What if OpenSea did a year in review like Spotify? Mine would look something like this:
“You bought over 50 NFTs this year…and now they are worth ~.005 ETH. Nice work!”
“Your most popular NFT was AlphaBetty, remember those? #ThrowbackThursday”
“You owned 2 Cool Cats…unfortunately you sold one of them at 1 ETH. What were you thinking?”
“You are in the top 5% of OpenSea users, officially making you a degen.”
“But it’s not all about the NFTs…it’s actually about the friends you made along the way.”
Here’s to 2022. I feel it’s going to be an even bigger year for NFTs.
ALPHA
We have begun to see the claws come out. After months of kumbaya’ing and preaching positivity within the NFT community, a few down-weeks for the market has turned us into savages just like the rest of Twitter.
The resentment began a few weeks back, when a tweet revealed KeyboardMonkey shorted Punks with a friendly wager. Everyone’s least favorite influencer Beanie (who never claimed to be peaceful, in his defense) could not help but insert his opinion into the conversation, which of course lead NFT Twitter at large to begin discussing the trajectory of CryptoPunks.
Over the weekend, the resentment between the communities began to spill out even more.
The argument against Punks boils down to those bearish on Larva Labs as a whole. Once in the driver’s seat, the company behind CryptoPunks admittedly hasn’t really doing much over the past year while almost every single blue-chip NFT has continued to build. Meebits was their play into the metaverse in early May, but we haven’t heard much from Larva outside of that recently. Meebits FWIW netted Larva about $85 million…
Then, with recent NFT events in NYC and Miami too, Larva Labs decided to throw no events, while conversely, BAYC had DJs and special parties for their owners. Punks owners don’t seem to be complaining about the lack of involvement in the community, but others have taken notice of their absence. Athletes, musicians, and DJs are flocking to Apes over Punks and off the top of my head, the only athlete who chose Punks over Apes is Odell Beckham, who is likely punching a net over his decision.
Ultimately, the narrative has quickly evolved…Punks are now somehow these dinosaur NFTs only for boomers, while Apes are for the cooler, younger generations entering the NFT space. Where have we heard an argument like this before in crypto? Hmm…
(Yes, of course, I speak of ethereum vs bitcoin.)
The big difference between BTC vs ETH and Punks vs Apes? Apes flipping punks has long been a meme, but it’s inching closer and closer to reality.
As I write this, CryptoPunks sit at ~75 ETH floor while the Bored Ape Yacht Club is hot on their tail at ~50 ETH. The gap has quickly been closing and it’s become something to monitor going into 2022.
If someone would like to lend me 100+ ETH I would be happy to check in and see which one is ultimately better…
BETA
OpenSea is rumored to be going public.
After hiring former-Lyft CFO, Brian Roberts, on Monday, the writing is on the wall that the $OS ticker will eventually be on Wall Street and not on FTX as many had hoped.
Going the traditional IPO route is disappointing for the site’s users, for sure. Many (myself included) were hoping they would go with an issuance token to reward those who helped make them the number one NFT marketplace.
It would have been a step in the right direction for decentralization. But looking back at all their funding being tied to VC capital, it should have been obvious that something as “progressive” as a token would be out of the question for them.
OpenSea has investors after all, and they are not going to leave those profits in the hands of a bunch of crypto degens. Instead, they will leave the profits in the hands of Wall Street degens.
Unfortunately, we are left with few alternatives at this point. Many on NFT Twitter are clamoring for Coinbase to drop their marketplace ASAP, but let’s not forget they are a publicly traded company too! The pie-in-the-sky of a truly decentralized NFT marketplace seems farther away than ever.
Which leaves me wondering…is it harder than it sounds to run an NFT marketplace? All signs points to yes, as no one has been able to break up the OpenSea monopoly yet, and it’s taking a HUGE public company in Coinbase to pose its first legitimate threat. And of these two, neither will be decentralized as we all want. Something is off here.
DELTA
It appears that LinkedIn has starting removing profile pictures that feature NFTs on their platform. A Web2 company threatened by Web3 and cartoon animal pictures? Truly, NGMI.
Coinbase released another 3 launch partners on Tuesday - Pixel Vault, Jessica Yatrofsky, and…Lazy Lions? A real surprise pick considering that Deadfellaz have been their banner art for about a week on Twitter. Everyone was expecting them to be apart of the new announcement. Instead they go with one of NFT’s most vocal communities, so expect to see a lot more #ROAR’s in your mentions when you ask what NFT you should buy moving forward.