ALERT : NFT Drops and Major Moves in 2022
Huge Bored Ape and CloneX moves, an NFT backed major animation launching and the virtual Las Vegas with the biggest DJ's in the world
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As always, the content of this letter is not financial advice or an inducement to trade, rather a spotlight on projects I am focussing on, always do your own research. Some projects I have participated in.
Happy New Year! We’re currently 4 days into 2022 and the NFT space is already providing us with new headlines and major moves.
Not that it needs further explanation in this letter but the Bored Ape Yacht Club is continuing to defy everyone’s expectations, with a current floor of 74 ETH ($284,000) from a $200 mint 8 months ago. Mutant apes (a free airdrop to ape holders via a serum) are themselves sitting at 16.1 ETH ($68,859) having hovered around 3-6ETH for many months. The latest celebrity addition to pick one up is Eminem :
This is obviously well documented but even for BAYC these are some major moves over the last few days.
More than anything, we’re seeing exponential adoption in general, as this graph from NFT GO (via @douglassNFT) demonstrates (wallets that hold NFTs).
BAYC sits essentially at the top of the pile as both an OG project, digital flex, store of value and store of culture in this new digital world.
In early December there was also the announcement that a BAYC play-to-earn game is coming with Animoca Brands (one of the most respected game developers/publishers & investment firms in the space). This will certainly gather attention when it is released - story here
I also found it interesting that Bitwise (one of the largest and fastest-growing institutional crypto asset managers) recently launched a blue-chip NFT Index Fund for accredited investors.
Bitwise are crypto native and ahead of most other traditional investment firms but it’s an interesting signal that NFTs are in the very very early stages of being accepted as a new digital asset class. There’s a long way to go yet (and therefore lots of opportunity) but this was certainly interesting to see.
You can view what NFTs Bitwise have in their index fund here
As always, this newsletter is never intended to time the market. Adoption is not a straight line up and there will be corrections, so a reminder to only invest what you can afford to lose and to think long term.
With that in mind, let’s dive into the recap and this week’s NFT picks (as BAYC steals the mainstream limelight, there are some other very interesting opportunities being overlooked).
The recap
RTFKT Studios - CloneX (prev. AKIRA) is a project we’ve been watching for a long time and it’s been quite the journey from the qualifying NFTs. We first mentioned these back in August, in this issue at 0.5 ETH ($1500 at the time), which then rose to dizzying heights of 19 ETH (approx ($70,700).
Since the reveal of the CloneX avatars, RTFKT Studios announced they’d be acquired by Nike and we’re now seeing this project creep into blue-chip status.
To date, Clone X has done over 50,000 ETH ($190 million) of volume traded in a matter of weeks, with top sales reaching 6 figures (view here - scroll down) - the biggest being 289 ETH ($1.1 million) and the floor on less rare avatars currently sitting at 5.75 ETH ($21,850) each.
Holders also got airdropped a ‘space pod’ - a cool 3D environment that can be fully explored and also acts as a place to display NFTs you hold. Currently sitting at a 0.8 ETH ($3000) floor, it’s another example of RTFKT rewarding long term holders as they continue to do - there is also a great thread about they are probably still undervalued here
There’s also full 3D models to come for holders of CloneX and RTFKT Studios continue to be a top tier brand in the space.
Jenkins the Valet - I first included Jenkins the Valet back in this issue on August 5th, the floor at the time was 0.04 ETH ($100), it’s now sitting at 0.7 ETH ($2674).
Jenkins the Valet is a fascinating project, started by and also starring Bored Apes in an upcoming book signed by CAA (one of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies).
Holders of a Writer’s Room Ticket can team up with other ape holders to license their NFT and share in profits of the book and wider IP. You can read more about it all here - a super interesting project and one I continue to watch closely.
It also seems likely that they’ll adopt other NFT projects and expand into film and tv too.
888 The New World - The ‘888 inner circle token’ continues to give whitelist access to various projects for holders, alongside airdrops and various perks - the token itself is up from 0.5ETH ($2100) to 1.3ETH ($4924) this week, having previously reached highs of 2.85ETH ($9832) from an initial 0.2ETH ($700) mint.
Chicken Derby - The team continue to make improvements to the yet to be released chicken racing game that’s best described as Zed Run meets Mario Kart. It’s interesting to note just how long it takes to build a working game from scratch, so this has certainly been a journey. I’m hoping we see some public races soon but the team are always communicating well with regular updates in discord.
I’m still bullish on the project, I think it’s something fun and shareable that newcomers will enjoy. There’s also some chickens with good stats at decent prices at the moment - 0.099ETH ($375) will get you a 98/100 perfection chicken e.g. here
The CryptoBabyPunks - Well loved and early project CryptoBabyPunks, is still sitting a little undervalued imo at roughly 0.3ETH ($1136) down slightly from 0.65 ETH ($2015) in the last few weeks.
We now have seen the full migration of the CryptoBabyPunks to their own independent contract by RTFKT Studios CTO and podcast guest Samuel Cardillo.
There is now an interesting roadmap (including the $Babytoken) to come so I am keeping a close eye on the project as always :
Seerlight - Continues to be an artist I think has a major future in this space - in this issue, we identified what I think is a mis-pricing of some of his early work. It hasn’t moved further but I think it’s still underpriced.
In the last issue, we also highlighted - this Seerlight collab ‘Capsule House’ - the floor was sitting at 0.07ETH ($266), it has since risen sharply to 0.95ETH ($3524) - mainly off the back of the news that holding a Capsule House will give you access to an upcoming pfp avatar co-designed by Seerlight:
Some other long term projects I’m continuing to watch closely are Jadu Hoverboards, Cryptoys, Big Time, MetaSoccer, Huxley Saga, Internet Game - All of these we’ve covered in previous issues but I will continue to update on their progress in future issues.
With the recap done, let’s dive into some upcoming opportunities and this week’s spotlight picks :