Calculating My Wins

(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 to those who now have newfound riches in the past week. The timeline is euphoric and it's nice to see that all of you who have been scraping for dust the last 6-8 months have finally struck gold. On the real, this has been one of the most exciting weeks in recent memory. My bags have been "mooning" and your bags have *hopefully* also been "mooning". Personally, I have de-risked on this run-up and am enjoying my spoils from accumulating my favorite assets during the very sad months of October and November. Now that my humble bragging is over, what exactly comes next. Many say we're in a new bull market while others are claiming that we're going to dump to the depths of hell post blur airdrop and token launch. Unsurprisingly to you, a loyal reader of my ramblings, I do not believe either of these are the case. I'll dive into my reasoning below. With that, enjoy your morning coffee, tea, yerba mate, water, or whatever it is you prefer to indulge in and let's review this fun filled week.

Market Overview

We're off to a hot start in 2023. Pretty much everything is going up and even once-thought *dead* projects like 0n1 Force have been returning with a vengeance. There are a ton of narratives at play (cute meta, old projects, asia meta) but the core point is that practically everything has been pumping over the last few days. Not that my opinions matter (well I guess they do for 5,000 of you) but I have some mixed feelings. I think projects like Azuki, Penguins, Yuga ecosystem, and Kanpai Pandas make sense. There's more to include here but, most of these have either upcoming catalysts or have been *mis-priced*. When I started seeing old projects with zero communication in months pump off of an announcement, I feel that things have gotten a bit frothy. Anyways, opinions are opinions so let's take a look at the data.

Look at that spike! We're so back! Total exchange volume is the highest it's been since the week of June 20th, wow! This is the highest its been in 6+ months. Now, let's not get too ahead of ourselves, as a large portion of this is due to Captainz. Nonetheless, it's nice to see and this is our 4th week in a row where volume has increased.

Some more bullish hopium – we're in a 2-month uptrend for users, aka the folks coming back to buy our bags 10x what we paid a few months ago. Overall, my thesis from a few weeks back, that we hit the NFT-volume bottom in November, is looking decent right about now. That being said, we have a loooooong way to go before any talks of a bull market returning can be taken seriously. While it's nice to see our internet pictures up in ETH, we're all still down tremendously in USD for the most part.There's a lot of talk about blur bidding propping up the ecosystem. I share my thoughts here:

All in all, some of these blur bid walls we see are quite hefty and I do feel somewhat artificial in nature. With the recent aggressiveness of this pump, I am starting to get more concerned of a greater pullback in the coming weeks. ETH has been flat for the last 2 months and this consolidation has definitely helped the NFT cause.I know nothing about technical analysis as I am a self-proclaimed *professional picture trader*. That being said, what I do know is that swift movements in ETH price are not good for my pictures, and with the 12% increase in ETH over the last week, I am a tad concerned. This grind up was quick and we may be getting to the area where market participants start to sell their pictures for ETH, which obviously isn't great for NFTs. Overall, while I am still remaining cautious, there is not much to complain about right now. Things are *currently* looking the best they have since June 2021. I expect things to remain this way until the Yuga mint later this month, where I will have to re-evaluate my thoughts. My hunch is that things heat up until then and we have a drop off in floor prices/market activity similar to what happened after Otherside. But, what do I know.

Blue Chip Overview

(I am using blur as of Monday afternoon EST)Speaking of airdrop, it only makes sense that Yuga assets are pumping aggressively. Regular monkeys and mutant monkey floors are UP 15% week-over-week. Bored Ape Kennel Club aka the dogs continue to pump and are up 30%+ week-over-week, mainly due to their *utility* in this new upcoming mint. All eyes are on Yuga now. Like any good market analyst, I'm here to provide some skepticism or at least make you think. When I see the brilliant participants of NFT twitter brag about quitting their jobs and making a full salary from a ponzi monkey coin, I usually think this is a good sell signal. This feels *too easy*, but we all remember the Creepz Loomi fiasco don't we?

Azuki's almost need their own category at this point. These things just do not stop running and are at a 15 ETH floor (if you remove flagged items). Beanz are enjoying the pump as well and are up almost 50% on the week. There's a rumored airdrop for the upcoming one year anniversary, I stress the word rumor, which is leading to FOMO.Moonbirds have been quietly grinding up through a lot of the recent FUD which I find quite surprising. Whenever this happens it's usually worth looking at but the MBs got back above 8 ETH recently. Doodles had a short lived pump from some teasers of Doodles 2 but nothing notable and we're back to flat prices week-over-week. Clones are still doing absolutely nothing and are struggling at their 5.5 ETH floor price. What's next for both of these? Doodles has been consolidating for 6-8 weeks now in the 6-7 ETH range. I believe it's gearing for a big move up or down and this will be due to the reaction from a Doodles 2 announcement. No strong opinion on either direction but I do believe a big move is coming. For Clones, they need to reclaim that 6 ETH level or they'll continue to bleed out as holders move to other projects in this price range.Penguins grinded back up to 6.7 ETH and there's been a back and forth between them and Doodles in floor price value. Lil Pudgys also hit an ATH of .8 ETH this week. Penguins look solid and are holding tight. Many are selling NFTs to gain liquidity for Azuki assets, Captainz, and Yuga, but it looks like they're still holding onto their flightless birds.Finally, Cool Cats. No surprise but they're flat week-over-week. Still controversial to include these especially when the newly minted Captainz is at a nice 5 ETH floor already. As always, worth leaving here until flipped by a handful of projects or sinks below 2 ETH. I didn't want to choose violence in this newsletter, but this tweet of Cool Cat owner (roughly 12 ETH floor at the time) dunking on Penguins during "Peak FUD" is quite funny. This goes to show how important it is to be nimble, and constantly willing to change your mind. FWIW, 1 Cat was 12 penguins during this time and now 1 penguin = 3 cats.

Finally, the holy grail of PFPs IMO, CryptoPunks, are cool 67 ETH stable coins and have now been steady in their 62-68 ETH range for over 3 months. Very exciting stuff here.

Musings

Throughout the bear market I've written a lot about the importance of sticking around and keeping interest. I'll say corny things at the end of a newsletter like if you're still reading this you're going to make it and keep pushing forward and building. I dumped my thoughts in this thread below, but this recent pump, bear market rally, NFT revival, whatever you want to call it is the perfect example of "being rewarded for sticking around".

If you were grinding (looking for hidden value, speaking to teams, doing twitter research) throughout the summer and rough months of the fall, you practically could have "made it all back" in the last 2 weeks. For me, I've practically made up all my bear market losses and then some since December started. This is what makes NFTs so amazing.But it's important to keep a level head. If you're FOMOing into a project right now, ask yourself what's different now than a few months ago when it was literally 1/10 the price. Nobody cared for Lil Pudgy's at .1 just 2 months ago but now all of a sudden at .7 they decide to buy? Showing up everyday pays off. For the first time since May, my normie friends are asking me for my NFT "plays". Whether this is a top signal or we're just getting started, these are the *tourists* who only participate during manias. They're not paying attention and are buying solely off of emotion, hype, and to get rich quick. But, you were a cockroach, and spent a few hours every week keeping up to date with the space. You got in early, farmed the right WLs, met the right people, and continued to grow your brand. While the last 6-8 months have felt like hell, we're seemingly getting massively rewarded right now. And it kind of feels out of the blue.

Overall, another great week for jpegs in the books. It feels like we're back in that period of time when it's impossible to put down your phone – we're all constantly staring at our screens and floor prices. Short lived or not, take a deep breathe and enjoy the fun while it lasts.Cheers,Wilson