Morning Minute | A Memecoin Is Going to the Vegas Sphere

TylerD's Market Summary

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by MetaStreet, THE best new way to earn yield in NFTfi.

Interested in earning yield via NFT lending? Like points farming, or gaining exposure to Blast? MetaStreet is for you.

MetaStreet solves 3 issues in the current NFT lending market by:

• not depending on oracles
• offering dynamic interest rates, and 
• operating permissionlessly via its Automated Tranche Maker (ATM). 

Recently they launched their Pudgy Ascend Tower, allowing those interested in lending against Pudgy Penguins to do so with up to 26.7% yield (and major points).

And just yesterday they announced a new open edition mint with Metaverse HQ to celebrate the Blast launch!

New things are happening almost daily with MetaStreet right now, and users are winning.

So deposit now and start earning!

🐶🧢 Sphere WIF Hat Is Happening

If you've been following the crypto market even loosely over the past few months, one new trend has stood out.

Memecoins. And memecoin mania.

And that mania is about to go to the next level.

What Happened?

Notable crypto X influencer Ansem started a campaign on March 9 to get the viral Dogwifhat ($WIF) meme on the Las Vegas sphere.

The cost was $650,000 to be featured on the Sphere, for a week.

Well, the memecoin degens raised the money in less than 5 days, breaching the target goal of $650k yesterday (with some help from Phantom Wallet).

And the market absolutely loved the news.

$WIF soared 47% on the day to $3.25 and a whopping $3.25B marketcap.

For perspective, that makes $WIF (a memecoin) the 45th most valuable crypto token in the world. It flipped notable alts Arbitrum (51) and Celestia (48) in its run-up.

Why It Matters

There is a very real scenario now where the "memecoin supercycle" thesis plays out.

It was a big tongue in cheek before, but not anymore.

The thesis is basically this:

Market participants are tired of betting on the 50th new L2 or alt-L1 that does virtually the same thing as the infrastructure we already have in place and are ready to place bets on the simplest culture-based assets out there - memes.

It's the "crypto is a casino" thesis played out to its natural end state.

Memes are easy to bet on because they are very few risk factors involved (once a few basic things happen like the dev leading, liquidity getting burned, etc.).

In this scenario (if it plays out), 4-5 memecoins become top 10 crypto tokens by market cap this cycle. And dozens of others reach high-9 figure to 10-figure market caps.

That statement seemed outlandish just a few months ago, but now Doge and Shiba are both top 11, and Pepe (31) and WIF (45) are in the top 50.

And real crypto thought leaders (like Raoul Pal) are consistently talking about memes like WIF on their streams and X pages.

The memecoin supercycle is likely happening - now it's time to figure out how to play it. 

💎 Magic Eden Diamonds Are Live

Magic Eden has been busy.

After announcing their Magic Eden wallet and ETH NFT marketplace, they have soared to the top of the market place wars.

In the past week, they led all chains with 36.7% marketshare (Blur next at 29.8% and OpenSea at 9%).

This come up drove expectations for their recent Diamonds claim (points) high, and they seemingly delivered (though with a twist).

What Happened?

Yesterday, Magic Eden's Diamond claim for OG ETH NFT traders went live.

Points were rewarded based on historical activity and factors such as royalties paid, total trading volume and more.

And the rewards seemed fairly good, with traders receiving anywhere from 15k Diamonds to 120k based on those factors above.

But the catch? Up to 5x those rewards are available to those who choose to go on quests (farm Magic Eden).

Diamond Quests look like this:

• Buying NFTs
• Listing NFTs
• Making collection offers

Pretty standard farming activities. And more are expected to come.

Now the question is - why? Why farm Magic Eden Diamonds?

Why Magic Eden Diamonds Matter - $NFT

Recall the Non-Fungible DAO. Magic Eden is effectively going on a decentralization journey.

Magic Eden's Non-Fungible DAO TLDR:

• A new DAO with the mission to "develop and drive adoption" of decentralized NFT protocols

• The DAO owns and governs Magic Eden's smart contracts across the 4 major NFT blockchain ecosystems

• $NFT will be a governance token used to control and steer the DAO

• The $NFT token will be allocated to the NFT community and earned by those who use the DAO-governed protocols (i.e. Magic Eden)

While it's not confirmed, it's not hard to guess that Diamonds turn into $NFT tokens.

And those tokens are seemingly going up in value as Magic Eden soars up the marketplace leaderboard.

Will their lead grow? We are about to find out.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• Ethereum led NFT trading volume with $17M on the day (-20%); BTC was next with $13.9M (-16%) and then Solana with $11.3M (been)
• The ETH NFT leaders were very red again; BAYC -4% at 14 ETH, Pudgy Penguins -12% to 11.3, DeGods -15% to 1.33
• SMOWL was the top performer on ETH, jumping 300% to 0.19 along with Asterix +45% to 1.45; Pandora jumped 11% to 6.66 ETH
• Renga NFT holders will get a free mint from DirtyRobot on March 21 at 4 pm ET (snapshot taking on Feb 26)
• 0xdgb minted "Choose Rich" as their latest 1/1 on SuperRare, as the meme continues to spread
• Blast briefly went down on Wednesday morning due to issues tied to the Dencun Upgrade; it was back online within about 2 hours
• Mikan was the top Bitcoin mover on the day tallying 18 BTC in its debut with the floor opening at 0.011 BTC; Nodes were next at 0.537 BTC (-12%), and other leaders mostly held steady
• OMB fell 12% to 1.11 BTC ahead of its Orange Eyes expansion mint today
• New BTC art mint Mitosis minted out for 0.01 and ran as high as 0.045 BTC before setting at 0.028
• Solana NFTs were mostly even or red on the day; Frogana even at 3.85 SOL, Mad Lads even at 192, Tensorians -13% to 55, Bodoggos -17% to 8.3
• Bored Elon is hosting his latest live metaverse gaming experience today with Edison

💰 Token, Airdrop & Points Tracker

Highlighting the major token or airdrop news from the day.

• Wasabi added leverage trading on $MOG coin with 2x Wasabi points for the next 3 days
• The $PAC airdrop was delayed to today after Blast experienced outages, though the team did release its tokenomics
• Saga shared that it will be airdropping tokens to CryptoPunk owners
• Grass points are live for pre-market trading on Whales

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are mixed this morning; BTC -0.5% $72,920; ETH -2.2% at $3,968; SOL +13% at $173
• $JUP quietly jumped 13% on the day to $0.95 and closing in on $1
• Michael Saylor is set to buy another $500M of Bitcoin via Microstrategy through another series of convertible debt offerings
• An Arbitrum DAO proposal is seeking 400 million $ARB ($426M) to "catalyze gaming ecosystem growth" on Arbitrum

🚀 NFT Total Volume

• Mad Lads ($2.44M, 192 Sol Floor)
• BAYC ($1.99M, 14 ETH Floor)
• Mikan ($1.35M, 0.011 BTC floor)
• Pudgy Penguins ($1.2M, 11.3 ETH Floor)
• NodeMonkes ($1.13M, 0.53 BTC floor)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• SMOWL (300%, 0.19 ETH Floor)
• Asterix (45%, 1.45 ETH)
• Yogapetz (19%, 0.57 ETH)
• Baby Bears (18%, 13 ETH)
• Sam Spratt - Players (13%, 6.5 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a busy day of drops, mostly focused on Bitcoin.

The highly anticipated OMB Orange Eyes mint comes today. The 3,141 NFT expansion set is priced at 0.29 BTC for those on the WL (0.99 BTC for public).

It's expected to mint out of course, but after a 910 BTC raise ($66M) in a market lacking volume right now, the rest of the eco could be in trouble.

C.O.C.K.S. is trying to take advantage of a more liquid environment with its CDB-like launch also on BTC today.

Expect some fireworks, one way or another.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Glitch Codes - Obyor(11:00 a.m. ET)
• Courtyard - HODL (11:00 a.m. ET)
• C.O.C.K.S. (12:00 p.m. ET)
• Darien Brito x Highlight - Metamorphosis (1:00 p.m. ET)
• Floor Icons SZN 2 Drop 6 (2:00 p.m. ET)
• OMB Orange Eyes (TBD)
• $PAC airdrop (TBD)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.