Happy Blur Day

(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 all. I am still feeling pretty good on this lovely Tuesday morning and am looking forward to my stimulus package today. It’s been quite the volatile week in the markets as the long-awaited Blur airdrop will finally be hitting our MetaMask wallets today and many are anticipating a large move. Added to this, in the normoid world, we have CPI coming out today which will probably happen around 10 minutes after I finish wrapping this up. While the fungible crypto markets have been choppy, the majority of the internet pictures are spiraling downwards. Overall, while quiet, I had a decent week of picture trading and I’m now leaning even more optimistic for the remainder of February. Funny enough, you can read this newsletter and essentially determine if I’m right or wrong a few hours after so this one should be fun. I’ll keep this simple and make a ton of predictions. Big day today, good luck all 🫡.

NFT twitter has been lit this week with plenty of drama – the discord is live. A lot of folks are coming back from the dead as the sound of easier money continues to ring. With crypto prices down across the board and chopping, if we continue to stay in this lower range I’ll continue to believe our pictures will outperform. Of course, my bags will outperform mainly, but that’s a different story.

Moving on, the big story this week has been Bitcoin NFTs. Below is the now the dumbest take on the internet all week.

Like most experienced in this market, I think if you’re reading about bitcoin NFTs for the first time in this newsletter today, then you’re already late. Including myself. It’s exciting to see Bitcoin Punks go from $200 to 30 ETH in a few days but these fads do not last very long. Checks is a great example of this. At 2 ETH, we started to see the narrative of folks calling this “the next Fidenza” and the project is now down 75%+ from its ATH. I’m not dunking on Checks, but I do think this was quite obvious. Luckily for us, we have folks who will continue to gobble up liquidity on our sells, despite the normoids not returning to the market.

Volume is still solid and the days where the top project on OpenSea was doing 24 hour volume of 300 ETH seem lightyears away. Ah, the true dog days, few remember this. I say this a lot but grinding throughout these times has really paid off. Trading volume ticked up this week slightly after a few weeks of small declines. I expect today specifically to be a massive volume day and that by this time next week volume will have drastically increased.

Last week I spoke about the 3 major catalysts: Digi Dragons / Super Bowl commercials, Yuga mint, and Blur airdrop. The first one, Digi Dragons, turned out to be a major disappointment in the sense that for some weird reason I expected this to onboard normoid no-coiners to space. Instead, my super bowl viewing party had zero clue what was occurring and thought this was dumb. Adding to this, practically everyone who minted already had an NFT in their wallet. A whole bunch of nothing in my opinion (when it comes to impact on the market). This leaves us with the Yuga mint and Blur airdrop.

For those wondering, I think the market is going to pump today, and projects like Pudgy Penguins and Azuki are going to run. Now that your favorite MAYC PFP influencer has put his net worth into Open Editions, we can declare that meta dead and move on to the next one. While there is a lot of FUD around $Blur and how everyone is going to take their money and run, I disagree.

These people are certainly not dumb. They have to have some plan… right? Anyways, I think most who say they’re going to dump the free money don’t know themselves too well. This is a casino and most of the participants have a dangerous gambling addiction. I think the combination of Blur incentives (which will be clever) combined with the degen mentality to double your money overnight, will add some fuel to keep the ponzi running.

The great news? You will know if I am right or wrong within a few hours of reading this.

Blue Chips

Ah, my favorite part of the morning, the chance to give the cold hard unfiltered truth about your favorite project. Prices taken from Blur early morning EST.

Here are MY thoughts:

1. BAYC took a bit of a nosedive this week after the closing of Dookie Dash, not too surprised but wouldn’t be too worried here either.

2. Nothing ever changes with Punks.

3. Not sure for the run up here but MAYC are definitely the strongest assets. It looks like when they get to a ⅕ ratio for BAYC then this is the time to buy.

4. Azuki is still in a league of its own.

5. Moonbirds looked horrible this week after some PROOF shenanigans but recovered the other day after a collab with DesLucrece. I think this is short lived as this project is hanging on by a thread.

6. Penguins got crushed this week off of Blur farmers taking advantage of the high volume and 9x9x9 dumping ~300 Penguins. Still, it looks stronger than all the other projects outside of Yuga/Azuki.

7. Doodles is looking more and more like Cool Cats 2.0

8. At this point I don’t see Clone X recovering.

Very few new points here. I have been quite surprised by how horrible Doodles looks right now and seeing the community abandon the project after holding on for dear life since 20 ETH is surely a remarkable sight. This project and the way the founders have been handling things are giving me an eerily similar feeling to Cool Cats. Nonetheless, wouldn’t be surprised to see “dip buyers” come in with their Blur stimmies. However, these are not “community members” but short term flippers, which makes me remain bearish.

Yuga and Azuki still look strong and I expect these to continue to run this month.

From many internal conversations I have, there’s a lot of no-penguiners who want Penguins. They are waiting for the volatility to settle or post-Blur to buy some. I expect these to run hard later this month.

Moonbirds are doing nothing for me and continue to grind lower. While still the highest in their category, we forget that these were once 40 ETH. The project releases news every time things look too horrid that give it a quick boost but overall nothing substantial.

Finally, Clone X looks less and less like a blue chip at this point.

Of course, I am extremely biased, but at least I’m consistent and honest here folks. I think the 2022 meta of Doodles/Moonbirds/Clone X is coming to an end. There will be projects to fill the void and one I’m fairly confident that will do this is Kanpai Pandas.

Disclaimer: I own 0 Pandas and have no plans to anytime soon (I am accumulating Penguins instead). That being said this project has the makings of a future blue-chip and cult-like community that most other projects lack. Yes, I do think Captainz is another that may fill the void. However, the difference is there’s too many moving parts for me to tell right now, whereas Pandas are just a repeat of what we’ve seen work in the past time and time again. Killabears is another one but I need to do more research there.

While there are still projects I find interesting to look at such as Overlord, My Pet Hooligan, Chimpers, and MFers - none of these have been able to gain any real traction in the bear market so far. Again, I like all these projects but I’m speaking the cold hard truth. Instead, I’ll focus on projects with momentum right now which is essential for survival.

Musings

I’m not sure about you but I have been looking forward to today for a long time. While I have changed my view on the potential outcome 10+ times over the last month or so, I am going into this airdrop with the mindset that things will simply go up. If I am wrong, oh well.

With my newly found wealth and fake internet tokens I will be avoiding all projects that have dipped a ton in a the last 2 weeks (Doodles / Checks) and will focus on positive momentum. For me, I like to trade what I know which is Penguins, but I think avoiding projects that seem to be dying is usually the right mentality. If dying projects make an announcement that changes everything, I'm happy to buy slightly higher. That being said, I want to avoid being the guy who bought the Cool Cats dip at 5 ETH or the Clone X dip at 7 ETH.

My hope, is that with this influx of liquidity, we get a ton of new mints and Degen projects like The Ponzi from a few weeks ago that do a swift 20x+. Of course, don’t bag hold these (i.e. get in quick and out quicker) (NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE). If this is the case, then the next couple of weeks are going to be a ton of fun. If CPI comes in hot and Blur turns out to be a dud, well then our nice NFT echo bubble is coming to a close.

Keep your head up high. This is the week where a quick sequence of hitting 4-5 buttons on your computer can make you a millionaire. The choice is yours.

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

Cheers,
Wilson