Morning Minute | New BTC NFT Mint Brings In $5.5M
TylerD's Market Summary
Plus catch up on the roller coaster BTC ETF day.
🎉 Shadows Sell Out for $5.55M
Dropping a hyped NFT mint, on Bitcoin, on the same day that the BTC ETFs went live was a risky gambit.
But it seemingly paid off for Dotta and the Forgotten Runes team.
They raised over $5M selling just 600 NFTs in less than 2 hours.
It's a promising sign for the NFT market on Bitcoin.
What Happened?
The Shadows NFT mint sold out all 600 NFTs at the 0.2 BTC cap yesterday, raising a whopping 120 BTC ($5.55M) in the process.
The sale was structured in a 24-hour, ascending auction style format, with a min bid of 1 satoshi and a max bid of 0.2 BTC, called a "goated" bid. All goated bids would receive 1 raffle ticket for a Shadow Hat NFT.
Well, the allure of that Shadow Hat raffle ticket was enough to convince the market to max bid, and to bid fast.
All 600 bids at max price were receiving within the first 1.5 hours of the 24-hour auction.
Just a tremendous success story for the team, whose Forgotten Wizards (genesis set) are holding just a 0.75 ETH floor.
How Did They Do It?
They were early.
When Ordinals first took off, Forgotten Runes CEO Dotta dove in. He started inscribing early and secured 10 spots in the first 1,000 inscriptions.
For perspective, the floor on sub-1k Ordinal inscriptions is 0.5 BTC right now, regardless of what's inscribed on them.
Dotta took advantage, inscribing 10 "Shadow Hat" NFTs, effectively "evil wizards," on to these sats.
And then the all 600 Shadows have a parent-child relationship to 1 of the 10 Shadow Hats. It's a relationship that can only be done on Bitcoin right now, and it's a big part of the project lore.
Market Reaction
These haven't started trading on secondary yet, so we are still yet to see ongoing demand. But given the fast sellout, it's likely to be there.
The mint had a pretty major impact on the broader Ordinals market as well.
The past few days had been down-only for the volume leaders (NodeMonkes, Bitcoin Puppets), but both of those seem to have rebounded overnight.
With this large overhang off the table, Ordinals may see a weekend run here.
Time will tell.
🎢 Bitcoin ETFs Day 1 Report
The first day of trading for the approved BTC ETFs led to a roller coaster day in the markets.
Yesterday morning, BTC (and basically every crypto token) was pumping hard.
It briefly ran past $49,000 in the first 30 minutes of market open.
Then it stopped. And violently reversed.
It fell to $46,000 and has basically chopped their since.
But that isn't due to lack of interest.
The group of ETFs did a combined $4.3B in volume in the first day, a record for ETF launches.
Now there has been some mixed feedback regarding the role outflows from GBTC played in this, which can be debated.
Volume, and marketing, was very present though.
A few highlights:
- A new VanEck commercial touting its ETF with the tagline “Bitcoin may help guard against the government devaluing your money.”
- Cathie Wood declaring her BTC price targets of $258k-$682k in bear case and $1.5M in bull case by 2030
The day didn't come without hurdles however.
Vanguard blocked its clients from purchasing the BTC ETFs on day one. And Elizabeth Warren shared her disdain, stating the SEC made a mistake with the decision.
With the euphoria now washed away, it seems clear that the immediate path forward will have additional hurdles and won't be up-only.
But the groundwork has been laid for the next major leg up.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- ETH trading volume jumped to $32.7M on Thursday on the back of big OpenSea and CryptoPunks volume; NFT leaders were mostly red
- Azuki led volume again but fell another 7% to 6.4, while MAYC found a new local low at 3.85 ETH (-8%); BAYC even at 23
- A new whale swept 13 Punks and 18 Squiggles in a major debut, sending Squiggles +14% to 8.69 ETH and Punks +4% to 58
- Node Monkes led trading on Bitcoin, falling below 0.15 before rebounding strongly to 0.185 BTC; new project Persona by Rapture rallied to a 0.15 BTC floor on its debut before falling to 0.094
- BTC generative art darling The Golden Ratio has passed all 2023 Art Blocks sets in floor price (currently at 0.16 BTC or 2.75 ETH)
- Open Solmap led trading on Solana, jumping 39% to 0.46 SOL; Froganas and Saga Monkes continued downtrend, at 4.15 and 5.8 SO respectively; Mad Lads at 177, Tensorians at 97
- Taproot Wizards unveiled "Quantum Cats" behind its recent inscriptions
- KILLABEARS released "The Hunt," a sequel to its previous short film that notes Seth Green as an Executive Producer; the NFT floor fell 6% to 0.9 ETH
- Wasabi Protocol announced the launch of its SZN 2, running 3 months and with a points program rewarded for trading, providing liquidity and social sharing; this comes after Wasabi did over $2M perps volume in its 1st week
- LooksRare launched a new game "Poke the Bear" on Arbitrum, where players literally poke a bear and get eliminated if the bear wakes up; remaining players split remaining fees
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- Crypto majors fell Thursday after a roller coaster morning; BTC -1.7% at $46,050; ETH -0.2 at $2,630; SOL -4.7% at $98.60
- Larry Fink says he sees value in an Ethereum ETF, driving homes that ETH is next up
- WIF continued its rally, jumping another 11% to a $260M marketcap (briefly passing $300M) after being listed on a new exchange
- Polygon introduced a new blockchain Libre, powered by the Polygon CDK, with intended use for alternative and real-world assets
- The Hytopia team (formerly NFT Worlds) is launching "HYCHAIN" as an L2 utilizing $TOPIA set to power and enable the mass adoption of web3 games
🚀 NFT Total Volume (ETH)
- Azuki (2,343 ETH, 6.4 ETH Floor)
- BAYC (1,927 ETH, 22.97 ETH)
- MAYC (1,558 ETH, 3.85 ETH)
- Pudgy Penguins (522 ETH, 10.92 ETH)
- DeGods (403 ETH, 2.69 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)
- Gazer - Abyss World (50%, 0.2 ETH Floor)
- Karma (37%, 0.2 ETH)
- Boo Bears (19%, 17 ETH)
- Baby Bears (17%, 9.33 ETH)
- Honey Comb (15%, 0.23 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is a slower day of drops and events.
Sotheby's is auctioning off a NodeMonke "Gavin The Gavel Monke" with proceeds going to charity (could drive more attention to the Nodes).
NudeYogaGirl is the meme card artist, and Amber Vittoria is back with a new mint.
See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
- Sotheby's - Ordinals (10:00 a.m. ET)
- Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
- Amber Vittoria - Vibes (4:00 p.m. ET)
- Bitcoin Whales - Culture Pods (5:#0 p.m. ET)
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.
