Start Your Engines

(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 fellow agents. I trust that everyone who trades on both ETH and AVAX is planning on rolling their $BLUR profits into quality AVAX projects. At least I am.

Now that the $BLUR cat is out of the bag, it seems like many are trying their hardest to farm points for the second airdrop which, in this smol penguin’s humble opinion, is easily the most crowded trade in NFTs right now. Wat do when everyone is fixated on one corner of the market?

Find good deals in other markets that have been neglected via lack of liquidity.

While the past week in AVAX was slightly better vs. 10 days ago when $BLUR dropped, I still think there are some solid opportunities to move in before the next rotation of liquidity comes to pass.

Before I move on, your favorite flightless bird is once again in the smoggiest city on earth in Los Angeles for the remainder of the week. If you’re pulling up to Avalanche Park tonight, I’ll probably see you there.

In the words of my girlfriend, “I’ll go to the nerd concert if it makes you happy.”

Anyway - how’d we do last week?

Market Update

Before I begin, a few people have asked me where I grab my market data. You can find the below output here.

I will say this - a lot of other sources I have used for researching AVAX volume metrics seem to either be incomplete or flat out incorrect. I use Dune to get a directional sense for market liquidity, which in itself may very well be complete. Don’t worry, I have CHD on the case.

Anyway - Joepegs volume, while slightly better than last week, was fairly muted. Not surprising to me - many who trade on AVAX also trade on ETH and right after $BLUR generational wealth was sent out to many traders, they released their season 2 airdrop details which people have been scrambling over and has induced a fair amount of drama. Given that the average NFT enthusiast’s attention span is that of a goldfish, you can understand why many are having a hard time focusing on AVAX.

Shout out to Virtual Query for completely overhauling avalytics.xyz over the last few days, which is my go-to AVAX NFT analytics platform of choice (do I even have a choice?) Looks absolutely mint.

As someone who cuts and manipulates data for a living (yes, I have a normoid job too), this is the stuff I love to see. As said by VR himself, I’d take the marketplace statistics with a grain of salt as the source data just is not consistent pretty much anywhere you look, but everything else looks great.

My favorite chart to examine from a 30,000 foot view is growth in Unique Users at the bottom. It’s a pretty good indicator of how many people AVAX is onboarding from ETH and other chains, which I think should be the primary focus to bring new liquidity into the system. Despite relatively low volume the last couple of weeks, it’s good to see that we’re getting a constant drip of new faces (or wallets).

If we put aside the Chikn ecosystem, I would say that volume has been relatively unimpressive on a project basis.

With OOPA’s mint approaching, I’m not surprised to see APA’s continue their leg upward back north of 6 AVAX. I’m waffling back and forth between whether I should be buying tokens or the APAs themselves to burn.

With the highest sales in the last week being 2 1/1 APAs, that might indicate what the market thinks. Who knows? In any case, I really like OOPAs, Peons, Chad Doges, and anything within the Smolverse as something to gain exposure to while the market is relatively quiet.

Intrusive Thoughts and Conclusion

Moving forward, I’ve been thinking about previous lulls on AVAX and how I think we’ll move forward from a rotational liquidity perspective.

Usually, big spikes in AVAX volume came from very hyped mints which brought fresh liquidity into the system and trickled through to other projects. Think back to Wolfiland (RIP bagholders) in October. That was an insane 3 weeks for Avalanche where it was impossible for you to avoid gaining multiples on new projects.

With OOPAs being the most hyped mint in several months and coming out on March 10th, I plan to continue positioning myself accordingly for the next volume pump. This penguin thinks that the month of March is going to be a fun one, so stick around or stay on the sidelines and watch the fireworks - the choice is yours.

Now, time to make some coffee.

Cheers,

Chuck