NFT Weekly Recap - March Week3
Hello guys,
Hope you all had a great weekend. Welcome to this week's NFT market recap, covering basic stats and notable news with my observations. If there is anything else you'd like to see in the recap, please let me know. DMs are open.
Basic Stats
As usual, let's begin with numbers.
OpenSea trading volume (as measured in ETH) has finally seen a weekly green arrow, reversing the month-long downward trend. Compared to the 8% decrease last week, it increased by 22% this week. The 7-day moving average is still down ~69% as compared to the all time high (ATH) achieved on February 1st, but it is not as bad as a week ago (-75%).
Surprisingly, the number of daily active traders is still decreasing. It fell another 5% WoW. The number of daily active traders is below 50k for 4 days in a row from March 16 to March 19. The last time this happened was December 28 - 31 of last year.
The ApeCoin airdrop essentially gave free money to NFT whales, who spent that money on a variety of projects. The biggest winners are Clone X, Azuki, Meebits, World of Women, Gutter Cat Gang, Phanta Bear, Tasty Bones, and Pudgy Penguins. All are familiar names. Clone X looks best-positioned to join MAYC in the 20-ETH-floor club. Pudgy Penguins and Phanta Bear are making a comeback. For new projects, 3landers and Tasty Bones seem promising.
Source: flips.finance
Notable Events
ApeCoin Airdrop and the Otherside
Two big announcements from Yuga Labs in one week. They announced the ApeCoin on Wednesday and the Otherside on Friday.
I published a review of the ApeCoin airdrop hours after the announcement, predicting $APE price to be between $5 - $10 (make sure you download the TokenInsight App to be the first to know). $APE definitely outperformed my expectations. It is stabilizing at around $10 now, falling from ~$14.
If you are still holding onto your airdropped $APE, right now might be a good time to cash out for some nice short-term profit.
You could also hold for long-term gain. Yuga Labs just keeps delivering. Another piece of good news could easily pump $APE.
The Otherside seems to be a game or a metaverse of some sort. All the collections featured in the Otherside trailer pumped, including BAYC, MAYC, CyptoPunks, Meebits, CryptoToadz, Cool Cats, Nouns, and World of Women. More collections might be added before Otherside's release in April. Yuga Labs apparently has big plans in mind for the apeverse. It will be interesting to see what awaits ahead.
Meta Brings NFTs to Instagram
Mark Zuckerberg confirmed Meta's plans to bring NFTs to Instagram. Zuckerberg did not dive into details but said the NFT integration would happen "hopefully" in the coming months. Back in January, the Financial Times reported that Meta was working on a feature for both Facebook and Instagram users to display NFTs on their profiles.
The social network potential in NFTs is huge. But instead of Meta, Twitter, or YouTube implementing NFT-compatible features, I believe the real winner will be a currently lesser-known crypto-native project. I am writing an article on this topic. Hopefully I will be able to share it soon.
Meebits Easter Egg
Andrew Badr and co. solved an NFT Easter egg hidden by Larva Labs 10 months ago, upon the release of Meebits. Larva Labs took the jersey numbers of Pig Meebits that were randomly generated and created an Ethereum private key. After solving the puzzle and obtaining the private key, Badr and friends claimed 0.025 ETH and Meebits #2858, which currently has a 7 ETH offer for it on OpenSea.
Source: Larva Labs
This is legit one of the most interesting stories that I have read in recent months. It was nice to take a break from price talks. The Larva Labs guys are really doing NFTs for fun, not for business. You can read the full story here.
Other News
Some other news you might be interested in learning more about:
- Magic Eden, the NFT marketplace on Solana, closed a $27 million financing round, with participation from Sequoia, Paradigm, Greylock, and others.
- HSBC acquired a plot of land in the Sandbox, a space where it will be developed to entertain sports, e-sports, gaming, and finance professionals.
- Kakao's subsidiary plans to launch NFT creation and distribution platform.
- TIME will release its first NFT issue on March 23rd with Vitalik Buterin on the cover page.
Ending
I am still 50/50 between a bull and a bear in NFTs for the coming months. The ApeCoin airdrop brought liquidity to the market, but it has not yet attracted new players. Most NFT projects function like a semi ponzi scheme. Without new blood, we will not see new ATHs. I will monitor the trader numbers and report back next week.
NFT
PFP
BAYC