Morning Minute | NFT Traders Lose $200M+ in 2023

TylerD's Market Summary

Can $200M+ in losses be recouped? It's not looking great. But there are still signs of hope for NFTs even in this bear market.

📈 Blur Farmers Down $200M As NFT Downtrend Continues

It was a quiet weekend in the NFT market as summer rolls on and most action and announcements seem to be compressed in the Mon-Fri 8-5 window.

That quiet was reflected in Sunday's trading volume, which came in around $8.5M or 4,600 ETH - by far the lowest levels we have seen this year.

Only two projects did more than 500 ETH volume on Sunday (MAYC and BAYC) and just 8 crossed the 100 ETH threshold.

Perhaps the driver for the low volume - some Blur farmers are fed up with extended losses and no sign of SZN2 (and the next airdrop) in sight.

Blur Farmers Down Bad

NFT Stats shared some eye-opening stats on Friday.

Wallets that have bought NFTs via bids on Blur (largely made up of farmers) have now realized 50,000 ETH in losses this year (~$90M).

The unrealized losses are even worse, likely sitting over 60k ETH and bringing the total magnitude of losses past $210M.

The problem (well one of many) - the $BLUR token is at $0.30. With a minimum of 300M tokens expected for the 2nd airdrop, that's just $90M in value. So the token needs to go up to $0.70 or a lot more tokens are needed for these farmers to get even - and that's with the assumption that there will be buyers lined up.

It's a grim picture.

Blur's TVL is showing signs that farmers may be capitulating, now down to $116M from a local high of $173M on June 26 (a 33% drop). Granted, it's still above late April lows around $90M and well above the levels pre-Season 2 (around $30M) - but it's headed in the wrong direction.

These farmers seem stuck, forced to keep farming or lose their spots on the leaderboard and make all their prior work for naught. We will see how long they can keep up the fight, and how long the Blur team will choose to extend Season 2.

But even amidst the darkness, there are signs of hope.

Grail Sales and New Runners

This past week saw some major NFT sales, showing that the top-end of this market is still very alive.

Some highlights included:

• 0-trait CryptoPunk selling for 500 ETH
• An Autoglyph moving for 190 ETH
• A Cowboy Ape CryptoPunk catching a 1,100 ETH bid
• Where My Vans Go (Driftershoot's iconic project) swept up to a 20 ETH floor
• Rare DeGods selling for 122 ETH and 67 ETH

And then this past weekend we saw a 3x trade for everyone who minted the Red Bull Racing Velocity Pass (even with some controversy).

The Velocity Series is a "web3 experience that merges speed, technology, and art from the world’s leading digital artists" from Red Bull Racing and Bybit. The artwork in this collection will be inspired by the RB19 race car.

There will be 4 art releases coinciding with major F1 races across the 2023 season.

The pass caught more attention this past week when SnowFro was named as the 3rd artist, joining Rik Oostenbroek and Per Kristian Stoveland in a stacked roster. 

Then rumors swirled that Refik Anadol would be the 4th artist, driving the Velocity Pass to mint out on Bybit at 0.3 ETH (1k supply). It seems that was a miscommunication, as Refik will not be the 4th artist, but the market shook it off with the pass soaring to 1.2 ETH at peak (0.9 this morning) for a solid 300% gain for minters.

Now the question becomes - what will the Velocity drop look like?

From a note in the AOI Discord:

• Rik's drop will feature an open edition (free for Pass holders) and a Dutch auction with 200 NFTs
• Per's drop will feature an open edition (free for Pass holders) and a Dutch auction with 200 NFTs
• Snowfro's drop will be a free generative mint and a 500 supply public Dutch auction

So holders will get a free Snowfro generative NFT, 2 free open editions from Rik and Per, plus exclusive access to Rik and Per's limited edition mints. Plus whatever comes from the 4th artist, still to be named.

That's a lot of art for 0.3 ETH, clearly a driver for the price going 3x.

A much-needed win for many minters, in this brutal bear. Now all eyes turn to the 4th artist and any other announcements tied to this still-somewhat-mysterious project.

Market Action

On to the rest of the market.

Here is a quick rundown of the notable floors and their 7-day price changes:

• Fidenza: 90 ETH (+6%)
• CryptoPunks: 49.8 ETH (+4%)
• Ringers: 35 ETH (-8%)
• BAYC: 29.16 ETH (-2%)
• Gazers: 13 ETH (-7%)
• Chromie Squiggle: 10.49 ETH (even)
• Grifters: 9.25 ETH (-2%)
• DeGods: 9.15 (+8%)
• PROOF: 5.6 ETH (-13%)
• MAYC: 5.63 ETH (-1%)
• Azuki: 4.94 ETH (-1%)
• Captainz: 4.6 ETH (-6%)
• Pudgy Penguins: 4.18 ETH (-3%)
• Otherside Koda: 4.1 ETH (+3%)

So it was a mixed board on the week, with green up top for Fidenzas and Punks, but slight red for the majority of the other notable projects.

DeGods were the outlier to the upside ahead of DeGods 3 coming on Aug 9, and PROOF fell after the Grails Mint Pass was airdropped (not a surprise).

Expect DeGods to be the major focus of this week, and their price action post-August 9 could very well impact some other PFP floors. 

Let's keep the wins coming Frank!

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• Trading volume again came in around just 4,600 ETH on Sunday, a new local low; NFTs were mostly green on the day, led by Velocity Pass and Captainz
• The upcoming Animoca/nWay game "Wreck League" has confirmed its NFT mint will be in $APE; APE briefly ran past $2 on the news before settling at $1.86 (-2% on the week)
• Beeple announced a CryptoPunk meet-up event at his Beeple Studios in Charleston for September 30
• Doodles revealed a collab with Crocs coming soon, though the major announcement didn't budge the floor (even on the week at 1.54 ETH)
• Jack Butcher teased a cryptic image with Opepen sunglasses on a Pudgy Penguin with no other info 
• Notable Blur farmer HanWe tricked another bot farmer (who had been copying his Blur farming bid bot) into 800 ETH in overpriced Azuki sales
• The Little Lemons NFT team shared news that a contract has been signed for their acquisition, happening in 4 weeks or less; the floor rallied 200% on the news to 0.06 ETH
• Manifold's rolled out a new feature allowing artists and projects to create and save rule-based lists for allowlists and other uses

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• The crypto market chopped over the weekend; BTC even at $29,100; ETH even at $1,830; SOL even at $23
• Worldcoin's Nairobi (Kenya) warehouse was raided by Kenyan police, with machines and documents confiscated in the raid
• The CRV hacker has started giving back funds just a week after draining $61M from DEX's on Curve, with 73% now recovered; CRV is back to $0.62
• Miami Mayor and Presidential candidate Francis Suarez announced he will accept campaign donations in Bitcoin

🚀 NFT Total Volume

• MAYC (734 ETH, 5.63 ETH Floor)
• BAYC (612 ETH, 29.2 ETH)
• Azuki (385 ETH, 4.94 ETH)
• DeGods (324 ETH, 9.15 ETH)
• Milady (308 ETH, 3.56 ETH)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase

• Little Lemon Friends (222%, 0.06 ETH Floor)
• Velocity Pass (48%, 0.94 ETH)
• gmDAO (29%, 0.55 ETH)
• Sproto Gremlins (19%, 0.69 ETH)
• The Grapes (14%, 0.57 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a busy day of new drops to start the week, primarily focused in the art sector.

PROOF Grails IV is today's highlight, opening its mint at 11 am ET. Holders of the mint pass (0.79 ETH floor) will have until Aug 10 at 11 pm PST to make their selections from 20 artists spanning limited edition, series, and generative drops - with the artists behind each piece a secret until the post-mint reveal.

There are other events happening with Solana's marketplace Tensor and their Tensorians, with VeeFriends toys going live and a new Art Blocks drop.

If you want more, see the full list of today's drops from Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
• PROOF Grails IV (11:00 a.m. ET)
• VeeFriends x Jazwares Squighmallows Toys (12:00 p.m. ET)
• Art Blocks Presents "Bright" (1:00 p.m. ET)
• Tensor HQ - Tensorian (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.

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

For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's NFT Calendar page.