Welcome to NFT Insider for February 3rd, 2022 – FREE edition, brought to you weekly by Alts.
Before we dive in, just a reminder that our Discord is live and the NFT channel is an everyone-welcome place to get tips and swap opinions with other NFT fans. The community is friendly, helpful, and the invite is open to all. Come on in.
Table of Contents
NFTs in 2022
Fractional marketplaces have been on a downtrend in recent weeks, reaching the lowest ROI since we started tracking NFTs in early September 2021. There was a slight dip from last week, with fractional returns dropping from 215% to 183% since 2021.
Monday marked the second-highest day in NFT sales volume in the past three months. It was also the 11th-highest all-time day in NFT sales volume. Since Jan 25th, there have been seven days of sales volume above $120 million. Prior to that, there had only been one day with sales above $120 million in the past three months. The market is booming.
NFTs Last Week
NFTs on Fractional Marketplaces
NFTs were down a little more than 6% from the previous week. One of the biggest drops comes from Rally’s Bored Ape #601, trading down by a significant amount. Last week, Ape #601 approached $50 per share, but by the beginning of this week it was down to $33 per share.
On a positive note for investors, Bored Ape #9159 on Rally opened for live trading and gave a 64% return from IPO when shares reached $8.20 for a market cap of $320k, which for a moment mirrored the Bored Ape floor price. At the time of writing, the floor price has since dropped to about $270k.
NFTs on OpenSea
Azuki shows no signs of slowing down as it took the top spot on OpenSea for the second straight week. The floor price was more than double in the past week, going from 6.5 to 14.6 ETH for a day. The price has since dropped to 11 ETH. In just three weeks since its minting, Azuki has the 9th highest sales volume in OpenSea history.
Bored Apes momentarily reached an all-time high floor price of 117 ETH – the largest ever in terms of crypto or what was the fiat equivalent ($323k). Prices have since corrected with Bored Apes at a floor price of 100 ETH ($270k) at time of writing.
NFTs This Week
Fractional Marketplaces
No assets will be IPO’ing on the fractional marketplaces this week.
Projects Minting
Philosophical Foxes
Minting Feb 3rd @ 5PM ET
- These are living, breathing foxes with different philosophies, traits, and even emotional baggage written into the metadata
- The Philosophical Foxes Discord is described as “the portal to a sublime, virtual coffee shop complete with engaging conversation, chill lo-fi tunes, and mystical concoctions.
- After unveiling 100 Foxes to early adopters, the project is now ready to introduce an additional 1,100 foxes “into the wild”
- There are currently 15 Foxes listed for sale on OpenSea with a 2.3 ETH floor
- The drop will take place as a Dutch Auction on OpenSea
- Here’s a good read on the project
Alpacadabraz 3D
Minting Feb 12th
- Devs had a successful initial mint of 9,669 2D Alpacas. They are currently at a floor price of 1.53 ETH.
- There will be 19,969 3D Alpacas minted. All current holders of the 2D project will get an opportunity to mint a 3D Alpaca.
- 3,000 whitelists will be given out to members of the Discord community. All remaining Alpacas will be available for public minting.
- The Alpacadabraz have a genesis story of being abandoned by a greedy farmer. All 3D Alpacas should have a home in Sandbox land that devs are looking to develop.
Interesting projects elsewhere
Global Citizen Club
Minted February 1st
- This one minted on Tuesday, but it has a lot of momentum behind it and might be a good speculative buy as the floor price rises from .13 ETH
- Described as minimalism, the art stands out for its simplicity and colors
- The project aims to connect members through an exclusive club in the metaverse
- GCC has its own token, $GCCMILE, that is earned simply by being a holder
- A sufficient amount of $GCC can be redeemed for a GCC Destination Pass NFT
Industry News
It’s been a tremendous week for NFTs. Projects are minting left and right, each with its own pre-packaged hype and promises of going to the moon and plenty of LFGs(!!!!). While seemingly every economic sector sees some sort of retraction, NFTs have remained resilient.
A compelling argument has been made that NFTs have become a store of value. This would have been unthinkable even six months ago when NFTs were settling into the public consciousness.
The term “decoupling” has been thrown around to describe NFTs as a separate asset class, independent of the prices of cryptocurrencies, namely ether and bitcoin. For a few days this week, it was inarguable. The Bored Ape floor price reached 118 ETH ($320k) while stocks and crypto continued to sink or tread water.
When I think about this, I recall my conversation with Wave Financial Fund Co-founder Les Borsai, who said plainly, NFTs are not about the art or the utility – they’re about the creation of a new economy.
Yes, roadmaps are important, and community is essential, but they’re all part of what humans have done best for the past five thousand years or so, and that’s creating and forging new economies. Everything makes much more sense when we can view these new assets through that lens.
Of course, the floor prices for many of the NFTs have dropped in just the past few days. The Apes are now at 100 ETH, Azuki is back down to 11 ETH from almost 17 ETH, and the Mutant Apes are back at 20 ETH after going up to 27.5 ETH.
As we know, NFTs are not immune from market conditions and macroeconomic events. I don’t know how much anything can truly be decoupled.
But with the NFT economy still in its infancy, it’s clear that NFTs are carving out a clear role in the financial sector – a part that is altogether different from anything we have ever seen. The creator economy has taken its next step, where we, the participants, are the creators.
