Morning Minute | Pokemon Packs Catch Fire on Polygon

TylerD's Market Summary

Pokemon cards are being tokenized and sold on the blockchain - but Gary Gensler doesn't like it. Find out more and catch up on the latest Friend Tech market action.

📈 Pokemon Packs on Polygon

Pokemon cards are entering the NFT market discussion.

Why?

Courtyard NFT has started tokenizing and selling packs - and they're selling like hot cakes.

Just yesterday, they sold 200 packs of cards at $300 each and sold out instantly, with the floor immediately jumping to $455.

Thought Gary Gensler is trying to rain on the parade.

How Does It Work?

Courtyard.io is a platform that allows collectors to tokenize their physical cards and put them on the blockchain.

They're backed by some huge names like MoonPay, Opensea, Y Combinator and the Vayner Fund.

Their services include authentication, vaulting and insurance at Brink's, a marketplace to trade their digital collectibles, and a 1% fee rebate for original owners anytime their collectible is sold or resold.

The user's process looks like this:

• Submit a brief application for card(s) and ship them to Courtyard
• Courtyard authenticates and processes the card(s)
• They tokenize them and mint directly to the owner's digital wallet
• The owner has the chance to list their now digital collectible for sale, transfer it, or perform any standard blockchain-enabled action

Courtyard is running their own pack drops as well, like yesterday's Pokemon "Premium Pack: Grails That Got Away #3" which sold out in seconds.

Owners can rip packs or simply trade them.

But the digital Pokemon cards are already finding controversy.

Gary Gensler Enter the Chat

In his congressional hearing on Wednesday, Pokemon cards came up.

Gary effectively said that while the sale of physical Pokemon cards would not represent a security - the sale of tokenized cards might.

That's not too logical, but it does bring up a risk for the larger trend of RWA tokenization that has become the rage of late.

We'll see how/if it impacts the digital Pokemon card market, but for now, it looks like it's a non-factor.

Now we watch and see how much demand there is for ths new wave of digital collectibles...

👥 Friend Tech Trend Tracker

TVL made another big jump on Wednesday, leading to another leg up in key prices as well as an influx in return users.

Let's start with the numbers.

Here are some of the core Friend Tech metrics for 9/28 and their day-over-day change:

• Return users: 8,513 -> 9,776 (+15%)
• Daily Buy volume:  $4.59M -> $4.66M (+2%)
• Total Volume: $8M -> $8.2M (+2%)
• TVL: $41.95M -> $44.2M* (+5%)
• Highest key: Vombatus 7.31 -> 7.74 (+6%)

*7.6% of TVL is from self-buyers (down from a peak of 15%) per Slice Analytics' new dashboard.

TVL is soaring while self-buyer TVL continues to drop (now just $3.375M), contributing even more ETH to the pool.

The top accounts continue to grind up, with Vombatus jumping 6% to 7.74 ETH and CBB +7% to 5.15 ETH (tying Levi for 3rd on the leaderboard).

More NFT-natives are starting to come over, with notable new joins from Von Mises (0.45 ETH) and LuckyTrades (0.27) on the day,

A few other trends and developments we saw:

• New tools: Unibot added User sniping and auto-sniping on Wednesday, along with extending its 0% FT trading fee promotion
• Chat activity is starting to be monitored more closely, with "most active chat" leaderboards beginning to circulate - perhaps a metric to be rewarded this week?
• A few notable winners on the day included:
  • 0x5f +6% to 3.16 ETH and now in 13th on the leaderboard
  • Pranksy +11% to 2.4 ETH
  • mj23 +11% to 2.2 ETH
  • The Creator Fund +40% to 0.57 ETH

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• Trading volume came in at $8M (4,900 ETH) on Wednesday, though most leading NFTs saw red on the day down 1-6%
• Tristan Reddich projects led top movers, with Constructs +110% to 0.15 ETH and Grids +19% to 0.29 ETH
• DraftKings Reignmakers announced that 2 different contests this weekend will have $100,000 as top prize, as tournament prizes keep getting bigger
• Sorare announced the beginning of its NBA season with Game Week 1 starting on Oct. 17; cash rewards will be included and managers will be able to utilize USD-based credit
• The Echelon PRIME Foundation introduced the Ardent Arena 2023, a tournament with approximately $40,000 in total prizes with seeding starting Oct 3 ahead of Oct 13 commencement 
• Pixelmon debuted its badge system, introducing Community Badges and Cosmetic Badges to reward active ecosystem participants
• Matt Kane, the artist behind ANONS and Gazers, was announced as SuperRare's October RarePass airdrop artist
• Sugartown Oras staking officially went live on Wednesday, though the floor fell another 3% to 0.21 ETH

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• The crypto market was mostly even; BTC -0.3% at $26,500; ETH even at $1,630
• Central Banks successfully tested CBDCs for cross-border trading in a proof of concept using a hypothetical Euro, Singapore dollar and Swiss Franc
• Gary Gensler didn't provide answers as to the SEC's position on the spot BTC ETF decision in a Congressional hearing on Wednesday while continuing his anti-crypto rhetoric
• Improbable reported an 85% reduction in losses, crediting its focus on creating metaverse experiences in improving revenue to $95M in their best financial year

🚀 NFT Total Volume

• BAYC (909 ETH, 24 ETH Floor)
• Pudgy Penguins (342 ETH, 4.9 ETH Floor)
• Milady (333 ETH, 1.99 ETH)
• DeGods (321 ETH, 3.14 ETH)
• MAYC (226 ETH, 4.76 ETH)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase

• Constructs by Tristan Rettich (110%, 0.15 ETH Floor)
• Orbs (64%, 0.9 ETH)
• Memewhales (68%, 10 ETH)
• God Hates NFTees (49%, 0.15 ETH)
• Grids by Tristan Rettich (19%, 0.29 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a lighter day of drops after a busy Wednesday.

For those who want to dive in, see the full list and more details from Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Hugo Korhonen - The Sleeping Giant (12:00 a.m. ET)
• Godwits - Back to the Future (3:00 p.m. ET)
• Landscapes of Serenity (5:00 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.

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.