Weekly NFT Preview | Will Free Mints Spur the Next Bull Rally?

It was quietly a bullish weekend for NFTs in a sea of bear market vibes.

Everyone and their mother seems to be a crypto bear right now, as the headlines continue to pour in talking about the "great decline and collapse of crypto." But the crypto markets are simply tailing TradFi (traditional finance) and equities. Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) were down about 3 percent on the week, with BTC holding $30,500 and ETH at $2,070 at time of writing. But equities are poised to open in the green today, and many are expecting a brief relief rally this week.

A crypto rally could help ignite an NFT market that feels ready to make a move, given some positive events from the weekend. Friday gave us a strong foundation for the weekend, beginning with the Chimpers NFT project. The pixelated chimps from Timpers came out of the gate red-hot, as the 0.07 ETH mint jumped to a 3 ETH floor and held up through the weekend on 7,000 ETH total volume before falling to 2 ETH late Sunday.

Next, the Kith Friends edition (collaboration between Kith and Invisible Friends) rallied from a 0.3 ETH mint to a 0.9 ETH floor at peak. And then, the free mint Goblintown took over, dominating NFT Twitter and rallying to a 0.75 ETH floor before retracing back to 0.5 ETH. 

The momentum carried over to the weekend, as new artist/influencer/Degenz project founder OSF launched a free mint for "rektguy" (free for Degenz and OSF art owners), which proceeded to rally to a 0.4 ETH floor at peak. Then not to be outdone, Kevin Rose and the Moonbirds team launched their Oddities airdrop as a surprise Sunday morning, which reached a 5 ETH floor before settling in the 3.5 to 4 ETH range for most of Sunday.

This was a big windfall for anyone who participated in any of these projects, and a very nice surprise coming off a fairly brutal stretch of red.

The weekend NFT rally occurred against the backdrop of VeeCon, Gary Vee's NFT conference, which seemed to have nearly universal positive sentiment and has had high-profile NFT traders/influencers like DeezeFi state that the event has "set the bar" for how future NFT conferences should be run. 

There are some reasons to feel positive about the NFT space right now. Let's check in on the macro views before previewing the upcoming week in NFTs.

NFT Weekly Macro

It was the lowest liquidity week of 2022, with just $267mm in revenue on the week for a daily average of $38.1mm. For perspective, the "bull market" daily liquidity threshold is generally deemed to be $100mm, and the single day after the Otherdeed for Otherside mint from Yuga Labs tallied $476mm in a single day. Daily volume has fallen off a major cliff. 

But those expecting the top project floors to fall off in line with declining liquidity have been proven wrong. In fact, nine of the top 20 NFT projects by floor price were in green on the week, as well as 18 of the top 50. Most of the top 20 projects moved in a small range, with single digit red or green moves for 15 of the top 20 in a mostly "chop" week.

The most notable top winners of the week included:

• Degen Toonz up 126% to 1.94 ETH floor
• Quirkies up 30% to 2.85 ETH floor
• RTFKT MNLTH up 26% to 7.28 ETH floor
• Damien Hirst's The Currency up 20% to 5 ETH floor
• VeeFriends up 17% to 8.2 ETH floor

Some notable losers on the week included:

• Project PXN down 65% to 1.6 ETH floor
• Nanopass down 30% to 2.5 ETH floor
• Beanz down 27% to 1.69 ETH floor
• mfers down 23% to 1.55 ETH floor
• Karafuru down 24% to 1.8 ETH floor

In general, it feels like most of the top-end floors have held up better than most traders anticipated in this extremely low liquidity environment, and if some volume catalysts can return, it seems the market is poised to move up.

But if you are looking for those catalysts in this week's NFT drops, you'll be disappointed. This is set to be the quietest week in NFTs in quite some time (barring surprises).

Weekly NFT Preview

Here is what's on deck for this week in NFTs:

Crypto Boy Music NFTs - Tuesday, May 24

The song that caught the crypto and NFT space by storm just a few weeks ago is set to capitalize on the momentum by launching a collection of 1,973 music NFTs on Tuesday for 0.1 ETH, with all proceeds being donated to The Center for Reproductive Rights.

The singer behind Crypto Boy, Salem Ilese, is teaming up with Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot to create custom art for the project. From the project's website, buyers of the NFT will be able to "claim a permanent seat in the audience" and that seating will be determined by buy order. Given the charitable aspect of the mint, relatively low entry price, and general widespread love of the song, expect some attention on this drop on Tuesday.

Art Blocks Curated 'Colorspace' by Tabor Robak - Wednesday, May 25

"Generative art is back," everyone screamed three weeks ago, during a brief 36-hour rally in the market which seemed to be mostly influencer-driven. But since then, a real and quiet rally has been actually forming in the Art Blocks market.

Last week, both Art Blocks Factory projects minted out and were profitable for minters. The first Curated drop was very successful, with "Anticyclone" by William Mapan holding a 3 ETH floor and seeing five top end sales of 20 ETH or higher amidst 2,600 ETH volume in three weeks.

More importantly, an index of the Top 5 Art Blocks Curated projects is sitting on a very strong 30-day stretch. Check out these top end floor prices and 30-day percentage changes:

• Fidenza at 68 ETH floor (+58%)
• Ringers at 42.69 ETH floor (+12%)
• Elevated Deconstructions at 35 ETH floor (+52%)
• Archetype at 13 ETH floor (+113%)
• Unigrids at 9.85 ETH floor (+3)

It has certainly been a very strong month for the top end Art Blocks market and a very nice backdrop for Tabor Robak to be launching Colorspace. His animated generative art project, which has a 600-piece supply, is described as "a tribute to creating on the computer" and alludes to "classic screensavers and operating systems" in its design and outputs.

The dutch auction will begin at 3 ETH and decrease until sell out or 0.15 ETH. Given the top end momentum and recent success of Curated mints, expect some real attention on Colorspace this week.

Potential Wildcards for This Week's NFT Market

There are not many big or notable drops this week, but stealth drops and surprise announcements can come out of nowhere to disrupt the market. Here are a few potential projects which could have big announcements this week:

Yuga Labs and Otherdeeds

The 21-day window for BAYC/MAYC owners to claim their Otherdeeds land ended yesterday at midnight, and it looks like a total of 659 NFTs were not minted, including 132 kodas (and two mega kodas). There has been much anticipation of a potential announcement from Yuga after the close of the 21-day period, and the koda floor rallied from 18 to 25 ETH at peak in the past few days on this speculation. 

The Otherside Twitter account did provide a brief announcement last night, alluding to the "First Trip" coming on July 16, which is expected to be a game demo of some kind. But with that date still nearly two months away, this very demanding market will be expecting more announcements and answers to open questions soon (how will the game work? what will happen to the lost kodas? will kodas be their own NFTs?), and any information from Yuga could definitely move the market.

Moonbirds Oddities

The surprise airdrop on Sunday was well received from the Moonbirds community, but with a 60-day reveal clock (aligning to the next Silver Nest debut for nesters), owners will likely be impatient.

There has also been much chatter about this Gremplin-confirmed project to be a "side" collection and not a true Moonbirds secondary collection (a la MAYC to BAYC), and thus some owners have been quietly selling.

Kevin Rose has alluded to "mysteries" of the Oddities being unraveled over time, and any hints at future utility or ownership benefits could rally this market quickly. Expect some big attention on the team's recurring Friday Twitter Spaces and some additional hints about this project.

RTFKT and Nike

The RTFKT founders have been hyping the future of their project hard on Twitter over the past few weeks, coming out of a successful IRL (in-real-life) event in NYC, and momentum is building.

CloneX and MNLTH are both up 30 percent or more from local bottoms, and the rumor mill is swirling about MNLTH2 (Louis Vuitton x Nike?) and future clone utility. Any confirmed news about future roadmap items or utility for existing NFTs in this ecosystem will likely be a market mover - stay tuned.

Conclusion

Overall, we are looking at what might be the quietest week in NFTs in some time, likely driven by new project founders who won't want to launch into this low liquidity environment. But there are reasons to stay checked in:

• Art Blocks is back, and has two new mints this week (Colorspace and today's Factory drop "Horo").
• Goblintown and rektguy may have inspired "free mint meta," giving NFT collectors the chance to get into new projects for nearly no cost.
• The top end NFTs have held up very well over the past few weeks, given the lack of volume.

So stay tuned, focus on free mints and low entry projects with potential upside (please not copy-pasta derivatives), and keep up to date with breaking news from across the space with Lucky Trader's news feed.

Good luck and happy minting!