Morning Minute | Elon Pumps an NFT (Again)

Morning Minute | Elon Pumps an NFT (Again)

GM!

Take a minute to catch up on the latest in the Web3 space with today's NFT market analysis, top movers, and upcoming mints:

Skip to

NFT Total Volume

NFT Floor Price Increase

Upcoming NFT Mints

TylerD's Market Summary

Elon rockets an NFT project once again. Find out which one and the surprising winner. Plus, Tether has a record-breaking quarter and ACK raises over $1.3M.

๐Ÿš€ Elon Pumps Milady's

There are certain truths in NFTs. 

Anticipation of delivery is better than actual results. Prices go down after art is revealed.

And if Elon tweets about a project, it instantly rockets.

The Miladys project experienced that Elon pump yesterday, when the Twitter boss tweeted a Miladys meme with the text "There is no meme. I love you."

Market Impact

Elon's impact was swift and fierce.

The Miladys floor jumped from 3.8 ETH to over 7 ETH briefly at peak, an 80%+ spike in about an hour.

The pump was also fueled by Blur's new BNPL program, which allowed traders to capitalize on the momentum by buying up Milady's for a fraction of their price.

But the second part of the new "Elon NFT Pump" rule - what goes up fast, comes down just as fast.

After peaking at just over 7 ETH, the floor retraced to the 5 ETH level within an hour or so.

It's now at 4.6 ETH this morning, up 23% on the day. Still solid for this market, but leaving a lot of top buyers disappointed.

There was one other market impact here - on new NFT futures platform nftperp.xyz.

NFTperp's Big Day

nftperp.xyz is a "perpetual futures DEX for NFTs" allowing traders to go long or short certain NFTs.

The Elon pump effectively crashed their site, which set records for volume.

Here are some of their numbers from yesterday, according to one of their devs 0x_aster:

  • $8.3M in volume
  • 2011 trades
  • $46k in fees

All of those are new ATHs for the site.

For some comparison, OpenSea only did 4,700 ETH in volume yesterday ($8.65M). So nftperp did about as much volume as OpenSea.

Anecdotally, I did hear that the site was down during some crucial time after the Elon tweet, though that's not a huge surprise given the protocol is still in beta.

Regardless, nftperp might have been the biggest winner of the day.

These types of hyper-volatile events are some of the best times to use a futures platform like nftperp (if you know what you're doing).

The financialization of NFTs deepens.

๐Ÿ’ธ Tether's $1.5B Quarter

Crypto trading has been down significantly in 2023, but that hasn't stopped Tether from outperforming.

Stablecoin giant Tether has reported a staggering $1.5 billion net profit for Q1 2023.

That profit doubled their previous quarter's earnings.

Tether also revealed its Bitcoin and Gold allocations for the first time in the spirit of more transparency, related to the incident with USDC and Circle earlier in the year.

How Tether Makes Money

As I understand it, Tether the company makes money similar to how a bank would.

They generate revenue via:

  • transaction fees on issuing $USDT
  • interest on reserves
  • Investing those reserves in low-risk assets
And certainly the benefitted from the storm around Circle and $USDC during the insolvency fears back in mid-March when USDC briefly crashed below $0.90.
 
So just how much did they benefit?

Notable Figures

  • Tether's Q1 net profit rose to $1.5 billion, more than double the Q4 2022 net profit.
  • The company's excess reserves reached an all-time high of $2.44 billion.
  • Tether revealed it holds $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and $3.3 billion worth of precious metals (i.e. gold) in its reserves.
  • Their marketcap reached $82.6B, 174% higher than USDC's $30.1B

Tether looks to be the stablecoin king, at least for now. And kudos to them for the increased transparency.

For those looking for a deeper dive on how Tether works, check this guide from Worldcoin.

๐Ÿšš What else is happening in NFTs?

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

  • Trading volume rocketed to 22.5k ETH on Wednesday, led by Milady's after the Elon pump; most other NFTs saw big red on the day though, down 4-10%
  • ACK's The Broken Keys closed the auctions yesterday resulting in over 730 ETH ($1.3M) raised for the artist; the min winning bid was 9 ETH (much higher than expectation) and the top winning bid was 31.69 ETH
  • Paraspace revealed an active controversy tied to an exploit that occurred in mid-March, with its founder and CEO Ruan Tubo apparently misappropriating 50% of the funds that were recovered
  • Yuga CEO Daniel Alegre finally pulled the trigger and bought a Bored Ape, or at least he finally made it his new PFP on Twitter (BAYC fell 4% to 42.3 ETH on the day)
  • ALTAVA Group announced a licensing partnership with Animoca Brands, allowing ALTAVA to utilize BAYCs for a project called Bored Ape Golf Club (a new premium golf utility project)
  • Dune Analytics debuted support for decoding Solana programs, a huge win for those looking to run analytics on Solana projects
  • Blur announced 2 changes for bidding, including a new cancellation requirement to accept lower bids and a new filter for bid spoofers
  • OpenSea Pro announced a new label for bid farmer wallets to display on their platform
  • Kanpai Pandas announced that Panda holders will get a $KARATE airdrop woth an estimated $900k at luanch, with a snapshot coming on May 15

๐ŸŒŽ Around Crypto and Web3

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

  • The crypto market was volatile after a good CPI print yesterday, running up at first but falling after fears of more U.S. government selling; BTC -0.6% at $27,460; ETH -1.3% at $1,820
  • A Coinbase newsletter circulated Wednesday calling out $PEPE for its alt-right ties, leading to some backlash on NFT and Crypto Twitter ($PEPE fell 16% on the day to an $680M MC)
  • Binance's crypto trading volume dropped almost 50% in April to $287B, its second-lowest level since 2021, while Robinhood reported a 30% decline in crypto trading revenues year-on-year
  • Boss Beauties is collaborating with Barbie to launch a collection of virtual collectibles on the Flow blockchain.

๐Ÿš€ NFT Total Volume

  • Milady (8,275 ETH; 4.57 ETH Floor)
  • BAYC (2,316 ETH, 42.3 ETH)
  • MAYC (1,621 ETH, 9.57 ETH)
  • Redacted Remilios (1,567 ETH, 1.58 ETH)
  • Azuki (866 ETH, 13.4 ETH)

๐Ÿ“ˆ NFT Floor Price Increase

  • CryptoDickbutts (30%, 1.62 ETH Floor)
  • Milady (22%, 4.57 ETH)
  • Schizoposters (19%, 0.5 ETH)
  • Redacted Remilios (11%, 1.58 ETH)
  • Nakamigos (11%, 0.21 ETH)

๐Ÿ—“ Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a slower day, once again.

The highlight is the Krasis drop by Summer Wagner on Escher. The 100 editions are priced at 0.1 ETH.

Notably, ACK (fresh off his Broken Keys success) called Summer Wagner one of his favorite rising artists in an interview earlier this week.

Do with that what you will.

  • Sparkadia: Ascended Kana (11:00 a.m. ET); free
  • Escher Exclusives: "Krasis" by Summer Wagner (12:00 p.m. ET); 0.1 ETH
  • CRIM3 by Three Panel Crimes (6:30 p.m. ET); $4.20

Enjoy this write-up? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

For all volume and floor price data, see Lucky Trader's Project Rankings page.

For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's Project Schedule page.

Disclaimer: The author or members of the Lucky Trader staff may own NFTs discussed in this post. Furthermore, the information contained on this website or the Lucky Trader mobile application is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as financial advice. AI may have assisted in the creation of this content.