Alright I’ll go with the CEO of Stripe quoting the CEO of Github, as seen in notboring today, a meme, and then I will see myself out.
(before I do though, @zorloth absolutely incorrect fwiw I know a ton of people who will never ever sell much of theirs, especially early/art related, and I have pieces that I will never ever sell. There is a huge community of people who bought all of this stuff for basically nothing but the love of it and many more who still do that now but anyways almost everybody could say the same about a graded card or anything else. Your collecting does not need to be their collecting )
Goodbye, I’ll check back in in another 6-12 months. I hope you all have a wonderful evening and find more things to love in this world . Lots of cool stuff out there and the world gets more interesting every day!
@primordialaa, fine – I’ll amend my statement: the *vast, vast majority* of people buying NFTs are buying them in order to eventually resell them for a profit. Organic collector demand didn’t result in those 6 and 7-figure NFT sales. Speculative demand did.
Small circle of intelligent crypto millionaires/billionaires and some random lucky folk thrown in there to “legitimize” it all.
Hey! Nice cryptokitty there I’ll give you 1,000 ETH if you buy my cryptopunk for 1,000 ETH. Repeat, spread, bait in some other billionaire memers and profit when the articles get written and more people try to join in on the memes.
Just a guess. Are cryptokitties still around by the way? I think those predated cryptopunks and I remember some friends supposedly making stupid money early on.
@primordialaa, I think the core message of this conversation got a bit lost. I think your core message was that we shouldn’t just dismiss the NFT market. And personally, I don’t. I can see how it can be/is profitable and the numbers speak for themselves. So we actually agree on your point. All I’m saying is that I’m skeptical to enter the market because I’m not feeling NFTs and would burn myself, and that I personally believe that the entire market is hype driven. I didn’t say that some people are manipulating others into giving them their money. But I do think that many investors only bought NFTs because they expect them to rise in value. And sure, there were those who got in super early when the punks and kitties weren’t worth much, but they make only a tiny fraction of the buyer pool and those times are over anyway. If you were part of the early squad, congrats, but that doesn’t mean that someone who enters now will experience the same success story you experienced.
I actually like NFTs - I was reading about it after @primordialaa shared his purchases on cryptopunks long ago and it kinda makes sense that the rich would chase for the best avatar they can and its a limited number - its better than all the patek nautiluses that all my friends are buying (i much rather park my $80k in a cryptopunk than a mass produced watch). I sagely bought a psa 9 zard instead which dropped half in value.
The challenge with NFTs for me is that its ultimately a collectible, and in collectibles the top 100 items typically go up in value more than the next 100 items in % terms which means - i need to buy the top nfts which are already out of reach
The second problem I see with it is the buyer base - for a collectible to go up in value, the buyer base needs to be richer. If Jay-Z and all those other rich guys are competing for it, then who exactly is the next buyer that is willing to pay 10x or 20x of current prices in the future? If the current market volume is $100mm per month for a specific nft bucket, then assuming supply is fixed, it would need to be $1bn per month to generate a 10x in price (probably more, as new secondary supply will come in given price increases)
For pokemon, the biggest collectors are ~30 yr old regular joes - that’s why I like pokemon. Every other major hobby I can think of are dominated by the old rich guys or institutional funds at the top, and for pokemon it’s just barely beginning. The general collector base is broke af still and can be easily replaced by a wealthier buyer base. Much easier to visualize $200k worth of base set 1st psa 10 mthly demand becoming $2m for example
I understand the asymmetry in risk return in crypto but today that seems gone now, and it almost feels like picking pennies infront of a steamroller in some instances. Remember when pokemon was breaking records and everyone said this time is different, big money like logan paul has come in to splash $2m on boxes etc…that marked the peak of the market
Anyway happy to hear about your success and hope you continue sharing your thoughts on this forum despite the general negativity - I personally really appreciate it.
Reminds me of the time someone posted that digimon could be a good idea on this forum and immediately got shat on hahaha, I was secretly buying at that time and it went up 5x a few mths after. People are always adverse to the new and sometimes they are right but overall its usually to their detriment.
I’ll admit, the idea of NFT’s and crypto are appealing to me monetarily speaking. Who doesn’t want to spend $100 bucks and then get thousands in return?
Crypto is it’s own beast and the research on NFT’s, as pointed out, still has yielded little in-depth research outside of a couple of articles (some of which I linked a few pages ago) on their environmental impact. Yes, these are basic research and not peer edited, but stick with me for a bit.
This is what I consider:
Quick-to-rich techniques often leave a lot of people poorer than they were before. While you have your Mr. Beasts and the occasional average joe suddenly making it big, the fact remains that a grand majority of people don’t see that wealth, and many, unfortunately, are in worse condition than when they started. This goes for any investment and the hype trivializes these losses as people being “unlucky” when it plays into a larger systemic issue regarding wealth inequality. IE - think of gambling.
There’s already been research on the environmental impact of crypto and how a good amount of them negatively impact us (more so with mining versus minting). There is only surface level research on the impact of NFT’s but currently the basic research regarding the impact doesn’t necessarily look positive. I’m personally tired of a convenience-oriented societal think-tube that doesn’t give enough consideration to the larger well being of the other people that share this planet - ie, you, me, and that guy named Jeffrey who double dips every time he takes a chip from the Christmas potluck despite us continuously asking him not to. So until that research has been thoroughly done, I’ll pass on the quick-to-rich stuff in an effort to hopefully not play into a potentially larger environmental impact than the colossus we’re already dealing with.
I like the idea of NFT’s and crypto because it could mean that I can pay off my student debt quicker and go buy a house instead of living in a tiny apartment while the government slowly sucks me dry each month. The art side doesn’t appeal to me in the least because it’s not something tangible for me. Even more so, it’s not even functional in anyway. I could play a video game and purchase a skin for an in-game gun and it’d already have a ton more intrinsic value to me. A graphic image that I cannot manipulate in anyway simply doesn’t appeal to me at all. This is just a matter of my personal preference. If owning code for graphic images scratches that collectible itch inside your internal hardwiring, then so be it - that patch just doesn’t exist for me when it comes to NFT’s.
And if the risk of owning such an item means I might be helping the planet continue being ablaze while leaning into potential bankruptcy, then that leads me to my 3rd consideration -
It’s not worth the risk.
Until NFT’s and crypto hit a margin where they are more accessible, more transparent about their energy usage and global impact, and the research indicates it doesn’t lead us all setting ourselves on fire, then plainly put, I’m not interested.
People don’t like to consider the ethics of things like this because a lot of people think ethics have no place in collectibles. Then again, I’m sure poachers would agree with you if you were to consider their place in the fur trade market.
All I’m saying is that I think people should be more willing to be cautious with stuff like this. If NFT’s and such aren’t anything to actually worry about and you’re REALLY in it for the art - then you don’t need to defend against the naysayers. People will buy art regardless.
I just hope the people doing so understand the potential larger impacts and actually care about them instead of only thinking of the surface and self-gratification.
The only interesting NFT I’ve seen yet is the Damien Hirst. If you buy the NFT you have the option of trading it in for the physical piece the NFT represents. Either way, whichever one you keep the other version is destroyed.
So the end of this conversation was literally one of the biggest upside catalysts in NFTs I’ve ever been through. The space is outrageous at the moment and there just is wayyy too much demand and not enough “quality” projects. It’s been one of the most fun times I’ve ever had trading silly collectibles.
They just got written about in NYTimes a day after this sale. They also are doing $10-20m/day in trading volume.
This is your friendly reminder that the world is still crazy, buying/selling/trading “rare” things and following trends can be fun.
DraftKings NFT marketplace (Autograph) launched yesterday as well. It was a fair drop with everybody queued getting a random chance to win. The $12 version is 15x already and the $100 version is $3200 already. If you haven’t been following there is a slightly more rare “auto” drop of Brady cards tomorrow, If you want an easy lottery ticket to the first drop of an A tier name on an A tier platform it’s probably worth taking a punt at tomorrow, day 1 sets all did fantastically.
Is there a time limit to get in queue at 3:00? I’m understanding this to mean at 3:00 everyone will be accepted into queue, then 100 random people will be selected from the queue lottery style (for each drop tomorrow)?
For the ones yesterday I just got in 10 minutes before. I got 0/4, my dad got 1/4, I bought one of each on secondary market from the early flippers but hoping I get some at cost tomorrow. Feels like early topshot where packs were egregiously +ev because there was so much excess demand
Edit: to be clear you need to have been in prior, at 3pm they take all people signed up, randomize them, and process buys in order until sold out
@primordialaa, do you have a method for spotting which nft groups will become popular? For example, what made you go for pudgy penguins instead of [insert random no name nft here]? It’s not like any new NFT collectible will increase that much in price…right?
Of course. For me it’s a mixture of momentum and ‘quality’ which is a term I use loosely. Liquidity matters a lot in this stuff, as it does in any collectible. The less liquid the market is the more you need to fundamentally believe in the long term value of what you are buying, and it’s ability to hold/gain value over time. The current NFT market is a giant game of hot potato, which is certainly fun and lucrative but also a bit crazy and there is this game of games being played between what is held for quick flips and what is held for long(er) term. Obviously quick flips have a bit of a cap, you may get 2x, 5x, 20x, or -1x but holding longer term is many higher multiples than that. To me penguins just happened to have both sides of things I had a bunch of friends start getting pretty excited by them and I thought as an actual profile picture they looked better than many of the other existing projects and was easy to see how they could become a meme / generally loved, but I still made a pretty small bet because in general new things are a total crapshoot in the same way picking a new TCG or any other collectible within the first 1-15 days is also almost always going to be a total crapshoot but then a few release from very big industry names (ex-MTG guys for FAB example) or have a ton of early interest from existing communities (multi-level marketing for example) and those are usually safer bets although more widely known. That said though if you look in that OpenSea account you’ll see I buy a ton of ridiculous stuff, because right now the market is so insane and that’s the game… and I love games :-p, grew up playing all kinds of TCG/board games until I ultimately fell in love w/ Poker and that sucked me away for ~10 years but again lately it’s just been complete excess demand lately.
Some stuff I’ve bought recently while just taking some punts:
Corgis - friends minted @ 0.01, I minted 2 at 0.08 and then just bought up a bunch of the rares last night because it seemed like the market was mispricing them. The floor was 0.1 last night and you could buy the rarest skin trait (0.4% distribution) for 0.18, which seemed outrageous so I bought all of them priced from 0.18 → 0.5. Floor this morning is currently 0.15 and new mints seem to be around ~0.156, only 1k more to go until minting is done
Penguins - friends bought off open market when floor was ~0.01-0.02, I bought when ~0.08 or so and thought they looked great relative to most of the other pfp projects so I bought up a bunch of rares (one of which was from the post above that went ~1.2 → 50 in 7 days). Floor is currently 2.4 today and it’s one of the hottest projects in a long time and also has super broad distribution (almost 5,000 holders on a collection of 8,888 so it’s not completely owned by a few whales or anything like that) opensea.io/collection/pudgypenguins?search[sortAscending]=true&search[sortBy]=PRICE
Cryptoarte - one of the earliest generative art projects ever, they were created algorithmically from 2015 - 2018 and even just a week ago only 20% were minted, while their cousin ArtBlocks which came later has pieces selling in the $500k-1m+ range regularly. A bunch of people noticed and started buying up these cryptoarte pieces, when I saw that I went and minted some myself. Minting was 0.1 each and you could choose from any currently unclaimed piece. Floor currently sits at 0.28 opensea.io/collection/cryptoarte?search[sortAscending]=true&search[sortBy]=PRICE&search[toggles][0]=BUY_NOW
FLUF world - saw these as they were just launching and minted a bunch, friend was obsessed with them and they clearly were higher effort than a bunch of the other nonsense ones (Corgis :S). I minted a bunch at the mint price of 0.09 and then we all stayed up trading them for the evening as they had a really wild run (0.09 → 1.6 floor on the same night as mint, 17.7x on the same day). I sold a ton of the floor ones, got my initial capital out and upgraded to a bunch of the rare ones. Attention has died down a bit but I own a bunch and floor sits at 0.58 and just going to see what happens. I think they look cooler than most and I saved a couple for my friends and I to keep as troll avatars to use that we’ll just never sell ;p opensea.io/collection/fluf-world?search[sortAscending]=true&search[sortBy]=PRICE&search[toggles][0]=BUY_NOW
Also I’ve seen this one talked about a ton today but I go and check and all rares of any kind are already priced like 100x floor (20 eth min roughly) and that signals to me that there is much less overall upside and that it’s probably just worth passing or the ‘sharp money’ is probably already in, although I’m a bit torn since floor is still relatively low and if it’s widely represented it will get some decent attention. Going to pass though
And then today there is one being launched on Solana that will likely be very popular, a bit tough because Solana is sort of it’s own ecosystem atm so it has less people trading than a typical ETH project which goes right onto OpenSea and has a massive audience and wide reach from the get go but the Solana community is extremely zealous and diehard and I’m going to be trying to get as many as I can because I think they look cool, are likely to be widely represented within twitter (exposure) and generally will likely be pretty fun.
degenape.academy/rarities
I’ll do that + the Autograph/Drafktings Tom Brady Signature drops today, both take probably <20 minutes of total effort
Not recommending any of this stuff but you asked about how I think about it this is generally how I think about them. Also def. not recommending to retroactively follow into any of these, I’d say generally newer/earlier has the best asymmetry and you want to be trying to be in at mint or once you see an inflection point happening within exposure/community. In terms of their obiquitousness here is the member of a billion dollar fund responding to the member of another billion dollar fund about how his doggo is cooler than the others .
If you want pure art check out gallery.so/dcinvestor, he’s awesome, hosts a podcast, was in extremely early on a limited budget buying almost purely art and now has one of the single most valuable collections in the space. He’s only sold a few pieces and says he plans to hold the rest indefinitely and is working with groups in DC to open up a personal gallery with all of it displayed. Some of his early AB, EB, etc. are awesome, his collection is super sick and he’s a total stud
also if TCGs are your thing 2 new ones are releasing shortly that may be worth paying attention to.
www.parallel.life/ has an EXTREMELY strong following, if you have a chance to get into one of their future/upcoming pack drops I would highly recommend it (last ones were absurd value with a chance to pull cards going for $100k+). They also have a thing called “Masterpiece” card which is a 1/1 version of each individual card and entitles you to 1% of all sales that all version of that card does for eternity… which is a pretty amazing mechanic and entirely new from what I can tell
www.skyweaver.net/ - in beta now (I just got access / will report back) but seems to have a very strong community and I’m going to pay attention to. I love playing TCGs anyways so always fun to explore new oens
I just honestly don’t understand why anyone would buy these virtual cards when with $100k you could put together a complete PSA 9 WotC holo set, gold star set, or trophy, etc. Or you could buy a freaking Alpha Black Lotus or a complete set of Alpha duals…
People are more than entitled to spend their money how they want to, but I just can’t wrap my head around this stuff.
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. Lots of cool stuff out there and the world gets more interesting every day!
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