I’m Not F’ing Leaving

See you in Miami

December 01, 2022

(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. Hope you’ve all had a good week trading back and forth with the same 5 people. At this point, consider this newsletter my diary. Coming to you live from the soon-to-be underwater city of Miami, I’m in town for Art Basel this weekend.

I’ve got a few events planned, but I think it’ll make for an interesting weekend to say the least. Hit me up if you’re in town, otherwise let’s continue this illusion of identifying each other with animal art in perpetuity.

Without further ado, prepare yourself for your weekly enlightenment.

Market Update

When I first checked this chart, I thought: “There is absolutely NO way that AVAX NFTs had the same volume profile as last week”.

Outside of Plague Game, Chippers and MadSkullz, no project has had over 100 sales in the last 7 days. So what gives?

Let’s look at AVAX volume broken down by marketplace:

Leave it to Chikn to pump those volume numbers up. Despite being two weeks removed from FTX imploding, Joepegs had its worst week in months - not a single day this past week has moved north of $10k USD volume. Seems like a lifetime ago when we were in our mini-euphoric phase back in October where everything was doing 10x backflips.

With ETH having an uptick in volume this week, this begs the question: what’s the deal? I’ll touch on that in my musings towards the end.

Project Update

To the surprise of absolutely no one, most top projects by volume are relatively flat with the exception of Chad Doge, which is on the cusp of breaking its 3 AVAX support level. Given the way other projects have trended, I’m surprised it took this long but Stupifff and co. have done a great job of continuing to drive hype inwards and outwards around Chad Doge Supers.

Plague Game is interesting. As of this morning, you are able to claim your potions if you hold doctors. While the floor price is well below mint, I think this is a little misleading because of the potion claim mechanic.. While floor doctors currently look like a steal, I would be extra cautious and make sure that you’re buying a doctor for a doctor, and not for a potion. I’m certain that some of the floors have claimed their potions already, so just make sure you want to buy JUST doctors if you’re going shopping.

That said, we have had some rebounding back into quality projects, which is always a good sign.

Peons and Pickaxes have both rebounded from their lows around 3.1 AVAX and 1.5 AVAX respectively. Liquidity rotating back into Peons / Pickaxes seems to be a normal trend here - however it seems INSANE that Peons were north of 12 AVAX only 4-6 weeks ago. Just bananas. I might have to rotate back into a few myself… maybe.

APAs have bounced back nicely as well. I’m very excited for the launch of OOPA, their upcoming project which won’t launch for what seems like a few months. Seems like a fun take on SOL’s y00ts - I’ll be sure to cover them more in-depth as we learn more about them.

Market Musings

As I wrote this and stared at the Dune marketplace by volume chart, I was wracking my brain about the “why” - besides the macro outlook and FTX fiasco, is there any reason for volume to be down bad currently?

I think all of these play a part, but what I truly believe is sorely lacking at the moment in AVAX NFTs is a decentralized exchange aggregator. The market is currently too small for the various exchanges to be fighting for the 15 users who are trading every day. United we stand, divided we fall or something like that. I really think a Genie / Gem / Blur-type DEX aggregator would do wonders for the ecosystem.

Yes, I know Joepegs introduced a bulk buy function which is a great step, but it’s not yet enough. The whole point of a DEX aggregator is to reduce as much friction as humanly possible for a potential NFT buyer while giving them access to an entire inventory of NFTs to choose from (i.e., an NFT may be on Kaleo but not on Joepegs, vice versa, etc.).

At the moment, I think AVAX NFT marketplaces are effectively commoditized outside of the UX, similar to how ETH was for a while until Blur came along and shook up the scene with optional royalties, their airdrop, incredible UI/UX, and so on. We need something special like that from a DEX aggregator perspective - eventually. All I want is to sweep some stuff easily across 2 different marketplaces for now. It would bring about a lot more liquidity and facilitate trading significantly better than at present.

So, can someone PLEASE do this for free? We’re waiting.

Conclusion

All in all, another week of AVAX NFTs is in the books. With Plague Game kicking off next week, I will be hoarding all of my potions until Grandma or another whale is groveling in my DMs to purchase them for 100 AVAX apiece (lowball). For now, I’ll be in Miami frolicking amongst other JPEGs (or on discord).

Talk soon.

Cheers,

Chuck