. Someone was either 1) very smart or 2) very lucky. Likely a combination of both given the cast of characters in this space. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Chad Doge Supers: DNA Vials minted last Thursday and revealed earlier this week, settling at a 2.1 floor price off of a .25 AVAX mint. If you’re wondering, no, I definitely did NOT forget to mint mine and did NOT miss out on an 8x. But alas… I’m really excited for these to get burned and see the full collection. Great to see some strong interest in the fractured vials as well.

Yep, only a 400x. Mint the damn vials next time, Chuck.

Market Musings

Earlier this morning, I joined a really awesome spaces hosted by Uwuzu and Fish over at Joepegs. The premise of the conversation was, “What do we need to do to take AVAX NFTs to the next level?”

This was pretty much the takeaway.

We discussed a lot of important and thought-provoking topics. One in particular was how can we get NFT traders who aren’t here excited for all of the cool and unique projects being built?

This is a question I’ve asked myself for a while. Personally, I first came over to AVAX because I was completely exhausted from ETH. Between high gas absolutely gouging my wallet, insanely quick peak to trough cycles on new mints going from 0 to worth something and back to 0 almost instantly, I wanted to experience something different.

I think the elephant in the room that many avoid discussing is that pretty much everyone still here is monetarily incentivized. If people see AVAX NFTs do well, then they will want to come see what’s going on over on the red chain. Sure, the barrier to entry is lower for a myriad of reasons, but ultimately it boils down to one singular data point: numbah go up. This begs the question: how does one make that happen?

One point discussed at length was the risk-taking that founders should do to create unique and differentiated projects to generate excitement. We all know that an NFT’s floor price is the 8th wonder of the world and the justification for it cannot be exactly triangulated.

What we also know is that when you take risks and pursue ambitious goals, while you may fail, it keeps the addressable market guessing. Plague Game encouraged collaborating between others to form DAOs. Chad Doge has had a heads-down management team continuing to generate excitement for months on end for their holders which culminated in the CDS vial drop. These are good examples of what innovation can translate into with quantifiable results to prove it.

I could go on and on about this topic, so instead of boring you, here’s the recorded spaces where I gave my completely unsolicited opinion.

Conclusion

Taking all things into account, it feels like momentum is starting to swing in the right direction heading into the holidays. It’s also reassuring to see the level of self-awareness on part of the community and prominent figures with regards to how things can be improved and what can be done to make sure WAGMI.

Before I shove off, I just wanted to point out that I’m pretty offended I got left off this Christmas tree.

Maybe one day…

Cheers,

Chuck