The Pictures Come With Tokens Now?

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. I hope you are doing well. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve decided to put down my thoughts on paper and boy have things been wild. I’ve probably been staring at my screen for 18 hours a day since November 1st and am having the time of my life. I’ve been trading like a mad man and have been on one of the better hot streaks of my crypto, nft, magic internet money career. Am I a genius? Absolutely not. The market has been on easy mode, especially the last few weeks; and practically everything from jpegs to shitcoins to weird cosmos tokens are absolutely ripping.

Transparently, during these phases I find it a lot harder to write. While I’m active in discord 24/7 chatting and coming up with ideas, writing takes a lot of time. Time away from the “making money” aspect of this space. I’ll do my best to keep a weekly or bi-weekly cadence as readership has increased drastically over the last month (bull is back) but prefer to spend most of my time talking with you in discord. Anyways, let’s dive into a few things.

Along with prices, NFT volume has recovered nicely. I can’t recall when it was, I believe September, when I noted my expectation that volumes had bottomed. While not perfect, it looks like October 2023 will have been the bottom for NFT volume and marks the end of the NFT bear market. A lot of people seem scared to say this, but I really do think we’re back. Seeing tons of people from last cycle starting to show face in communities again, IRL friends asking about crypto, and general sentiment shifting with a hopefully imminent ETF approval.

In NFT land, many of the old dogs aren’t moving, while new shiny objects or ‘undervalued’ projects continue to gain market share. A lot of people are asking me about the recent Pudgy Penguins and Creepz pumps. I think these are just “re-pricings”. With how large of a splash $portal made on twitter, it didn’t make much sense to me that Creepz were sub-1 ETH two months ago. Considering the token meta with Pixelmon, Grapes, Blockdice, and many more - Creepz/Overlord should be at the top of this list.

Pudgy Penguins on the other hand will be the #1 PFP outside of Punks in 2024 (my opinions have been consistent since 2022) and it makes sense that the project is acting the way it is. Penguins kicked off the bear market at a 1 ETH floor price and hit 12 ETH recently on some token rumors. I think here we set a new base in the 8-12 ETH range and grind for a bit. I believe the 10-15 ETH run will take some time but the move up to 15-20 ETH will be quite quick. I took some profits on Lil Pudgys over 1 ETH to hedge my bets.

Again, I hold both of these projects so please understand that I am very biased and these are opinions. Please do not dm me on twitter asking what to do because I have absolutely no idea your situation and am certainly not qualified to provide advice. We are gambling on pictures!

Next up is Sol NFTs…

Sol NFTs may be even easier right now than ETH. Basically every new mint is an auto-cook for at least an hour or two, and if you have a small stack, the lack of fees makes this a lot more viable. Solana has gotten a lot of attention recently. Obviously this is because the price has gone up a lot, and price action leads all things in this space. With the recent Jito airdrop as well, a lot of people made a lot of money with extremely low risk. Now everyone and their mother is coming to farm random protocols on Solana. I don’t necessarily think this is EV+, as we have 10x more people farming protocols that will probably earn 1/10 the expected airdrop. However, I’m quite confident that Tensor will be one of the biggest airdrops as its volume is comparable to Blur. Tensor is great because it’s the same points mechanism as Blur (bid/list) and since Solana NFTs are hot, you can basically farm while also making money. Win/Win.

Another theory I want to play around with is what I’ve been calling a "reverse NFT cycle”. You may think this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever read, and honestly it might be - but just an idea I’ve been playing around with in my head.

On-chain has certainly been hot, but for the most part many NFTs have low key outperformed the majors and many alts. I did NOT see this coming tbh, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a point where I expected NFTs to be dead for another year. But maybe this time, we get a mini or full 4-6 month NFT cycle before coins hit new ATHs. NFT people are like 90% of the people who stuck around in the bear market. We all make fun of the sappy seal PFP tweeting “gm” or “like this if you’re still here” tweets. But a lot of the jpeg people are still here, and they’re doing quite well. Community this, community that, half these people still hitch their entire personality to a picture. It’s practically impossible for NFTs to flourish when ETH is above $4,000, and if you’re bullish on another crypto cycle like I am, then this day will probably come. Maybe NFTs pump first this time? Or maybe Pacman fixes this entire issue with Blast.

Lastly, the web3 gaming meta that we all spoke about a year ago seems to finally be playing out. Anything with “gaming” tied to it seems to catch a narrative-related bid as well. This seems obvious in retrospect, but something to watch out for. I’ll be minting Overworld this week and watching the PA closely. If a hyped new mint like this ends up being very successful, then we are more back than even I expected.

Anyways stay safe out there. On Thursday, we’re going to drop a guest post on safety from Beau. It’s important we all refresh our memory on wallet security as things continue to heat up and we must keep our internet coins safe.

Looking forward to another hectic week of fun and no sleep.

Cheers,
Wilson