Welcome to the first BivNFT newsletter of 2022.
The first few days of the New Year are (of course) for resolutions. Then, the proceeding 350 days or so that follow are typically for breaking those resolutions.
But this year, I’m hoping that’s different as I’ve made a commitment to myself to go all-in on Web3.
What does that mean exactly?
Well obviously, that means I will be committing more ETH to NFTs. That part doesn’t really affect you at all; it only affects my marriage, my bank account, and my tax man (those poor souls).
However, my renewed commitment also means that I will continue to write and build out this newsletter (yay! *more info in the Delta section*).
Ideally, I just want to be more of a creator/builder instead of a “rent-seeker”. I think so far, I’ve done a good job at not making this thing a 500-word shill piece. I don’t ever want to be someone who uses an audience for exit liquidity or bag holding (looking at you literally every NFT influencer out there).
I have some exciting goals for myself and I hope they come to be realized.
Shitposting on Twitter is fun and all, but I see how there might be a bigger role for me within this big, bright, and blossoming NFT community. And I would hate to miss out on hanging with you all some more.
ALPHA
We started the New Year with a bang. On literally the first day of 2022, OpenSea saw its highest sales volume since August.
With the strong start to the year, I wanted to go over where (I think) we’re headed. I’ll go over a trend per week that I think you should keep an eye on this year. I already talked about P2E gaming in another newsletter, so these are other trends to look out for in 2022…
TV/Media
As I’m sure you’re aware, the Streaming Wars are still very much on. With Disney+ now in the mix, and new streaming services continuing to pop up, I imagine it won’t be long until the big ones start poking their noses in our precious NFT space looking for ideas.
Even better for them, some NFTs are pretty well-positioned to get a series order at Netflix; they already have the characters, the vision, and the following, and it’s just about the execution at that point.
But don’t forget, we’ve already seen attempts to turn an NFT launch into animated series (just not at a Netflix-level scale).
There was, of course, the now-notorious Stoner Cats drop from Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. However, so far its only cultural legacy is “being on the phone with Ethereum.”
DeadHeads more successfully was able to launch their characters, but judging from its view counts so far, the Youtube animated series hasn’t found much of an audience.
And in the most promising news to date, in late November, Robotos made waves by announcing they were developing an animated kids’ series in partnership with Time Magazine’s production company.
Since then, there have been rumors swirling around that Robotos won’t be the only ones to make the leap to TV this year.
So what are the horses to bet on? (It’s not Glue Factory Show if that’s what you’re thinking)
It’s hard to say as Hollywood types tend to play announcements like these very close to the vest. You can be sure they are already in talks and negotiations with a few projects out there. Unfortunately, you’ll likely hear about it when everyone else does alongside the production company’s press release (unless you have some insider info).
That being said, there has long been speculation that the Cool Cats aim for their own TV show, which would likely explain their early partnership with TIME too. They seemed to have moved onto other aims in the New Year, but I would not rule out the possibility of the Cool Cats coming to a screen near you in late 2022…
Time will tell if any of these ventures will come to fruition or if they will actually be successful, but as a big film/TV guy myself, I have to imagine it’s a slam dunk.
Granted I’m no industry expert, but I think the path of least resistance is to have a big streaming service essentially option an existing NFT IP and use it to launch an animated series.
The big players like Netflix and Amazon already have the money, the platform, and the exposure to put us on the map. However, I can understand how some may be resistant to that route, as it would be yet another example of big business biting from NFT culture. The NFT project itself would also likely be branded as “sell-outs” if they sold their rights to Disney or NBC.
But to gain mass adoption, a successful TV show based on the Apes (for example), would do wonders for these projects as it adds yet another revenue stream that can be shared with the community - a win-win all around.
It would not only get eyeballs on the NFTs but would, in turn, recruit Hollywood talent that would otherwise not be interested to produce our stories. Just imagine another cartoon voiced by Chris Pratt, but this time, it’s your generative NFT project.
BETA
Another racism controversy in the NFT space *sigh*
This time though it’s big hitter BAYC…but to be fair to them, it’s a clear FUD attempt.
It all started when everyone’s favorite copycat project ‘CryptoPhunks’ co-founder @ryder_ripps tweeted his claim and then seemingly made it his life’s work to convince the rest of us that BAYC and its creator Yuga Labs were racist.
This is not to say that there isn’t some basis in what is being said. Some of the Ape traits are based on history and culture that can definitely be seen as problematic. It gets dicey when you hold it under a microscope and start really thinking about the decision-making when they were coming up with this stuff.
It must be noted that their Dogs and Mutants collections have not received the same scrutiny as the racism doesn’t seem prevalent in them (for some reason).
Either way, there has been some applied pressure for Yuga to dox themselves and prove they are not white nationalists running a pyramid scheme of stolen art (literally, what someone told me on Twitter this week).
I doubt it comes to that and I’d imagine this saga goes away quickly. As far as I know, *check notes* Steph Curry, Timbaland, Rich The Kid, Steve Aoki, Snoop Dogg, Von Miller, Lil Baby, and Future all still have their Apes and the racist traits in question are immutable. BAYC will be #1 regardless of what the Phunk has to say about it.
To be honest, participating in this saga got pretty exhausting as I heard a lot of noise from those outside NFT Twitter too. I always seem to forget how hostile the rest of Twitter is towards NFTs; I’ve even seen it even creep into my Instagram feed lately.
It seems that some are simply waiting for NFTs to mess up, so they can point to the mistake and say, “See? I told you it was all a scam.”
This controversy with the Apes lead to a lot of that…as normies were quick to decry the BAYC. Not only are they already a nefarious organization used for laundering money for sex crimes and drugs, but now…they were also racist.
Sometimes, people just already have their minds made up.
DELTA
In some personal news, I’ve changed my Twitter handle to @bivnft to match the newsletter for 2022. Please don’t try sitting on @nbivs and try selling it back to me in the future. I’ve already done that just in case I change my mind.
I will be messing with the format of the newsletter this year. I’m hoping to provide more data, infographics, and personal opinions on NFTs instead of covering the news. I won’t abandon that completely, of course, as the industry is always unnecessarily extra and gives me some good content.
Who knows, you might even see more than one edition per week if everything goes well for BivNFT this year! I appreciate your continued support (you know who you are).