NFT Insider — Jan 13, 2022

Welcome to NFT Insider for January 13th 2022, brought to you weekly by Alts.

Tons to cover this week, but before we kick-off, just a reminder that our Discord is live and it’s free for all our members. Join the conversation and share insight and opinions with other NFT aficionados.

In case you missed it…

Last week, Horacio sat down with Les Borsai, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Wave Financial, an actively-managed liquid VC fund investing in crypto-assets since 2018.

If you haven’t listened yet, check it out. Tonnes of fascinating backstory for novice and seasoned NFT fans alike.

NFTs in 2022

While the broader marketplace has experienced a recent boom, the fractional markets have experienced residual growth in value. NFTs on the fractional platform saw a 5% increase in value from the previous week, with Bored Apes being the primary risers.

Price data are taken from Rally and Otis fractional platforms.

Looking at the value of the NFT market more broadly, one trend that seems to be developing in the last two weeks is the rise in sales heading into the weekend and then a slowdown during the weekdays. Something to think about as a buyer or seller.

NFT Sales Volume 2021, courtesy of NonFungible.com

NFTs Last Week

NFTs on Fractional Marketplaces

Rally continues its bet on the Bored Ape Yacht Club franchise. Last week, Rally announced its acquisition of Trippy Fur Bored Ape #8827 and Mutant Ape #5750. With these acquisitions, the total number of Ape assets on Rally will be six.

The Ape is cool, but what about the parrot?

On the secondary markets, trading this week has seen one big mover.

On the Rally platform, Bored Ape #601 was up from a previous share price of $33 at the beginning of the week to $45 per share at the time of writing. The market cap for Ape #601 is at $742k. Pretty impressive for an Ape with a rarity rank of 7,522 according to rarity. tools.

On Otis, assets have stayed relatively flat.

The assets on Rally and Otis saw a slight overall increase, with NFT Avatars carrying the weighted average in gains with 10% increases, and the NFT Art category dropping by 8%.

Price data from Rally and Otis fractional platforms

NFTs on Opensea

The top project for the past week has been PhantaBear, which gained serious momentum when Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou tweeted about getting one as a gift on Dec 31, 2021. Several other stars started changing their Twitter avatars to different PhantaBear images in the days that followed. There has been some serious pumping of the project by influencers.

A PhantaBear market?

Doodles have skyrocketed, gaining nearly 4 ETH in about two weeks.

World of Women (WoW) has also seen a significant rise in value, especially with Gary Vaynerchuk pumping the project hard. About a month ago, WoW was selling near 1.5 ETH and is now standing at about 6.5 ETH. Madonna and U2 manager Guy Oseary is now also representing the WoW Collective.

WoW is wow. Taking that next step.

NFTs at Auction

Royal.io expected to drop its much anticipated fractional offerings of two Nas singles, Ultra Black and Rare. How does this work? Well, the fractional offerings are tiered at Gold, Platinum and Diamond levels, with escalating costs for a greater percentage of streaming royalties.

For instance, the Ultra Black Gold Tier ($50) entitles investors to 0.0143% of streaming royalties. The Platinum Tier ($250) entitles investors to 0.0857%, and the Diamond Tier ($4,999) to 2.14% of streaming royalties. The Diamond Tier will also include two VIP concert tickets, a signed vinyl, and a virtual meet-up with artist Hit-Boy.

Pretty neat, for investors and super-fans alike.

But unfortunately, the site experienced technical difficulties and had to delay the offerings until next week to Thursday, Jan 20th. The people are waiting… We could get deep into the economics of this particular drop, but it would take up its own issue. For a quick read on potential profits (?), read this.

But are people primarily buying as an investment or as a way to get even closer to an iconic artist? It’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out.

NFTs This Week

Fractional Marketplaces

No IPOs this week.

As mentioned above, Otis still has open offerings for FEWOCious’ i miss your voice call back soon okay and XCOPY’s Bottom Feeder.

Interesting projects elsewhere

Rug Radio

  • Claims to be the first fully-decentralized Web3 media platform
  • In their own words: It means that our community, our hosts, and you own the platform you participate in
  • The community will decide what content to produce and promote and encourage community members to become content creators on the platform
  • 19,000 mint passes were created for free plus gas. The mint pass (also called the Member Pass), allows holders to mint the Genesis NFT. Passes are now only available on OpenSea.
  • The Genesis NFT mint started on OpenSea on January 11th for 0.111 ETH @ 4 PM ET and will end on January 14th @ 4 PM.
  • The Member Pass will also entitle holders to future tokens to stake their claim in the DAO’s governance.
  • To that extent, Rug Radio promotes the “consume to earn” structure for its members. They are looking to build a multi-tiered, self-contained economy within the community.
  • We think highly of this project since Syndicate Protocol backs it. If there’s one organization creating the benchmarks for DAO code writing, governance, and token issuance, it’s Syndicate.
  • Disclosure – we may buy some of these.

With the backing of Syndicate Protocol, Rug Radio is off to a good start.

Industry News

We’ll continue with the DAO theme.

There’s no secret that many have predicted that 2022 will be the year of the DAO (decentralized autonomous organizations). But the evolution of DAOs in the public consciousness has proven to be an interesting development:

  • Constitution DAO graced the national headlines when it raised nearly $40 million about a week and almost bought an American relic tracing back to the country’s foundation.
  • PleasrDAO also caught people’s attention when they bought the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon A Time in Shaolin for $4 million.
  • There have been other DAOs created for the express purpose of buying specific physical items such as Dune DAO, or even a brand like BlockbusterDAO is attempting to do.
  • We also had the formation of multiple DAOs specifically created to vault valuable NFTs: Head DAO, TungstenDAO, and the WHALE DAO, to name a few.

By now, you get the idea. DAOs have sprung up exponentially in the way Facebook groups did at one point to connect people with similar thoughts and ambitions. Now, people are entering with skin in the game, with their aspirations taking them down a new path.

We’re not saying that buying a copy of the U.S. Constitution or a unique music album is no big deal. There’s a lot to consider when purchasing a 250-year-old historical document. But now, the concept of decentralized governance has taken on even more sprawling projects.

The recent formation of two DAOs can give us some clues into the direction we are heading in.

About two weeks ago, LinksDAO came out with a proposal to buy a Professional Golf Association-level golf course that members could govern. The project sold out in a few days, raising $10.4 million from the token sale and then raising additional funds from secondary sales to put its treasury at $11 million (correct at time of writing).

But $11 million is a drop in the bucket for a PGA-level course. LinksDAO would need at least an additional $70 million to make its purchase. In other words, the fundraising has only just begun. This DAO has taken on a project with several moving parts – some of which are still largely undefined, as in legal and tax structures.

The overall goal for LinksDAO is to buy a golf course by mid-to-late 2022 and then have it open for play by early 2023. Will it succeed? By the co-founder’s admission, there’s a lot of uncertainty. One good sign, NBA star Steph Curry bought into the project with two different NFTs.

Fore!

Then a week later, Hollywood DAO announced its ambitions to buy a movie studio and production company for $250 million. The emphasis for the venture is to pave a new way for creators to maintain rights to their intellectual property while also providing new pathways for actors. The token holders would also have the collective power to vote for content they want to see.

So the space is evolving from buying items of interest to purchasing multi-million dollar meeting spaces, which help create – or contribute to – the narrative that is so often inaccessible.

Will these DAOs be successful? Only time will tell, but we know that not all businesses succeed, and being on the blockchain is not a “fix” for the day-to-day operational issues that may arise.

What we are excited about, though, is seeing which DAOs will succeed by fulfilling their missions and bringing greater value to the community at large.

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Author

Horacio Ruiz

Horacio Ruiz

Horacio is a veteran math teacher of the New York City public school system. Prior to teaching, he lived in New Orleans where he worked in sales for the New Orleans Hornets before joining The Institute for Sport and Social Justice to rebuild homes in the Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He currently lives in Staten Island with his wife, Alicia, his three sons; Oliver, Henry, and Jacob, and their pitt-mi,x Tipitina. In 2019, Horacio published a biography, The White Knight: Calvin Patterson and the Integration of Florida State University Football.

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