A Great Cleansing Is Upon Us

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 another week of nothing in NFT world. While lurking around in the ghost land of dead discords, the main theme I’ve been noticing is that many are at a standstill.

There’s a few camps you’re in at this point:

1. Down bad and it’s not worth selling

2. Those with a ton of ETH but have little interest in dipping back in

3. Blur farmer who is down astronomically and

4. Waiting for $MEME airdrop before making next move.

As alts got absolutely rinsed this week, NFTs took a beating as well as we can see in the chart below.

Adding insult to injury, $BLUR cannot catch a break and keeps dipping, making our hopium for a large airdrop become less and less valuable by the day. As far as sentiment goes for NFTs (and crypto in general), things are pretty bleak at the moment and there’s a ton of crying on the timeline. This seems a bit extreme, as ETH is still up 50%+ on the year, stocks are ripping, and Macro doomers have once again been blown the F out. In the bull, everyone claimed that 99% of NFTs will go to zero, and that’s exactly what is happening. Although, we never expected it to be our bags!

In the world of crypto, jpegs, and what not, there’s simultaneously a lot going on and nothing going on at the same time. Trading volume ticked up slightly but it really doesn’t feel this way as there was no big “play” of the week (yes I’m aware like 7 people have been “cooking” on ordinals).

Would also check out this thread below to summarize the ‘fuckery’ going on in the markets. I’m not sure what the incentives are for these whales are as many of them are repping -2K ETH PnLs at this point.

There’s also a ton of FUD surrounding the liquidity decreasing and how this may cause some broader trouble. This seems pretty reasonable as every day season 2 continues, more and more people get exhausted, points become less valuable, and the token price seems to be in “down-only” mode. Still, this is somewhat concerning. It’s funny how we’ve gone from “Blur is killing our NFTs” back to “Blur is the only thing holding up floor prices” (grass is always greener).

Is this a sign of bottom? Remember the days of the BendDAO FUD that always somehow marked the local bottoms for NFTs and got everyone in Full Panic mode? This is similar, but I think more of a real concern as it’s not local to a few collections, but rather the entire market generally. I feel like Michael Burry at times because of how long I’ve been waiting, but I still feel strongly that we’ll see BAYC 30 ETH by the end of 2023 and some sort of pending cascade may be the way we get there. Or, equally likely, a slow bleed and grind down while little notice this is occurring.

Also, I’m starting to feel as if $MEME will be a sell the news event. Shitcoin season is absolutely dead, even though the final boss HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu is still managing to catch a bid. However, Captainz seems like one of those “everybody knows what will happen” plays. Reminds me of Otherside, when people were selling their mints and buying floors for 6-7 ETH right away, only to be down 50% within 48 hours. When the entire space if concentrated on one bet, it almost always never works out. Who knows though, surely I’ll change my mind next week.

All of this said – a devastating market calls us to reflect on the good times and the mistakes we made. I remember influencers claiming they’d never sell their “digital identity” or how their “PFP would one day be in a museum”. Funny looking back as many of these have re-surfaced on the timeline. No hate at all, but tough to think you could have taken 7 figures for an internet picture, and now it’s practically worthless.

Speaking of reflecting, we can also check the amount of royalties these projects generated. Goes to show that even 10m+ in the bank doesn’t mean much when it comes to projects succeeding. Community isn’t really a meme at this point, and some of the projects still kicking and pushing aren’t even in the top 20 here.

With that, we’ll see what happens this week – hopefully it’s a bit more exciting. I’ve only made 1-2 purchases in the last 2 weeks but things are starting to look juicy. I don’t think it’s time to bid yet (the 3 collections that still might go up) but we’re certainly close. While we’ve had multiple ‘capitulation’ events this year, I expect many more in the next 6 months. Of course, there will be a handful of projects that still rip (this is the worlds greatest casino) and most will once again fade and buy the top.

NFT Summer has been fun so far, right? Stay safe out there.

Cheers,
Wilson