The Uptober to Octover Rotation

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. Another week in the books, day 3 into October and we have both Uptober and Octover which have taken shape in short order. Some days it feels like this year has flown by, and other days leave me thinking about how it’s been basically 2 years since crypto topped. Throughout this period I’ve had multiple “it’s so over” and “we’re so back” moments – days having unwavering conviction and days full of self doubt. I’ve certainly been a victim of the chop the last few weeks, round-tripped a few too many shitters, and donated plenty of feed on friend tech. Oh well, charge it to the game.

With September behind us, I’m starting to feel back in my stride. From finally figuring out how to be profitable flipping FT keys, buying the lil pudgy dip, and avoiding buying the top of this weeks hot memecoin(s). Sometimes, having a strategy isn’t all that bad.

With Q3 done, and Q4 ahead - it seems the consensus is a bearish chop/down in Q4 with better times ahead in 2024. It seems like there’s a better chance than not we’ll get an ETF approval in 2024 and as long as Binance doesn’t completely blow up (the final boss?) then sunshine and rainbows might not be too far away. I’m cautiously bullish on 2024, so maybe the best decision you could make would be to fade me…

Luckily for you, my macro thoughts should mean nothing as I’m merely a cartoon penguin who writes (rants) about pictures on the blockchain. If we take a look at floor prices on blur, we’ve been quietly creeping up over the last 2 weeks. Azuki, Penguins, MAYC, BAYC - all up roughly 15-20% from their recent lows in late September. I also think this 1500-1700 range for ETH is ideal for NFTs to catch a bounce.

The big news over the past few weeks has been Brave New World - Pudgy Penguins releasing toys in 2000+ Walmarts that all have codes to unlock traits in their digital world.

This has been the first announcement in months that had a positive reaction. Penguins went from 4.5e to 5.3e, and are now settled at 4.85, looking like they want to reclaim 5e and up. Considering what an utter disaster DeGods and Azuki were, plus Captainz lack of transparency causing their floor to tank 60%, Penguins have prevailed once again. Luca is in the arena.

I find it quite poetic that the most hated NFT project during the bull market has been the most universally loved during the bear. My primary thesis going into 2023 was that by EOY Penguins will be the #3 PFP in floor price (Punks, Apes, Penguins). From an Ecosystem perspective, we’ve done it – and the cherry on top is Pengs flipping.

Next up, the one other project I’ve been focused on is Creepz/Overlord. I mentioned the other week that this is 99.99% connected with SOMO.

I’ve been pretty disappointed in the floor price reaction so far and am not sure if the market either is not familiar with the connection or simply doesn’t care. I think SOMO looks as legit as they come and it does give me some hope for the future. That being said, outside of the same old whales propping up the creepz floor, I’d prefer to see new entrants join. Maybe this is what SOMO will do, maybe I’ll be disappointed again, but i’m cautiously optimistic here. Despite being critical, I still believe Overlord is the most slept on project in the space and will be much stronger in Q1 2024. Let’s not forget that there’s going to be a memeland-type coin launch here soon with $portal - this does look like something from the Creepz trailer months ago.

And finally, some final thoughts on Friend Tech. I think having some Blur PTSD is going to come in handy here. Blur season 2 is a whole other story but I’ll save that for my next newsletter. Friend Tech on the other hand, is the blur farmers new paradise, and there isn’t even confirmation of an airdrop. That being said, what FT has that Blur doesn’t is creator fees - a double edged sword considering you take a 20% haircut roundtrip for every flip.

Unpopular opinion but the big idea I've been floating in my head is that points won't correlate to dollars. The theme seems to be that FT points are selling OTC for around $2. Outside of Blur, many past airdrops have been broken up into tiers. Friend Tech has 4 tiers here (diamond, gold, silver, bronze). My thesis is that within each “Tier” there's around 3-5 sub-tiers. This would be diamond 1, diamond 2, disamond 3, etc. In total, this would be around 12 to 25 categories - and each category would get a fixed amount of tokens.

Maybe sub-tier diamond 1 is something like the top 100 points holders in the diamond category, and sub-tier diamond 2 is top 101-1000, and so on. You can imagine or speculate however you want but something like this really would not surprise me, especially considering the poll below. In this case, farmers would be absolutely BTFO.

But, we won’t know for months. There’s very little info out there so for now we simply farm and have fun!

Have a great week everyone - cheers!

Wilson