the punk formerly known as punk4156
“Son, it’s about time we talk about security. *pats empty seat next to me on the sofa*
Yes, I remember the first time I got hacked…It was 2012 and I had built a pretty formidable hunter (yes, noob I know) on World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, I was just a child then and I didn’t realize the world was full of bad actors…I don’t know how it happened exactly, but I got keylogged, meaning they took my login credentials and then locked me out of my own account.
I had put days (maybe months) of gametime into questing and leveling my main, only to have it swooped out from under me in an instant.
And from that day forward, I took internet security seriously. I vowed to not let something like this happen to me again. I still feel a pit in my stomach when I think back on it…knowing that I had been so careless and that all my hard work was for nothing.
But just because I take internet security more seriously now doesn’t mean I’m out of the woods. All it takes is for me to have one slip up again and poof…a lot more could be gone.
The stakes are even higher…
That Bitcoin you’ve been saving? It could be gone. That NFT you thought was going to pay off your student loans? Gone. Your financial wellbeing (and the safety of it) is completely in your hands with Web3 and crypto. It’s a blessing and a curse…
You may have heard this week about a lot of Bored Apes falling for phishing attempts and losing their Apes. That’s why I’m sitting you down here today.
There is always something more to learn about security. It’s unfortunate that it often takes a bad experience for us to take the threats more seriously, so I’m trying to reach you today.
I simply urge you to learn something new about crypto security and be diligent. Go watch a YouTube video or go buy a Ledger. It may save you one day soon.
I hope this helps, son.” *dad rant ends*
ALPHA
Absolutely massive.
That was the sentiment surrounding Nike’s big acquisition on Monday - RTFKT. For boomers like me, the brand may not sound too familiar. Also, how do you pronounce it? Is it really “ratf&%#ed”?
Regardless, the digital “clothing” brand for the metaverse immediately jumped to blue-chip status for some with the announcement. I mean, just look at the brand logos above. That is some powerful company to be around, so I completely get it.
For being around for only 2 years, they’ve already made quite a splash in the NFT world. The announcement comes on the heels of their CloneX release, an avatar project that actually experienced a good amount of FUD.
They botched a lot of the launch and priced themselves absurdly high. Upon reveal, many were less than thrilled considering their initial investment. To add to the distrust, the rarest of the Clones were reserved and distributed to team members instead of minters and their terms announced that minters also had none of the IP rights of their Clones.
It wasn’t looking great…
But the rumors of them being acquired by Nike had been out there (based on what, I do not know) and now…the slip ups look comical. The prices of RTFKT Studios projects have mooned as the famous swoosh has silenced many of the company’s doubters.
A few weeks back, I asked ‘wen Nike’ after discussing the adidas x BAYC partnership in this newsletter. Well apparently, Nike had been cooking something up big too. They didn’t strike first, but they did not disappoint with their first forray into the metaverse.
BETA
Enter another big brand into the NFT world. On Thursday, Pepsi announced they would be launching their first NFT, which I imagine is some cross-promotional campaign they’ll use in the Super Bowl Halftime performance (book it).
After announcing it, they were welcomed to the space by some other big brands on Twitter including Meta (formerly Facebook) and Budweiser. Using ‘fren’ and ‘WAGMI’ in those tweets completely triggered all of NFT Twitter.
Many noted it marked the top, as the big bad corporations had finally found our precious NFTs and were reappropriating a culture we built (to which I say: LOL).
While it certainly marked a sad day for us, I can’t say this wasn’t expected or even unwanted. We can’t have our cake and eat it too. You want mass adoption? It’s going to take more than convincing your dad to buy an NFT…We’ll need old voices in combination with the new ones in order to push us forward.
We’ve already seen companies make a play into Web3…where was this same energy then? Arizona Iced Tea buys an Ape and we all lose our minds. A Cool Cats drop with Time Magazine…so exciting! Now? Pepsi tweets ‘fren’ and we deserve for it to go to 0.
Sure, one is definitely more cringe than the other, but ‘cringe’ is unfortunately not a metric that affects the bottom line here.
Sure, some of these big brands’ drops are better than others and definitely more thought out.
And sure, it may negatively affect the “culture” of it all (ie not making your NFT as cool), but it’s unfortunately a necessary evil and one we sold our soul to long ago.
MoonPay has been buying celebrities Apes for weeks now. Adidas is partnered with some of the biggest NFT brands out there. Nike just bought RTFKT. From these moments on, the entrance of other big brands is inevitable…So where do we draw the line on our corporate overlords?
Some of these brands will sink and some will float in the space. Ultimately, the market will determine that though. Don’t blame them for trying, simply just don’t engage with their stuff. The market is the great equalizer, so if it sucks, don’t buy it; it’s pretty simple.
As I write this, the Mic Drops have been released to a tepid response and some massive dumping. Nice work all!
DELTA
Punk4156 made some waves last week when he listed his rare ape CryptoPunk in a dutch-style auction. Starting at 3500 ETH, it went down to 2500 ETH before being swooped. Punk4156 marked the 3rd biggest CryptoPunk sale to date. Instead of triggering a frenzy, however, it gave more fuel to Punk skeptics. The BAYC continues to creep closer to flipping the iconic LarvaLabs creation.
A fat-fingered Ape owner made a disastrous typo and sold his for .75 ETH instead of 75 ETH. The sale-gone-wrong got picked up by major publications, so at least they have that…
Coinbase announced 5 new NFT projects that will be on their new platform - HaskMasks, RumbleKongs, Shantell Martin, PopWonder, and ???. For some reason, they never tweeted out a 5th. DeadFellaz will have to wait another week, I guess.