Daily NFT News & Drops for July 27 | Lucky Trader

Lucky Trader covers the latest NFT news for Wednesday, July 27. Top stories include "The Currency's" burn window ending, Cool Cats announcing new characters, and two hot new mints from Warner Records and Art Blocks.

Top NFT Projects to Watch Today, July 27

Tuesday was a relatively uneventful day in the NFT market, but it does seem like the recent bleeding in floor prices may have paused or at least temporarily reversed. There's some green back on the board today, and ETH has rebounded as well back at $1,460 (+3% on the day).

The recent rebound is a positive sign for the new projects dropping today, with a combination of free and paid mints across music-NFTs and generative art all up for grabs, along with a key burn window deadline for Damien Hirst's "The Currency."

Let's get into it.

Top NFT Mints and Reveals Today, July 27

Here are the three primary drops on the radar for today:

Drops:

• Stickmen Toys
• Art Blocks Curated: Alan Ki Aankhen

Stickmen Toys

The newest free audio-visual NFT launches today from Warner Records and Bose, as Stickmen Toys is set to launch at 2 p.m. ET. 

With the tagline "Toys, but for big kids", holders of the Stickmen collections will have access to brand collabs, merch, as well as access to future Warner Records NFT, drops. The team's vision is to create a decentralized brand "fusing music, art and technology", with four pillars of utility, dreaming big, enjoying the journey, and you (the community). The team is using the free mint strategy to build loyalty and trust and as a way to provide value to holders versus extracting it. 

The NFT collection will have a limited set of Bose characters, and those lucky enough to mint/buy will be able to claim free one-of-a-kind Bose headphones or speakers. Find out more on the project's website.

If this was an expensive paid mint (which we've seen other brands do), it would probably be dead on arrival in this market. But I love the choice to do this for free, and there is a good chance this one will stir up some market attention and maybe secondary volume with its mint today. Music NFTs have notoriously struggled, but there haven't been many free mints from top brands, so perhaps Warner/Bose can buck the trend with the launch today.

Art Blocks Curated: "Alan Ki Aankhen"

Art Blocks is back today as generative artist Fahad Karim drops his 500 NFT supply set "Alan Ki Aankhen."

We did a full preview of the project and its artistic style in yesterday's preview post, so not rehashing that here and focusing more on market sentiment and dynamics.

The sentiment seems to be really strong around this drop, given its mainstream appeal and the market's love for cityscape-style art. The last cityscape project from famed artist Josh Bagley, "Ecumenopolis," gained a cult following and ran to a 20 ETH floor at its peak last summer. But while sentiment for this project is high, that is in contrast to general Art Blocks sentiment which has been falling after most of the latest drops have all been busts from a trading perspective, as an influx of traders/flippers has led to higher than normal mint prices, too many listings on secondary and prices falling below mint.

The Dutch auction starting at 10 ETH and decreasing to 0.2 ETH is a big win for traders/investors/collectors, as folks will have a chance to settle in and "hold the line." The last Curated drop, Running Moon, essentially minted out at the top of the Dutch auction at 3 ETH, but it never had a chance to really run its course. This one will, and because of that, it likely mints out at a lower price than Running Moon.

My current projection is for mint out in the 1.75-2.25 ETH range, and if it goes lower than that it will be an absolute slam dunk mint. This project should have a nice rare lotto with the eight different styles of outputs (hoping ocean towers and upside down are rares), which will be a boost to the secondary volume. And there really aren't many other projects to trade this week, which means this should get an attention boost. At an attractive entry point, this could be the best play of the week, but as always, mint price matters, and overpaying (i.e. 3 ETH plus) is very risky.

Learn more about Fahad's process and see different examples of the project's outputs here.

Alan Ki Aankhen mints today at 1:00 p.m. ET in a Dutch auction, starting at 10 ETH and exponentially decreasing to 0.2 ETH. 

NFT News and Announcements

While Tuesday was a quieter day, there were still some major headlines to be aware of for those active in the NFT market. 

Starting with Damien Hirst's "The Currency," this cult digital/physical art project is officially closing its burn window at 10:00 a.m. ET today. Through this burn mechanic, owners of the NFT will be able to essentially trade their NFT for a physical version of their The Currency, signed by the artist. As of this morning, nearly 50 percent (4,962) have been burned, though the floor price has retreated from 6.59 ETH yesterday at peak to 5.6 ETH at the time of writing. The price action will be very interesting to watch right before the window closes as well as after.

The Cool Cats team made multiple headlines on Tuesday, first by teasing its new characters and then later by announcing a "fast hatching" feature for its Cool Pets. The new characters are anticipated to be revealed in more detail this Friday at 3:00 p.m. ET, though it's still unclear if this will be a new mint, airdrop, or new mechanic for expanding their ecosystem. With new characters coming, clearly, the team realizes they need to move forward with Cool Pets, which is exactly what they're trying to do with this accelerated hatching. This is likely the latest in the overall pivot from the focus on Cooltopia the game and back more on the overall Cool Cats character universe.

Hello Kitty NFTs are coming from Recur, the team behind the recently successful Nickelodeon NFT drop. This sale is scheduled for August 25, though without much additional information or detail. But with the popularity of this cult brand coupled with the recent success of Recur, this may very well be one of the most hyped mints of the next month. 

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

• Mooncats (one of the oldest NFT sets founded in 2017) announced a partnership with NFT MMORPG The DeFimons.
• Chimpers "Dojo" opened Tuesday, providing a new staking mechanism and way for holders to earn experience points for their NFTs; learn more from the team's post.
• MekaVerse teased new in-game footage for its upcoming Meta robot game coming in collaboration with Core Game.
• Nickelodeon launched its Slime NFT claim on Tuesday, with all claimed within two hours; to claim the Slime NFTs holders of the Rugrats & Hey Arnold project had to burn their NFTs.
• OpenSea continues to struggle with its Solana launchpad mints, with its first mint Zoonies yet to mint out and newest drop Monkai having trouble as well.
• World of Women scheduled a snapshot of its WoW Galaxy holders for today at 1:00 p.m. ET for a potential upcoming airdrop.
• BYOLand's BYOverse map is now complete, with holders able to place their lands on Friday, August 26th.
• WZRDS skull holders will be receiving Elixir NFTs on a 1-1 basis, according to an update from the team last night; the skulls hold a 0.279 ETH floor, nearly 2x the WZRDS NFT floor.

NFT Market Action Data, July 27

Volume was low again on Tuesday, with Ledger standing out atop the board with 1,300 ETH traded on its first full day of trading after minting out its full 10,000 NFT supply. The floor has been volatile, peaking near 0.68 after Ryan Carson's fund swept, though falling back to 0.54 ETH as of this morning.

CryptoPunks were 2nd in volume with just 406 ETH traded, though the floor was somehow out 4% with this meager volume. Moonbirds seem to have held at 19 ETH on 300 ETH volume, and perhaps these two projects have found new floors.

The Yuga ecosystem mostly chopped on the day, combining for less than 1K ETH across the 3 major sets and with floors at 86 / 16.5 / 2.3 ETH respectively for BAYC / MAYC / Otherdeeds.

New joiners The Potatoz and Isekai mostly held ground on Tuesday, down 4% each at 0.69 ETH and 0.45 ETH respectively.

Some notable winners on the day included Chimpers up 10 percent to 1.65 ETH with Dojo's release, mcgoblin's up 6 percent to 1.6 ETH with the upcoming baiting feature, and RAGS to RICHIE up 6% to 1.2 ETH floor after cutting its supply to 3,333.

Mooncatz led notable losers on the day, down 50 percent to 0.06 ETH after its reveal, followed by YOLO Bunny down 40 percent to 0.9 ETH, and Nina's SCW down 11 percent to 0.47 ETH after its recent weekend run.

NFT Market Analysis

The crypto markets rallied Tuesday evening and into the morning following decent tech earnings from Google and MSFT after hours on Tuesday, with stocks set to open up slightly today. BTC and ETH now sit at $21,300 and $1,460, up 1% / 4.4% on the day though both are still down on the week. Coinbase was a notable loser in the markets on Tuesday, falling more than 20% to $53 as news of its SEC probe hits the market and fund managers such as Cathie Wood dumped shares at big losses.

Eyes now turn to today's FOMC meeting at 2 p.m. ET followed by Powell's presser at 2:30 p.m. ET, with the expectation of a 75 bps rises seeming to be a common sentiment. It's unclear how the market will react to that raise or a higher one of 100 bps, but most expect strong volatility one way or the other, ahead of Thursday's GDP data and pending announcement of an official recession or not.

The NFT markets continue to struggle with this low liquidity, especially the mid-tier and lower-end PFPs. It's hard to see a catalyst for that sector right now, and the continued decline seems to be the base case. Top-end sets (Punks and BAYC) and grail art (top Art Blocks and 1/1s) have done well even with a recent drip and will likely lead the way in the next recovery. Today's Art Blocks Curated drop will be a great test of current sentiment and whether traders/flippers are still here or have left given the recent poor performance.

But new projects can still be successful, as Ledger has proven, up nearly 100% from mint price, as evidenced by multiple free and low-cost paid mints from the past week. Hopefully, that trend can continue today, with Stickmen being the primary target of attention in the free mint space.

To those minting, good luck and stay safe out there, and as always make sure to stay up to date with the latest news with the Lucky Trader newsfeed. 

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