Morning Minute | Physical Collectibles Are Coming to the Blockchain
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.
TylerD's Market Summary
The next major trend to impact the NFT market may very well be the tokenization of physical collectibles, and Alexis Ohanian-backed Americana is trying to pave the way. Find out what they're doing plus catch up on yesterday's Christie's auction results.
🚗 RWAs Are Coming
The RWA (Real World Assets) term started floating around NFT Twitter a few months ago, after NFT Lending protocol Arcade.xyz made a splash by facilitating loans against a few Rolexes.
For many, this was the first real and tangible example of the tokenization of luxury goods (RWAs) used within an NFT native process (lending).
But this was likely just a taste of what's to come.
Enter Americana and their new "concierge vaulting" service.
What Is Americana?
Americana is a tokenized collectibles platform, backed by Alexis Ohanian and OpenSea.
It offers blockchain solutions for storing and managing luxury physical collectibles (RWAs).
Their concierge vaulting solution combined physical management (climate-controlled storage) with tokenization, ensuring authentication and unique digital certification.
They store everything from vintage cars to fine art. Here's how their storage process works:
- Interested collectible owners have an initial consultation
- The collectibles then go through an authentication and intake process
- They then receive a unique digital certificate of authenticity
- Owners can showcase their tokenized RWAs on Americana's site, with trading functionality (listing, accepting bids, etc.)
Recently, Americana has partnered with several notable contemporary artists (Danny Cole, Dustin Yellin, Tom Sachs) offering a direct sale function to their fans facilitated by its platform.
Why It Matters
Infrastructure is being built in real-time to bring RWAs to the blockchain and into the NFT sector.
NFTs have several advantages over physical collectibles from a management and trading perspective:
- Owners don't have to worry about safe storage or potential decay
- Owners don't have to travel to trade shows to list them or get in front of audiences, instead able to list them on 24-7 global marketplaces
- Authenticity is much easier to prove
Now RWAs can gain those features via tokenization. This is a huge unlock.
It is becoming increasingly likely that the tokenization of RWAs will be one of the next major trends to impact the NFT market.
We will see how it impacts our digitally-native collectibles...
🖼 A Mixed Day at Christie's
The Gucci x Christie's "Future Frequencies" auctions came to a close on Tuesday afternoon, with more of a whimper than a bang.
Although 15 of the 21 pieces met the reserve price and were officially auctioned off, none of the high-end pieces sold.
The highest sale was for William Mapan's "Bestiaire: Flamant Rose" which sold for 15.069 ETH.
Just 3 other pieces sold for more than 10 ETH, including works from Helena Sarin, Botto and Luke Shannon.
All combined, the 15 winning bids totaled just 92.477 ETH - an average of 6.17 ETH per piece.
The list of pieces that went unsold is below (along with their reserve price):
- Claire Silver "style moderne" (40 ETH)
- Fidenza #367 (75 ETH)
- Fidenza #234 (75 ETH)
- Robbie Barrat "AI Generated Nude Portrait #7" (220 ETH)
- Claire Silver and Emi Kusano "Shinjitai" (30 ETH*)
- Iskra Velitchkova "PostMachine A study of ethos and patterns" (4-5 ETH*)
*I was unable to capture the exact reserve bids for these pieces but these are close based on estimates
The Fidenzas were a bit of head-scratcher, with the Fidenza floor at 89 ETH, though the lack of buys was likely due (at least in part) to the typical 15-30% buyer fees at auction houses.
The Lost Robbie reserve was set well above the last sale price, so that was less of a surprise (it was surprising why they set the reserve so high).
And as much as I love Claire Silver, 30-40 ETH reserves were likely just too high for this current market.
It's clear that Christie's set the top-end reserves a bit too high for this particular auction, but that's just a symptom of the larger problem right now.
As notable collector Batsoup pointed out a few days ago, volume in the 1/1 digital art market is approaching levels not seen since November 2020. This is a brutal bear market for art (Fidenzas and Ringers may be the lone exception here bucking the trend).
But it will get better - just a question of when...
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- Trading volume came in around 8k ETH on Tuesday; leading PFPs mostly chopped on the day, though DeGods fell 7% after a large whale dump and Sproto Gremlins led top movers (+50%)
- Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) unveiled "Made By Apes," an on-chain licensing platform made in partnership with SaaSy Labs; the move is aimed at unifying and verifying genuine products made by BAYC and MAYC holders, and the system was tested by partners including Ape Beverages, Bored Brewing Co., Ape Water, and more
- ApeFest Hong Kong tickets go on sale today, July 26, at 8 pm ET, free for BAYC and MAYC holders and $269 or additional guests; the 3-day event begins on Nov 3 and will include meetup, city-wide experiences, a surprise night and more
- CyberKongz announced its Genkai public mint will take place on the Ronin Network, on July 27, marking the first-ever NFT mint on Ronin's Mavis Market (only 3k of the 20k supply will be on Ronin)
- 0n1 Force added NFL star JuJu Smith-Schuster to its roster of ambassadors this week
- Parallel announced the open beta for its upcoming game will begin on July 31
- Richard Nadler's "Yamabushi Horizons" soared on Wednesday to a 3.2 ETH floor, up over 6x from its recent mint on the brand new Verse art platform
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- The crypto market chopped on Tuesday; BTC even at $29,200; ETH even at $1,850
- Recent rocket HarryPotterObama... ($BITCOIN token) soared late Tuesday, up 70% to $0.068 (passing $0.08 at peak) as the latest cult memecoin seemed to revive
- Binance introduced a new stablecoin FDUSD, apparently backed by USD with reserves held by First Digital HQ in Hong Kong
- Tech earnings were positive yesterday, as Microsoft reported its best quarterly sales ever with help from its AI business and Google jumped 7% on its Q2 earnings beat driven by cloud sales; a promising macro set up ahead of today's FOMC meeting
- Candy Digital's latest collaboration with the Chicago White Sox will provide a commemorative digital ticket collectible to attendees of the crosstown series starting on July 25
🚀 NFT Total Volume
- BAYC (3,186 ETH, 30.49 ETH Floor)
- DeGods (1,050 ETH, 7.88 ETH)
- MAYC (955 ETH, 5.63 ETH)
- Azuki (750 ETH, 4.77 ETH)
- BAKC (374 ETH, 2.29 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
- Beeple Spring Collection (50%, 8.99 ETH Floor)
- Sproto Gremlins (49%, 0.55 ETH)
- Lazy Lions (43%, 0.42 ETH)
- LOVE Tennis Art Project (37%, 0.86 ETH)
- Apes Together Strong (23%, 0.8 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is likely the busiest day of the week, with several art drops, the Reddit Gen 4 Avatars launch, and ApeFest HK tickets going on sale.
The Floor App debuts its new Icons program with its genesis edition drop featuring art from Vinnie Hager.
In generative Art, Art Blocks is back with a supply of 300 drop priced at 0.08 ETH fixed, and then Prohibition has 2 drops, priced at 0.05 ETH for All Our Faces and then a 1.5 ETH Dutch Auction for CodeTrip.
It's a lot of art coming, but the lower entry prices make it a bit easier for collectors to enter.
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)
- Sotheby's x Vera Molnar (11:00 a.m. ET)
- Floor x Vinnie Hager - Ground Level Garden (12:00 p.m. ET)
- Art Blocks Presents "Assembly" (1:00 p.m. ET)
- Prohibition "All Our Faces" (1:00 p.m. ET)
- Prohibition "CodeTrip" (5:00 p.m. ET)
- Reddit Gen 4 Avatars (TBD)
- ApeFest Hong Kong tickets (8:00 p.m. ET)
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 NFT Calendar page.
