Alpha Schedule #11 - OpenSea acquires NFT aggregator
Alpha Schedule #11 - OpenSea acquires NFT aggregator
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Hi Frenz,
For the past few weeks, the profit and loss statements of my NFT portfolio colored dark red ... which I contribute to the highly hyped Moonbirds launch and the upcoming The Otherside mint.
Next to shrinking NFT cashflows, the NFT sector was dominated over the past week by acquisitions, apecoin, roadmap announcements, and quality memes.
In other words; we have got some interesting news items in this newsletter, and we've got an even more exciting mint weekend ahead of us!
— 🩸💀 AMERICAN RADASS
OpenSea has acquired NFT aggregator Gem
The leading NFT marketplace OpenSea announced Monday that it had bought Gem, a popular NFT marketplace aggregator.
In a blog post, OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer said that it had made the acquisition “to better serve more experienced, “pro” users.”
Gem lets users buy multiple NFTs across marketplaces in a single transaction, making transactions more efficient and lowering costs for users. It claims to offer up to 42% gas fee savings and is popularly used for “sweeping the floor”.
RTFKT x Nike launch first metaverse kicks
Athletics and sneakers giant Nike has collaborated with RTFKT Studios, which it acquired sometime in December 2021, to launch the first Ethereum NFT metaverse wearable sneakers.
At the time of writing, the collection has garnered a floor price of 2 ETH on OpenSea, with over 4,700 owners and counting.
ApeCoin Becomes Largest Metaverse Token
Yuga Labs – the team behind the Bored Apes Yacht Club – has revealed the date for the much-anticipated Otherside project (more info in our "Upcoming mints"-chapter) and has also confirmed that APE coin will be the official means of payment.
Since this announcement, Ape Coin has made a series of new all-time highs ($26.8), currently trades at $22, and is expecting to end up much higher.
📰 OTHER NEWS FROM THE PAST WEEK
NFT project Woodies and creative studio Woodblock will work together on the creation of high-quality animated content centered around the story-rich Woodies IP.
Deadfellaz announced their V1 roadmap for deadfrenz, which contains a play-to-earn NFT Trading Card Game, an ecosystem update, metaverse integrations & token plans.
Sales of four-digit ENS domains have skyrocketed as collectors rush to own one of only 10,000 possible combinations.
On Saturday, Moonbird #2642 was sold for a record-breaking 350 ETH (over $1 million) to the Sandbox.
Belgium-based Venly, a blockchain-agnostic technology provider with wallet, NFT, and marketplace solutions, announced on Thursday that it has raised €21M in a Series A round of funding.
$34 million, or 11,539 eth, is permanently locked into the AkuDreams contract forever. It cannot be retrieved by individual users or by the dev team.
Sky Mavis, the company behind the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, said it is looking to become a “zero-trust organization" in the wake of last month's $600 million attack on the Ronin network.
Meta Platforms Inc., formerly known as Facebook, released its first-quarter 2022 results on Wednesday, reporting that its Reality Labs unit, which focuses on the company's metaverse, posted a $2.9 billion loss in Q1 of 2022.
PROOF, the Web3 media startup which recently launched the Moonbirds Ethereum NFT series, has successfully raised $10 million in funding from Seven Seven Six, a venture capital firm led by Reddit's Alexis Ohanian.
The National Football League (NFL) has announced the release of an all-new NFT collection with a series of card-themed collectibles representing players for its upcoming draft this week.
✨ NEW IN THE SPACE
The popular Netflix show Stranger Things is reportedly all set to launch NFTs in partnership with NFT platform Candy Digital, ahead of its Season 4 installment.
DC Comics, one of the world’s most well-known comic publishers, is moving forward with the debut of a new NFT collection dedicated to Batman in collaboration with Palm NFT Studio.
Logitech will host the first music awards show in the metaverse this Saturday.
The Standard Chartered Bank has partnered with the leading decentralized virtual gaming world, The Sandbox, to create its first Metaverse experience.
theVERSEverse, a women-led literally collective and NFT gallery founded in 2021, has secured its first major grant as it seeks to expand its innovative works into Web3.
According to Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook post, Meta Platforms is all set to launch its first physical store where customers can explore and purchase virtual reality headsets.
Ryan Carson, the Chief Operating Officer at Moonbirds and PROOF, stepped down to launch a new NFT-focused fund called 121G.
The world’s first-ever NFT sporting event will feature a boxing match between Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather and ‘Dangerous’ Don Moore, and will be an exclusive live-streamed pay-per-view for NFT ticket holders.
💀 HOW TO RECOGNIZE A RUG PULL
A “rug pull” is a wildly used term within the crypto world and NFT space to describe a scam in which the founders of a project don’t fulfill their promises after receiving funds - essentially, running away with the money.
In order to recognize these rug pulls and to help you improve your research, we’ll be sharing various tips and tricks over the next few newsletters.
This week's most interesting story is about how Twitter influencer @chadgelina turned out to be a model hired by a marketing agency who managed her account giving crypto and NFT advice, while she just provided pics for thirst trapping.
OTHER POSSIBLE RUGPULLS
Someone hacked Bored Ape Yacht Club’s official Instagram account and posted a malicious link that lured followers into sending over their NFTs this afternoon. They got away with a haul worth at least $2.7 million.
NFT project Imaginary Ones has some red flags, as the art appears to be copied.
Social Engineering (SE) is a collection of primarily non-technical attacks. Statistically, SE is used in 98% of all attacks.
📅 UPCOMING MINTS
This chapter of the newsletter functions as the extension of my public NFT mint calendar, which is meant to highlight projects I’m looking forward to.
Below are the projects I’m looking forward to the most. However: do your own research into them if they sound interesting because this shouldn’t be considered as financial advice.
The Otherside
Mint date: April 30
Supply: 55.000 outerlands, via KYC'd wallets
Mint price: 305 ApeCoin
Twitter: @OthersideMeta
By: @yugalabs
Yuga Labs, the team behind the well-known collection Bored Ape Yacht Club, amazed the Twitter community on March 19 with a teaser of a forthcoming virtual world named the Otherside.
Until now, the video has gathered over 2.7 million viewers and has aroused high expectations among the community, since the launch of the other Yuga Labs projects are all considered to be successful.
The impending sale of NFTs for its Otherside metaverse will no longer use a Dutch-style auction this weekend, according to a blog post from last night.
In order to ensure as broad a distribution as possible and dramatically soften the potential for a massive gas war, there will be an enforced limit of 2 NFTs per wallet at the start of the sale.
As the mint continues, the number of NFTs that can be minted per wallet will increase. Each increase in the per-wallet limit will be announced on the Otherside official Twitter account: @OthersideMeta
Toy Boogers Kitbash
Mint date: April 30
Supply: 1.111
Price: 0.25 eth
Kitbash Boogers is an upcoming collab collection between 4 various NFT projects: Toy Boogers, Cool Cats, Deadfellaz and Robotos.
The project is based on mixing and mashing traits from these four projects into one wacky collection called Kitbash Boogers. All the 1,111 NFTs are completely unique 1/1 pieces of art drawn by Toy Boogers' main artist Doug.
The four projects have over 15K different owners, and divided the 1,111 allowlist spots between their followers. This is also the reason why we are interested in this mint and will keep an eye out on their volume as the mint moves along.
Shamanzs
Mint date: May 3th
Supply: 9898
Mint price: Dutch Auction between 0.15 and 0.5 ETH
Twitter: @shamanzs
Roadmap: shamanzs.com
Instagram: @shamanzsnft
The Shamanzs project is an NFT collection that contains various references to different religious tribes, beliefs, and religions. It has been rumored through its lore that the Shamanzs have an unstoppable wave of positiveness radiated all over the world, and are able to awaken the dormant ancient gods.
The roadmap is kinda vague and focuses on "giving back to the community", "becoming a good vibes only brand", airdrops, and creative partnerships.
What is interesting, is the fact that the founders of this project are an award-winning design studio called Brosmind, which is led by brothers Juan and Alejandro. Their work has been admired and hired by international companies from all over the world: Nike, Adidas, Coca-Cola, Google, Ray-Ban, National Geographic, Landrover, Facebook, Honda, Mobile World Congress, Mailchimp, and many more.
Something that personally turns me off, is the dutch auction that starts at 0.5 ETH. This is why I will look at the volume of the project during the mint, and decide from there.
🔮 LOOKING FORWARD
We are already looking ahead to the next few weeks, meaning we’re currently doing our due diligence and researching the projects listed below.
It’s no financial advice at all, but you might want to start doing your research and grinding for these allowlists before it’s too late.
PS - Don’t hesitate to tell them you found out about them via this newsletter ;)
📖 LEARN HOW TO DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH
Twitter user @hunterhmaier has found some similarities between NFT investments and how Wall Street executives manage their stocks and portfolios.
According to him, it all boils down to your ability to control emotions, create a strict strategy, and understand human psychology.
😂 LAUGH OUT LOUD
Few good jokes out there this week, my favorite is a reference to Steve Aoki's track record of buying NFT's at their all time high, just before they dump.
Other notable memes:
BitBrussels - about WEB3, NFTs & Metaverse
[tweet https://twitter.com/MERICAN_RADASS/status/1520019520869613569]
Earlier today, we attended the Belgian WEB3, NFT, and Metaverse-focused event BitBrussel, which included various interesting conversations.
FYI - We are planning to attend NFT NYC in June, so we already started a google document to track interesting NFT community events and parties. Feel free to bookmark it!
😊 ENJOYED THIS WEEK'S ALPHA?
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🤓 DISCLAIMER: NFA & DYOR
This newsletter is a curated overview of the most interesting things I’ve read the past week, the projects I’ve researched, and the NFTs I’ll be trying to buy.
This means I’m - per definition - biased, so don’t consider this as financial advice and keep doing your own research if you see something you like.