Free Money For Gambling Addicts

(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 all you newfound wealthy blockchain enjoooooyers. What a week it has been. I would like to take the time to say thank you to Blur and the team for giving away 300 million dollars to those with crippling gambling addictions. This was very generous of them. Where to even begin here. Despite the fact that 99% of my predictions from last week came true, I will hold off on the victory lap and instead discuss what happens next. While I was extremely confident in how last week would play out, I am more unsure of what the future holds. The 2 things I know for sure, however, are that 1) a ton of money has, is, and will continue to flow back into jpegs. And 2) it will not end well for those aggressively farming blur points this time around and taking hefty losses. Let’s dive in.

Market Update, Musings, and More
What a wild week this has been. While I expected NFTs to run (and especially for volume to pick up at the very least), the amount of blur those received in $USD value was quite the anomaly. I don’t think many were expecting 6 figure airdrops, especially when some of these folks were simply farming with 5-10 ETH. Blur continues to change the game.

There’s a lot to digest this week so instead of running through a whole bunch of data points like usual, I’m going to keep this post relatively high level. Why you even bother to read what I have to say beats me but I do appreciate all 5000+ of you who show your support every week!

As of this week, OpenSea is now officially #2 in volume. While I knew this would happen eventually, I am quite surprised how quickly it happened after the airdrop. While a lot of this is still due to those farming airdrops on Blur, the platform is simply superior. This means 2 things.

The first is that OpenSea is absolutely screwed. Unless, of course, they drop a token. Do I think this will happen? No. We will probably be gaslighted into thinking this for months and those will waste their money farming on Gem. Yes, OpenSea owns Gem and you can receive “points” for using their new Beta. So if you degens want to gamble on another airdrop, here is the link: https://beta.gem.xyz/.

Next up, I’m sure we all saw that OpenSea has also moved to 0 royalties and 0 fees to try to compete with Blur. What does this mean exactly? Well, most projects are absolutely screwed. This isn’t really a surprise though is it? I mean we always hear that 99% will go to 0 (most already did in the bear), but seeing some more “known” projects actually struggle hits differently. I’m not one to dunk on specific projects, but the thread below is exactly what I do not want to see out of a founder. I want my founders to adapt to a changing environment, not complain.

Moving on, what happens next. The first is that all of us are finally rich again. As I socialize with my normoid friends over the weekend, occasional conversations pop up about how funny it was that crypto and NFTs ever existed. This is a good sign I guess, and little do they know we all just got a stimulus check of tenfold value compared to the government checks during Covid. Thanks again Blur. Of course, we all received this due to our financially responsible decision making?

What do I think happens next? I think the majority of this is going to find its way back into NFTs and shitcoins. This will appear in floor prices over the coming weeks. However, a lot of this is going to be used to farm the next airdrop, which we have little to no idea what that will include. I am willing to bet the house that those taking 10+ ETH losses in fees to farm their 50 Moonbirds will not make this back due to upcoming free money. There is just no way.

This has been my favorite tweet all week. Some of these whales are going to be stuck with huge bags the second the “news” or “details” of the next airdrop come out. My prediction is Blur season 2 will be at least 3 months long and we can align this with the fatigue of farming that will die out within the next ~2 weeks. Market participants are still riding a high. I do expect a pullback when this fatigue hits and the bids die down, however, this will probably lead us to the next run up in floor prices for quality projects.

This is a good segue into what exactly these projects will be. I usually do a whole section on blue chips every week but I’ll skip that for now as the floor prices currently don’t mean much. When projects like Moonbirds go from 6 ETH to 8 ETH back to 6.5 ETH in 24 hours due to farming (Penguins experiencing the same phenomenon) it’s tough to tell if new holders are being added into these communities. In order to get a proper gauge of this, I think it will be a waiting game over the next few weeks or so.

What do I feel more confident in? New shiny objects will be back. New mints, new metas, new “future blue chips”, all of that fun stuff will return. Utopia Avatars and Super Puma mint this week which are the first paid mints with high-ish price points in a while. Not sure how Utopia does but I think Super Puma will cook and be a good flip if you have a white list spot. Even if you don’t, I think observing the price action on these is a good indicator of where the market stands. If Utopia mints out at .25 mint price and does well, then we know the risk appetite is back (more back than we’ve seen since the bull market). And, I don’t say that lightly.

Now, are we in the beginnings of a bull market? Probably not, and probably not even close. But giving away $200-300 million dollars to a bunch of folks who will most likely throw that back into internet pictures over the next month is certainly something that we cannot just gloss over.

I mean, look at all of this green on the 7D change. You could have practically bought any collection in the top 50 on blur pre-airdrop and made money. It’s nice to see all of this green. What am I doing here exactly? I think it’s a good time to find quality projects that are not being farmed for points heavily and that haven’t made huge runs yet. I’m probably front-running myself here but if you’re looking to see what impressive NFT founders look like I’d watch this interview below. These are the types of founders I want to be investing in. Quite a different tone than those who are complaining about royalties rather than pushing forward.

Finally, where does this leave us? It leaves us feeling overall bullish for the near term, of course. I’m not sure about you but when I was out socializing this weekend in the normoid world the only thing that was on my mind was getting back to my computer asap and slinging jpegs. It feels like we’re back in that “stare at your screen 16 hours a day” vibe – the euphoria is palpable. Of course, too much euphoria is no good, which is why I’m being cautious around those collections being farmed. However, it feels like generational jpeg wealth is around the corner. Echo bubble or not, ride the high while things are good and take from the market what is yours. Let’s have another amazing week!

Also, feel free to DM on twitter @mintcalwilson if you want a discord invite to chat. Good luck everyone!

Cheers,
Wilson