Daily NFT News & Drops for August 24 | Lucky Trader

Lucky Trader covers the latest NFT news for Wednesday, August 24. Top stories include the BendDAO crisis averting, a potential Azuki airdrop, a major XCOPY sale, and some of the biggest drops of the week happening today.

Top NFT Projects to Watch Today, August 24

While NFT trading volume remains at the lowest levels of the year, sentiment does finally seem to be turning around a bit. Rug Radio host Mando called bottom yesterday (below), and a recent rebound in BAYC and mid-tier PFP prices, along with the amazing Pudgy Penguin comeback story, are starting to give some fresh hope to the market.

This week has also seen some major run-ups, highlighted by Finiliar which sits at a 5x from mint, and the mega-success free mint Digidaigaku which is at ATH this morning at 3.4 ETH.

With this backdrop, today's new mints have a bit of a tailwind behind them that could lead to some success.

Let's get into it.

Top NFT Mints and Reveals Today, August 24

Here are the two primary drops on the radar for this weekend:

• Art Blocks Curated: Polychrome Music
• Recur Pass: Hello Kitty
• Candy Digital: Cal Ripken Jr.

Art Blocks Curated: Polychrome Music

The latest Curated project out of Art Blocks is an animated, musical set of 400 from Rafael Rozendaal and Danny Wolfers called "Polychrome Music". Rafael is not new to Curated, having dropped a solo collection "Endless Nameless" last summer (currently 0.42 ETH floor), as well as two Playground sets which have seen some real success in Dive (0.66 ETH floor), Corners (1.08 ETH floor), and Non Either (3.1 ETH floor).

Polychrome Music is a generative set of 400 outputs inspired by early computer chips that play "an infinite composition" to go along with the colorful block animation. Each time the piece is played, the system changes the music pattern, making it unique. From the project preview page "In essence, the system infinitely randomly remixes the source melodies to create ever new surprising pieces that harmonize with the colorful compositions."

Art Blocks tailwinds are pretty bearish overall with most floors down, but good projects are still minting out (see last week's 80s Pop) and the last Curated "Fake It Til You Make It" saw a recent recovery from its lows of 0.2 back to 0.4 ETH. Monday's Factory drop "Glass" has done surprisingly well, minting out at 0.22 ETH and running up almost 100 percent to 0.43 ETH on secondary in early trading.

The low supply of this one, combined with Rafael's prior project's success, makes this one interesting, especially if it goes below 0.5 ETH. On a market cap basis, this set should be in line with Endless Nameless, meaning its implied floor would be ~1 ETH. If it mints out there, there's less upside but if the line holds to 0.6 or lower, this becomes a much more enticing mint.

As always, the entry price is everything - unless you're just in it for the art, and then by all means mint away. Polychrome Music will begin its Dutch auction today at 1:00 p.m. ET at 5 ETH, decreasing exponentially to a 0.25 ETH resting price.

Recur Pass: Hello Kitty

The most heavily anticipated Recur Pass drop to date begins today when Hello Kitty begins the first stage of its allow list mint. This travel-themed set featuring Hello Kitty and Friends will include 10,000 unique PFP NFTs, each featuring 1 of 6 characters from famed lead Sanrio in their "typical kawaii style". 

There will be a travel game aspect to the project as well, as each PFP will be able to "travel" to one of eight different cities, executing two week-long challenges. The travel guides were introduced in a blog post on August 1, introducing what will likely be the PFP characters as well: Hello Kitty, My Melody, Cinnamoroll, Kuromi, Pompompurin, and Keroppi. 

An auction for six 1/1 NFTs started yesterday, featuring each of the six main characters above in their outer space attributes. These auctions started at 10 ETH and ended up selling in the 3.98-9.83 ETH range, led by the Hello Kitty 1-1 which topped at 9.83 ETH in a sale near the very top of the auction (Cinnamoroll was not far behind at 8.59 ETH sale).

Today marks the first phase of a three-part sale mechanic for the 10,000 suitcase NFTs, selling for $100 and which will reveal one PFP character. The three phases include:

• RECUR Pass Holder Allowlist Sale: August 24 at 11:00 a.m. ET
• RECUR Pass Holder Sale: August 25 at 1:00 p.m. ET
• Public Sale: August 25 at 2:00 p.m. ET

From a trading perspective, we have some insight into market value already based on the difference in price for the Recur Passes eligible for the allowlist, and the general ones, which are trading for about a $400 difference (4x mint price). Both of the last Recur drops had very profitable trading windows, with Rugrats running all the way to 0.4 ETH at peak (from $50) and the Care Bears drop also doing a quick 3-4x. Given that success, expect a full-on gas war on both the pass holder sale as well as the public sale, and these will be tricky to get.

Be careful chasing these on secondary though, as the trading windows for the past two sets have not lasted long at all, and Rugrats have fallen all the way to 0.02 ETH. 

Candy Digital: Cal Ripken Jr.

Leading MLB digital card platform Candy is back today with a Cal Ripken Jr. Rookie Collection, celebrating "The Iron Man" in all his glory. There will be several collectibles in this drop, all from Cal's rookie year of 1982. The different pieces include:

Legendary 1-of-1 Rookie ICON, including a signed plaque and a zoom call with Cal himself

Rookie Box, featuring 1200 editions at $25 each

The Rookie Box rarities include 700 Core, 330 Uncommon, 120 Rare, and 50 Epic pieces, with the Epics including a physical print of the card signed by Cal.

The drop begins today at 1 p.m. ET over at www.candy.com, and you can read more about the drop from their blog post.

NFT News and Announcements

Tuesday had some major headlines across the PFP, crypto, and digital art space.

BendDAO passed proposal #9 on Tuesday morning with significant changes to the liquidation and lending process, to great effect. The DAO founders admitted that they "underestimated how illiquid NFTs could be in a bear market when setting the initial parameters," but are setting things right with several changes including:

• lowering the liquidation threshold from 95 percent of floor price to 70 percent over the next month
• auction period reduced from 48 hours to 4 hours, making them close more quickly and with less overlap 
• Interest base rate was adjusted to 20 percent, to make ETH deposits more attractive and make lendees more likely to repay timely

The likelihood of a "liquidation spiral" has subsided greatly already, as NFT Statistics notes in his thread below. The auction count is going down, and most of the NFTs in the auction are catching bids. And the "run on the bank" for BendDAO has ended, as their stores are back up to 4,000 WETH and climbing (they bottomed around 50 WETH on Sunday).

Azuki was back in the headlines Tuesday evening, as their website was updated with some clues about a potential airdrop coming in September. There is not an interactive portion of the website called "The Alley", which shows two dates: October 14 and September 23. A cryptic message on the page reads "There's a lot of rumors about what's going on beneath the alley...Some say it looks like your hidden folder on OS..." The market has already responded to this update, with the floor up over 15 percent from local lows below 6 ETH to 6.88 ETH at the time of writing.

Top digital artist XCOPY made headlines Tuesday morning with a massive secondary sale on "Don't Panic" (how fitting for this current market) which went for 500 ETH ($805,895). This piece has an incredible price history, as XCOPY minted it in February of 2019, it first sold for 1 ETH that March, resold for 12 ETH in September of 2020 to moderatsart, who then resold it yesterday for 500 ETH. The "floor" for an XCOPY 1/1 of SuperRare now is 420 ETH for "The Death of Cash." 

Here is a quick round-up of the rest of the main headlines from Tuesday:

• a16z led a $56mm Series B investment round for cross-game avatar platform Ready Player Me, in the VC fund's latest major bet on the metaverse 
• Grail 2 closed its mint Tuesday, with 1,178 pieces minted; all eyes now turn to the big artist reveal event Thursday at 1:00 p.m. ET
• Moonbirds announced a new event in Montreal for holders for September 8
• gmoney's latest mint went live yesterday, as 9dcc's ITERATION-001 began its mint for luxury t-shirts which also serve as the genesis NFT for this new project

NFT Market Action Data, August 24

Trading volume was up a tick Tuesday at $16mm, though you would not know it looking at the leaderboard. No set did over 500 ETH in volume on the day, in what turned out to be a very distributed day of trading.

As noted above, the BendDAO liquidation "crisis" seems to be under control, and the BAYC + MAYC floors have rebounded from their local bottoms. BAYC is back at 70 ETH (+4.5%) and MAYC is at 13.6 ETH. There is growing chatter that perhaps blue chips have bottomed, and certainly, the Yuga ecosystem should be the set to lead the way in the next run and should serve as a nice signal.

The mid-tier PFPs seem to have stabilized, or at least stopped the bleeding, as the trio of Doodles/CloneX/Azuki have recovered from recent lows. Azuki led the way, up 17 percent to 6.88 ETH floor as rumors of The Alley airdrop of some kind circulated through NFT Twitter late evening. CloneX was steady on the day at 6.4 ETH, and Doodles were up 1% to 7 ETH. Moonbirds remain a notch above, consolidating in the 13 ETH range, while Oddities dipped a bit on the day to 1.5 after their recent surge.

The big winner on the day was Finiliar, the animated PFP set which changes its mood based on crypto price action. Its floor jumped 78 percent to 0.4 ETH on the day, in what has now been a 5x run from its 0.08 ETH mint and recent local bottom. 

DigiDaigaku was the second big winner, up 32 percent on the day to 3.4 ETH floor as founder Gabriel Leydon continues to tease the impending airdrop. The team also renamed the set to "Digidaigaku Genesis", a hint that more sets are to come.

Pudgy Penguins were a notable loser on the day, down 13 percent to 3.25 ETH as some of the recent hype wore off. Founder Luca Netz did make a solid appearance on Rug Radio Tuesday recapping his personal story and plan for the brand, and with over 3,100 folks in attendance for the Spaces, it's doubtful the latest Pengu run was a one-time surge. 

NFT Market Analysis

The crypto markets are in chop mode ahead of the Jackson Hole meeting on the 25th, where several central banks and the Fed are gathering and with some expectations of guidance for future rate decisions. ETH was up 2 percent on the day to $1,640 while BTC was even at $21,400. Equities are coming off a pretty rough 5-day stretch here, and any negative news coming out this week is likely to send markets lower (likely dragging Crypto with it).

Cheaper ETH seems to be a local boon for NFTs, as daily ETH volume on OpenSea is back to the 10K ETH / day market, up from some August lows in the 7K range. NFT sentiment, especially around PFPs, does seem to be turning around a bit from the pure despair and capitulation of last week. Certainly any kind of BAYC run out of this BendDAO mess would go a long way in helping this rebound, and the high end Pudgy Penguin sale from Monday at 400 ETH has also given hope that there is still big interest in this new asset class.

A rebound in the mid-tier PFPs would go a long way for market morale as well, as these sets have been down only all summer. It looks like they may be on their way back up, and if this trend continues, it could lead to some funds moving off the sidelines and back in to some of these popular sets.

The low cap sector has seen some success this week, led by Finiliar and other micro plays like Pudgy Pepes, so expect some continued focus on the low end plays this week.

Good luck to those minting today, be careful out there, and as always make sure to stay up to date with the latest news with the Lucky Trader newsfeed. Have a great Wednesday!