Price Action News & Articles

TylerD's Market Summary

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⏫ Crypto Adoption Is Accelerating

Prices may be chopping this week.

But the bullish crypto headlines keep pouring in.

Several came through yesterday from Moonpay x PayPal, Jack Dorsey and Franklin Templeton, each of which will accelerate crypto adoption in their own way.

MoonPay Integrates PayPal

Yesterday MoonPay announced a major integration with PayPal for US users.

Key highlights:

• Fiat-to-crypto purchases for 110+ cryptos 
• Buying via standard PayPal payment methods available (PayPal balance, bank ACH, debit card) with just a few clicks
• Selling will be enabled soon

A telling quote from MoonPay co-founder and CEO Ivan Soto-Wright:

“Now more than ever consumers are exploring different avenues of financial systems–whether that be crypto, retail investing, or digital banking–and this partnership underscores our deep commitment to collaborating with trusted partners in the ecosystem to expand their access. By integrating PayPal, we are enabling consumers to transact with crypto in an already familiar environment, and significantly lower the barrier to entry for new users.”  

Now 100s of cryptocurrencies can be bought by millions of PayPal users with a few clicks.

The barriers are indeed being lowered.

Jack Dorsey is doing his part as well.

Jack DCA's Bitcoin And Shows Others How

Yesterday Jack tweeted out that his company Block is "DCA'ing bitcoin every month."

But that wasn't the important part of the tweet.

He also included a link to a 4-page primer titled "Bitcoin Blueprint for Corporate Balance Sheets."

The primer walks through their historical buys and how they executed them, their cold storage mechanisms, and insurance + accounting considerations.

Jack just shared the Bitcoin DCA playbook for any company (or wealthy invidivual) to follow.

And by the way - he is DCA'ing with a whopping 10% of gross monthly prifits.

It's not a stretch to think that at least a few companies will follow in his blueprint and begin their own DCA.

Jack and his company aren't the only ones ushering in adoption.

Franklin Templeton Lays Out Solana Thesis

The Franklin Templeton X account is becoming a must follow for their concise 2-pagers on a variety of crypto topics.

Yesterday they published "Solana: Accelerated Adooption."

Their core thesis is that Solana growth will continue, it will cement as the 3rd major crypto asset and it is uniquely positioned to catch the next trends in crypto.

Key takeaways:

• Airdrops -> wealth effect -> native tokens and memecoins surge (expect cycle to continue)
• Fees and DEX volume skyrocketing, to continue as performance improves
• Uniquely positioned for DePIN, payments, compression NFTs and limit order books
• Firedancer to solve current network limit issues

Favorite quote from the primer:

"Crypto enthusiasts are wondering what the next big thing in crypto will be...While we don't know the precise answer, we'd argue there is a strong chance it happens on Solana."

It's a convincing thesis.

Why It Matters

Momentum continues to build.

• MoonPay is unlocking crypto access for the masses with PayPal.
• Jack is teaching companies and major players how to safely DCA into Bitcoin.
• Institutions like Franklin Templeton are publishing theses on leading tokens, L1s and digital assets.

The signals keep getting stronger, and barriers to adoption keep getting broken down.

Higher.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• BTC led NFT trading volume with $9.8M on the day (+35%); ETH was next with $8M (+20%) and then Solana with $4.3M (+60%)
• NodeMonkes and Puppets both rallied ~20% leading BTC movers, now 0.4 and 0.31 BTC respectively
• Quantum Cats and OMB remain the leaders at 0.425 BTC and 0.42 respectively
• ETH NFT leaders were very green with most up 4-10%; BAYC +4% at 14 ETH, MAYC +4% at 2.6, Azuki +6% to 5.55 and Pudgy even% to 11.2
• DeGods spiked another 25% to 2.38 ETH as demand soared post-return home to Solana (multi-chain)
• Killabears and CEDEN Keystone Beavers jumped 40% and 30% leading other notable movers
• Solana NFTs were taken over by DeGods (+16% to 51 SOL) and y00ts (+20% to 13 SOL) in their first full day of trading post-bridge; Mad Lads -1% at 88 SOL, Tensorians even at 13.8
• Blast NFTs saw another $10M in volume , led by Plutocats (+10%), Blastopians (+19%) and BLASTR Keys (+130%)
• PacMan Blur loaded up 50 ETH in a wallet and began using dapps on Blast, winning 2.4 ETH on a 40+ eth spin roll on Yolo Games
• Pudgy Penguins teased that their plushy toys will be coming to amusement parks soon
• Cube Exchange bought 43 DeGods and 44 y00ts as part of its new partnership with DeLabs
• Garga shared a recap of The Otherside town hall which included a focus on Events, ODK alpha, new rewards for players, the launch of an L3 "Apechain", 3D Kodas, a new event code named Project Dragon and more

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are mixed this morning ahead of a key US jobs report this AM; BTC +1.4% at $59,050; ETH -0.5% at $2,970 SOL +0.5% at $137
• Memecoin majors were also green/even; DOGE even, WIF even, PEPE +6%, BONK +10%; HAMMY, TOOKER, MICHI outperform
• Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas reported that the day 1 HK BTC ETF inflows were actually ~$290M vs the $11M previously reported
• MoonPay is integrating PayPal enabling fiat-to-crypto purchases for 110+ crypto assets using PayPal native payment methods
• Jack Dorsey announced that Block will DCA into Bitcoin every month, and shared details for other companies to do the same
• Coinbase commemorated its Q1 earnings with a new free NFT mint
• Sergito's new company Popset announced a $1M pre-seed raise to "build the next generation of onchain social"
  

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $HAMMY (+465%, $20M market cap, Solana)
• $TOOKER (+29%, $90M market cap, Solana)
• $MICHI (+27%, $120M market cap, Solana)
• $ANDY (+24%, $70M market cap, ETH)
• $USA (+22%, $75M market cap, Solana)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Yogurt Verse (83%, 1.3 ETH Floor)
• Killabears (42%, 0.6 ETH)
• CEDEN Keystone (30%, 0.17 ETH)
• DeGods (25%, 2.38 ETH)
• Lasogette (24%, 0.48 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a slower day of new mints to end the week.

Expect most attention on FriendTech v2's chaotic launch day, Fantasy Top on Blast plus whatever catches hype into the weekend.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Paradise Tycoon (9:00 a.m. ET)
• Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Anomaly (2:30 p.m. ET)
• VeeFriends Ticket snapshot (5:55 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 to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

TylerD's Market Summary

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by nftperp, your gateway to the future of NFT derivatives trading!

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• New "Degen Draw" raffle game

• Punks, Penguins and Milady's live for trading

• 100% of their Blast airdrop being shared with the community

• Additional $VNFTP rewards for traders

So start trading today.

💰 Everyone Is Coming for BTC

The past few weeks have been a brutal bear market for crypto.

I jest, but sentiment on the timeline reflects more concern than should be warranted for a 20% pull back in Bitcoin after a 2.5x over the past year.

Warranted or not, BlackRock thinks those concerns will be alleviated soon.

What Happened?

BlackRock's head of digital assets said that more (and different types of) institutions are coming in a recent interview.

Robert Mitchnick described it as “a re-initiation of the discussion around bitcoin,” and that we will "probably" see big new movers soon.

Who is coming?

• Sovereign wealth
• Pension funds
• Endowments

That's about as big as it gets.

Mitchnick goes on to say:

“Many of these interested firms – whether we're talking about pensions, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, insurers, other asset managers, family offices – are having ongoing diligence and research conversations, and we're playing a role from an education perspective."

BlackRock is certainly playing their part.

But they aren't alone in the realm of major players driving more attention to Bitcoin.

Saylor Builds on Ordinals

Last night, news broke that Michael Saylor is building on top of Ordinals.

He is building a decentralized identity protocol on top of the Ordinals protocol, according to Ord.io.

Not much additional information has circulated yet, but the details seem less important here than the signal.

Arguably the most important holder of Bitcoin in the world is legitimizing Ordinals, a sector of Bitcoin which has been heavily scrutinized by the "laser eyes" cohort.

It's a big deal.

Why It Matters

More adoption is coming.

From different types of funds buying Bitcoin to prominent figures building on top of Bitcoin (Ordinals).

Just yesterday the ex-PayPal President said that "Bitcoin is the neutral settlement network for all payments in the world."

The Bitcoin movement is hitting a new crescendo.

Don't lose the plot or get shaken out because of a 20% pullback in price.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• ETH led NFT trading volume with $7.5M on the day (-10%); BTC was next with $7M (+2%) and then Solana with $2.7M (-1%)
• ETH NFT leaders were green in a solid rebound; BAYC +4% at 13.4 ETH, MAYC +10% at 2.5, Azuki +3% to 5.3 and Pudgy +2% to 11.3
• DeGods spiked 20% to 1.9 ETH after they (and y00ts) began to bridge back to Solana on Wednesday, with Phantom adding their own support with an in-app banner
• NodeMonkes led the BTC NFT board with 22.5 BTC, rallying 10% to 0.345 BTC; Puppets also rallied 10% to 0.268 as did RSIC (+10% to 0.05)
• Runestones were given a 25% Magic Eden diamond reward bonus, though still only came in 4th in volume with 12 BTC (floor even at 0.02)
• Solana NFTs were mixed on the day after DeGods (44 SOL) and y00ts (10.7 SOL) made their debut; Mad Lads -1% at 89 SOL, Tensorians +9% at 13.8
• Blast NFTs saw a huge day of volume in their 1st full day of trading on Blur; Blastopians +15%, Plutocats +30% and Blastosaurz +64% were notable winners
• PAC REKT fell 30% back to mint price after rewards were removed by the Blur team
• VeeCon moved its VeeCon ticket NFTs to Base for this year's conference

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are green this morning; BTC +1% at $58,200; ETH +4% at $2,990 SOL +12% at $136
• Memecoin majors were also green as Zhu Su called for "alt szn now"; DOGE +5%, WIF +17%, PEPE +17%, BONK +11%; SC, ROCKY, POPCAT outperform
• Runes were mixed with DOG leading (+7%), RSIC down (-7%) and BITCOIN PEPE MATRIX (+74%) and LOBO (+27%) outperforming 
• Rollbit burned 71M $RLB to conclude its Solana migration phase

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $SC (+200%, $125M market cap, Solana)
• $ROCKY (+180%, $44M market cap, Base)
• $MICHI (+64%, $95M market cap, Solana)
• $TOOKER (+64%, $69M market cap, Solana)
• $BODEN (+60%, $334M market cap, Solana)
• $POPCAT (+47%, $530M market cap, Solana)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• KIP (82%, 0.14 ETH Floor)
• Tarot (58%, 2.94 ETH)
• Mittaria Genesis (49%, 0.22 ETH)
• alignDRAW (25%, 1.5 ETH)
• DeGods (23%, 1.92 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a slower day of new drops.

The highlight is definitely Friend Tech v2 if it indeed launches today.

With alts heating back up and the crypto board flipping green, the macro backdrop is better than it was earlier in the week. If v2 comes with a splash, it's a set up for fireworks (or else $FRIEND will dump like every other recent airdrop).

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Sadwonderer - Faceless (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Origin Mint (12:00 p.m. ET)
• FriendTech v2 (1:30 p.m. ET)
• Aleks Ustya - Tessellation (11:00 a.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 to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

TylerD's Market Summary

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by Arcade, the leading protocol for NFT lending.

Arcade allows users to hold on to their NFTs and still get liquidity when needed via their flexible time-based lending terms.

They changed the game with their Smart Vaults, allowing users to store their NFTs in vaults during the loan process - enabling them to claim airdrops sent to the NFT after paying off the loan.

It's a major unlock.

The protocol has seen an explosion in user growth (+130%) and monthly loans (+300%) over the past 8-9 months as more and more users find the platform.

And of course - users are being rewarded.

Lending and borrowing on the Arcade protocol earns points which convert to $ARCD tokens.

So check Arcade out today, give or take some liquidity and start earning!

🙈 Blur Launches On Blast

"Time for something new. April."

That was the tweet from the Blur account back on Feb 29 that tipped everyone off for the potential launch of Blur on the Blast L2.

On the final day of April, it finally happened.

And it came with some big incentives (and likely implications).

What Happened?

Yesterday Blur officially introduced its platform on Blast.

Highlights from the announcement:

• Users simply toggle a switch at the top of the UI to switch from ETH to Blast
• Depositing to the Blur pool on Blast continues to earn native yield 
• 2M Blast Gold* (~$20M at current prices) will be distributed to Blur traders on Blast (list, bid, trade to earn)
• A new "NFTfi" Blast multiplier was introduced, providing a 2x for using Blur or other NFTfi apps on Blast (like nftperp, Wasabi, etc.)

*The twist with the Blast Gold rewards - no points will be revealed until the end of May.

This means farmers will be flying blind, leading to some likely chaos in the market.

Market Impact

Chaos is probably the correct term for the first few hours of NFT trading on Blast.

Several leading NFTs saw major spikes then full roundtrips as Blast-front runners sold into the pump, and incentivized sellers simply listed and moved on.

OSF's PAC REKT collection is the top winner after day 1, jumping 50% to 0.28 ETH on a whopping 4,000 ETH volume.

Plutocats jumped 10% to 1.5 ETH leading notable floors.

The volume numbers are not to be trusted, as reports of rampant wash trading have been circulating already.

And with no fees and no royalties on trades, and no visible points system to track rewards - expect that to continue.

The impact on ETH NFTs - well none so far.

The large crypto dip pulled down ETH NFTs with them and that impact likely overshadowed any potential impact of this Blast announcement.

Many are calling for ETH projects to bridge to Blast - we'll see if any teams make the move.

Why It Matters

At the highest level, we may be approaching the Blur incentives end game.

Season 3 ends with the Blast launch coming in May, and it's unclear if the standing ETH NFT trading incentives will continue past that point.

That's a major potential impact for the ETH NFT market.

The Blur team will also have to find a way to prop up its token, which has fallen over 50% from local highs to just $0.37 ($590M mc) into the last month of Season 3.

The staking rewards given to BLUR stakers were seemingly outweighed by the Blast Gold farming opps, which in many cases were less risky than holding $BLUR.

As for the next month, it's going to be a chaotic sprint.

NFT Stats has the 66,666 Blast Gold/day as $1.2M in incentives, per day.

That's a big carrot and many feel "behind" in the Blast Gold farm - they will go hard at this.

And the rules are pretty murky with no visible points, leading to the chaos.

Get your popcorn ready for what will be a wild month on Blast.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• ETH led NFT trading volume with $8.5M on the day (-2%); BTC was next with $6.8M (-10%) and then Solana with $2.8M (-10%)
• ETH NFT leaders were mostly red after crypto tumbled; BAYC -7% at 12.55 ETH, MAYC -13% at 2.2, Pudgy -4% to 11
• Azuki was the lone bright spot, jumping 4% to 5.05 ETH after the debut of their new Anime series was received very well
• Runestones led the BTC NFT board with just 8.8 BTC, rallying 20% to 0.02 BTC; new project BLIFSTONE reached 0.015 BTC in debut
• BTC PFP leaders were mostly stable as the Merlin Unlock continues; Bitcoin Puppets -20% at 0.24, NodeMonkes at 0.312, OMB at 0.42 BTC, Quantum Cats at 0.369
• Solana NFTs were mostly red on the day; Mad Lads even at 90 SOL, Tensorians -10% at 12.7, Mall Street -20%
• Blast NFTs saw an explosion in volume after the Blur on Blast debut; PAC REKT is top winner at 0.28 ETH, then Pluto Cats at 1.5
• Yuga announced an Otherside townhall held in The Otherside this Thurs at 6 pm ET;  all ecosystem NFT holders can attend

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are down bad this morning; BTC -6.4% at $57,555; ETH -4.7% at $2,886; SOL -6% at $121
• Memecoin majors were also mostly red; DOGE -9%, WIF -7%, PEPE 12%, BONK -9%; ELON and BOOMER outperform
• Coinbase added support for Lightning Network on Bitcoin
• Binance founder CZ is getting 4 months in prison as a result of his most recent charges
• Prohibition Art is expanding to Base and launching MOONSHINE - a new community rewards program
• Pirate Nation announced a long-term partnership with Horizen Labs Ventures (known for its help in launching tokens)

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $ROCKY (+190%, $16M market cap, Base)
• $ELON (+90%, $21M market cap, ETH)
• $MANEKI (+18%, $94M market cap, Solana)
• $JOE (+17%, $9M market cap, ETH)
• $ROOST (+19%, $18M market cap, Base)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Infinigods (46%, 0.19 ETH Floor)
• QQL Mint Pass (29%, 2.97 ETH)
• VeeFriends (20%, 1.22 ETH)
• Kiraverse (13%, 0.18 ETH)
• Meebits (12%, 0.67 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is another big day of token claims and airdrops + mints.

The $NIM token and mainnet go live this morning, and then the Pacmoon Airdrop 3 this afternoon.

Fantasy Top is set to launch its mainnet this morning (pending no more delays).

And artists Sarah Zucker and Patrick Amadon are back with new drops.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Fantasy Top (10:00 a.m. ET)
• Ether Pillar (10:00 a.m. ET)
• $NIM claim (10:00 a.m. ET)
• Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Sarah Zucker - Strabismus (12:00 p.m. ET)
• $PAC Season 3 airdrop (1:00 p.m. ET)
• Patrick Amadon - disobedient (3:00 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 to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

TylerD's Market Summary

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by Wasabi, THE leading NFT leverage protocol.

Did you see NFT news and immediately want to go long Bored Apes or Mutants? Or did you want to short them? 

How about wanting to long $PAC after the recent breakout (with leverage)? 

Either way, Wasabi has you covered.

With Wasabi's Perps markets, savvy traders can now win in any market conditions and earn points and Blast GOLD while doing so. 

It's a huge unlock.

They recently crossed $100M in cumulative trading volume on the platform, so traders are figuring it out.

So why not join them and start trading today, and earn those rewards!

📉 Hong Kong ETFs Disappoint In Debut

Expectations were high for the Hong Kong Bitcoin and ETH ETFs.

Those expectations grew yesterday after preliminary reports circulated saying that the HK big was going to be big.

Well, it was not.

And now Bitcoin has tumbled below $62,000 again in the wake.

What Happened?

The Hong Kong BTC ETFs closed their debut day with just $11M in volume.

This was a massive miss from expectations of $125M (besting the opening day for the US Bitcoin ETFs).

And one press conference summary showed expectations of $200M-$300M.

Even Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas reported that HK was confident it could "outdo the US in Bitcoin ETF flows and volume on Day One)."

Well everyone was wrong. Now we pay the price.

Market Impact

Crypto majors were hit hard, and other beta assets, even harder.

• Bitcoin fell 1% on the day but ~5% from last night's high in the mid-$64,000s
• ETH and SOL fell 4%
• Most leading Solana memes fell 6-10% or more
• Bitcoin Runes fell harder, dropping 20-30%
• Ordinals leaders fell on the day as well, with NodeMonkes hitting 0.32 BTC

Not great.

Why It Matters

The week had a potential set up to be bullish.

Mutliple major airdrops were lined up, then delayed (FriendTech) or disappointed (Eigenlayer).

Hopes were high that HK would "save" the local Bitcoin support levels, but now that looks to be out the window as well.

More chop and decline seems to be in our future, barring some major surprise out of the FOMC meeting tomorrow.

Maybe it will be a "no screen" summer after all (here's to hoping it's not though)...

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• ETH led NFT trading volume with $8.7M on the day (+37%); BTC was next with $7.3M (-20%) and then Solana with $3.1M (-16%)
• ETH NFT leaders were mixed with BAYC -10% at 13.75 ETH and MAYC -5% at 2.53, while Pudgy +4% to 11.8 and Azuki +5% to 4.85
• Moonbirds and Beanz were notable winners, jumping 20% each
• A Hoodie CryptoPunk sold for just 105 ETH ($333k), the lowest Hoodie sale since 2021 in ETH terms; the Punk floor is down to 36 ETH
• Moonbirds announced its Moonbirds Universe along with the puzzling decision to move to commercial rights and abandon CC0 (via a new art change)
• Pudgy Penguins announced the first 3rd party licensing deal for Orange Cap Games, bringing 200 Pudgy's into their upcoming trading card game
• Azuki will release "Enter the Garden: The Waiting Man" tomorrow live on YouTube at 1 p.m. ET
• Prometheans led the BTC NFT board with just 10 BTC volume but falling to 0.016
• BTC PFP leaders were mixed as the Merlin Unlock begins; NodeMonkes at 0.32, OMB at 0.42 BTC, Quantum Cats at 0.385, Bitcoin Puppets at 0.28
• Solana NFTs mostly chopped on the day; Mad Lads even at 90 SOL, Tensorians -4% at 14, Mall Street +35%, Wassieverse +45%
• Blast NFTs continued grinding up ahead of an expected Blur launch on Blast happening today (not confirmed); Blastopians at 0.185, Skellie at 0.075

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the weekend:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are red this morning; BTC -1.4% at $61,5000; ETH -4.5% at $3,030; SOL -4.2% at $129
• Memecoin majors were also mostly red; DOGE -3%, WIF -8%, PEPE even, BONK -3%; ELON and BOOMER outperform
• The Hong Kong ETFs went live this morning in China, bringing in a disappointing $11M in volume compared to $100M+ expectations
• Coinbase Wallet announced its new Solana trading would be powered by Jupiter, bringing trading access for 80k+ Solana tokens to its users
• Morgan Stanley filed with the SEC to allow its customer to invest in the BTC ETFs, potentially unlocking their 15k+ brokers

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $ELON (+230%, $12M market cap, ETH)
• $BOOMER (+74%, $24M market cap, Base)
• $JOE (+29%, $7M market cap, ETH)
• $ANDY (+21%, $21M market cap, Base)
• $SEXY (+21%, $4M market cap, Base)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Mavia Land (22%, 0.32 ETH Floor)
• Moonbirds (21%, 0.7 ETH)
• Beanz (20%, 0.27 ETH)
• Pixelmon Trainers (15%, 0.37 ETH)
• San FranTokyo (10%, 0.37 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a big day of token claims and events.

Both Kamino and NFTfi launch their claims today, with $KMNO going live for trading immediately and NFTfi including a 41-day lock up timer.

Azuki debuts the first episode of its highly anticipated anime series.

And there are several mints across Base and Bitcoin.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• $KMNO claim (8:00 a.m. ET)
• $NFTFI claim (8:30 a.m. ET)
• Azuki Enter The Garden (1:00 p.m. ET)
• Maxi Runes (3:00 p.m. ET)
• Based Angels (4:00 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 to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

TylerD's Market Summary

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by Arcade, the leading protocol for NFT lending.

Arcade allows users to hold on to their NFTs and still get liquidity when needed via their flexible time-based lending terms.

They changed the game with their Smart Vaults, allowing users to store their NFTs in vaults during the loan process - enabling them to claim airdrops sent to the NFT after paying off the loan.

It's a major unlock.

The protocol has seen an explosion in user growth (+130%) and monthly loans (+300%) over the past 8-9 months as more and more users find the platform.

And of course - users are being rewarded.

Lending and borrowing on the Arcade protocol earns points which convert to $ARCD tokens.

So check Arcade out today, give or take some liquidity and start earning!

🗓 Crypto FUD As Big Week Looms

This is arguably the most important week of the year for the crypto space.

The biggest potential airdrop in crypto history is now rumored to come, along with several other major protocol token drops.

But it comes against one of the most unstable regulatory backdrops in a long time.

What Happened?

Let's start with the bad news.

On Friday, news spread that MetamMask parent company Consensys was suing the SEC after it was revealed the SEC had sent them a Wells Notice earlier in the month.

Wells Notices typically come before enforcement actions, like the ones the SEC has filed against Coinbase, Binance, etc.

For Consensys, the SEC alleges that they violated securities laws via MetaMask Swaps and Staking.

Later in the day, the DTCC filed a change to its Collateral Hairucts mandating that Bitcoin and other crypto should be marked down to 0 collateral value for loans.

Not great, although the DTCC headline seems to have less substance than the SEC one.

This all went down Friday as the Japanese Yen fell to its lowest value against the USD after BOJ decided to keep its interest rates unchanged.

Combined these headlines made for a shaky Friday night.

And really bad timing as the crypto market prepares for a massive week of token launches.

Airdrops SZN Heats Up

Here is the list of tokens expected to come this week:

• $DRIFT on Apr 29 
• $FRIEND on Apr 29 
• $RENZO on Apr 30 
• $KMNO on Apr 30
• NFTFI on Apr 30*
• $EIGEN on May 1**

*NFTFI will be claimable but not tradeable for 41 days

**Eigen is not yet confirmed, just speculated

The wildcard on that list if Eigenlayer which has $15B+ in TVL for the leading ETH restaking protocol.

If it does indeed airdrop this week, it could very well be the biggest one in crypto history. And many pointed to the ETH pump from Saturday as insider's buying ahead of that airdrop.

FriendTech v2 officially launches today with its $FRIEND expected to come as well (though also not confirmed). Given all of the influencers with big point totals, expect a ton of chatter around this one today (especially with Fantasy Top delaying).

And Solana sees a few major protocol airdrops this week with Drift and Kamino dropping their tokens, with Kamino likely to garner more attention.

It's a huge week with a massive potential influx of capital - if macro markets can cooperate behind the scenes.

Buckle up. It may be a bumpy ride...

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• BTC led NFT trading volume with $7.2M on the day (-17%); ETH was next with $7M (+31%) and then Solana with $4.4M (-20%)
• Prometheans led the BTC NFT board with 43 BTC volume but falling ~70% after the runes snapshot
• RSIC pumped 15% to 0.048 BTC after its genesis RUNECOIN was listed on OKX Jumpstart
• Udi announced the OP_CAT proposal will go live on Bitcoin's "signet" this week, an upgrade that will enable a bigger crypto economy on BTC
• Ink announced its new INKUBATOR for builders (NFTs at 0.02)
• BTC PFP leaders dipped 5-10% on low volume; NodeMonkes at 0.34, OMB at 0.4 BTC, Quantum Cats at 0.4, Bitcoin Puppets at 0.28
• ETH NFT leaders were mixed with BAYC even at 15.2 ETH, Pudgy -6% to 11.4, Azuki +7% to 4.6 and MAYC -4% at 2.66; most closed the week up 15-25% still
• Mintify Genesis and Mocaverse were notable winners, jumping 19% and 9% respectively
• Solana NFTs were mostly green on the day; Mad Lads even at 90 SOL, Tensorians +10% at 14.8, Mall Street +19%, Saku +15%
• Blast NFTs were led by Skellie at 0.059 ETH, Blastopians jumping to 0.18 ETH & BAC Genesis Runner at 0.24
• 0xMaki launched the Hero Glyphs whitepaper along with a cross-chain scavenger hunt to mint the NFTs
• Yuga announced broad layoffs on Friday as the company looks to go back to its roots

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the weekend:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are red this morning; BTC -1.9% at $62,370; ETH -3.5% at $3,170; SOL -4.7% at $135
• Memecoin majors were also mostly red; DOGE -5%, WIF even%, PEPE -6%, BONK -4%; MICHI and USA outperform
• Coolman's Universe debuted its $COOL token on Solana at $32M mc
• The SEC sent a Wells Notice to Consensys saying that it violated securities laws through MetaMask Swaps and Staking
• The DTCC declared that Bitcoin ETF collateral should be marked down to 0 in its latest Collateral Haircuts notice

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $COOL (+700%, $33M market cap, Solana)
• $MICHI (+55%, $55M market cap, Solana)
• $USA (+39%, $70M market cap, Solana)
• $PAC (+22%, $18.5M market cap, Blast)
• $KEYCAT (+17%, $39M market cap, Base)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Cecu Cube (35%, 0.32 ETH Floor)
• Mintify Genesis (19%, 0.12 ETH)
• Honey Comb (10%, 0.33 ETH)
• Mocaverse (9%, 4.08 ETH)
• Yogapetz (8%, 0.43 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a huge day of events to kickstart the week.

Friend Tech v2 is set to launch (and potentially airdrop $FRIEND) along with the $DRIFT airdrop.

Prometheans is airdropping and launching its DECENTRALIZED runes today.

And new mints are picking back up across Bitcoin (gas fees are going back to normal) and Base (with artist Resaang highlighting).

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• BitLads (7:00 a.m. ET)
• Ultiverse (8:00 a.m. ET)
• Petopia airdrop (10:00 a.m. ET)
• Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Resaang - Kintsugi (3:00 p.m. ET)
• Prometheans - DECENTRALIZED airdrop (TBD)
• Friend Tech v2 (TBD)
• $DRIFT airdrop (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 to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

TylerD's Market Summary

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by nftperp, your gateway to the future of NFT derivatives trading!

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So start trading today.

💳 Stripe Unveils Onchain Settlement with USDC

"Crypto is back."

Some of us have been shouting it for a year.

But it's louder when people like John Collison, co-founder of Stripe ($65B payments giant) say it.

Actions speak louder than words though, and Stripe is backing up John with some big moves.

What Happened?

Yesterday Stripe announced that it is re-entering the crypto game and will global stablecoin payments.

This means that businesses using Stripe will be able to accept USDC, with onchain settlement, and will receive Fiat (USD) on their end of the transaction.

It's a massive unlock for Stripe and it's 300k+ integrated partners around the world.

The demo John walked through highlighted Phantom Wallet and executed the payment transaction on Solana (and showcased Solana's low fees).

After finishing the transaction, John also highlighted how the transaction was posted to the blockchain (pulling up Solscan to show the details).

How this will work:

• Stripe ends up taking the crypto (USDC) and settling with the business (who gets FIAT), effectively meaning that Stripe is buying the USDC
• Payments will be available on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon, with the business and/or customer able to choose
• Rollout begins this summer

What They're Saying

Some of John Collison's notable comments from the keynote:

"We’re excited to announce that we’re bringing back crypto as a way to accept payments, but this time with a much better experience."

“Crypto is finding real utility. With transaction speeds increasing and costs coming down, we’re seeing crypto finally making sense as a means of exchange.”

Notable collector (and crypto mega-whale) Batsoup shared deep comments in a thread:

"I've said in the past that corporations are the trojan horse for mass crypto adoption and that it would likely happen via payments."

He goes on to walk through the 2.5% credit card transaction fee and how crypto can solve it, along with the myriad of loyalty programs that blockchain enables for merchants.

And one more key point from Daniel Got Hits:

"The most insane part of the Stripe announcement isn’t just that you can pay in crypto…. It’s that the SELLER receives normal fiat. Aka, they don’t need to know or care that you paid in crypto."

Why It Matters

There's so much to unpack here, but this is one of the single most bullish crypto headlines of 2024.

A payments giant is re-embracing crypto after abandoning it 6 years ago, effectively saying that the user experience has improved enough to give it another shot.

That's a huge signal.

Merchants can accept crypto without even knowing it or without even liking crypto - and it doesn't matter for them because they settle in fiat.

Merchants who do choose to embrace it can do so with lower fees, and if they go down the rabbit hole, can get creative with loyalty programs as they'll have their customers' wallet data handy.

And the biggest winner here may be crypto maxis.

The biggest hurdle to keeping and holding crypto over the past decade has been balancing the need to spend money irl and the broad inability to do so with crypto.

Now that's changing.

The more irl goods and experiences that can be purchased direct with crypto, the less need holders will have to "sell" crypto for fiat.

There is a real path to holding and keeping wealth in crypto.

We aren't there yet, and it will take time - but the path is more clear than ever.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• ETH led NFT trading volume with $27M on the day (+274%); BTC was next with $7.5M (even) and then Solana with $3.4M (-32%)
• ETH NFT leaders saw big green with BAYC +20% to 17 ETH, Pudgy +8% to 12.5, Azuki +14% to 4.6 and MAYC +35% at 3.2
• MAYC, BAKC and Moonbirds were notable winners, jumping 35% each
• Alien Punk 635 sold for 4,000 ETH ($12.4M) on Thursday in the 3rd Alien Punk to sell in the past 1 month (others at 4,859 ETH and 4,500)
• Prometheans led the BTC NFT board with 72 BTC volume, jumping 50% to 0.093 BTC ahead of their pending runes airdrop
• Ink was a big winner, rallying 4-% to 0.025 BTC
• BTC PFP leaders mostly chopped; NodeMonkes at 0.38, OMB at 0.42 BTC, Quantum Cats at 0.4, Bitcoin Puppets at 0.32
• A rare sat (the first sat) from this past Bitcoin halving sold for 33.3 BTC ($2.13M) at auction yesterday
• Solana NFTs were mostly red on the day; Mad Lads even at 90 SOL, Tensorians -7% at 13.3, Saku -30%
• Magic Eden officially expanded to Base on Thursday with a reduced 0.5% fee on transactions 
• Blast NFTs soared on the day led by Blastopians 3x'ing to 0.13 ETH after Wasabi announced a new quadruple farm with them via fractionalization

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are slightly green this morning; BTC +0.7% at $64,200; ETH +1% at $3,130; SOL -1% at $143
• Memecoin majors were slightly green; DOGE +1%, WIF +3%, PEPE +4%, BONK +12%; POPCAT outperforms (+60%)
• Base memecoin leader BRETT fell 25% after inside trading allegations around the launch circulated
• Consensys is suing the SEC, citing "the SEC shouldn't be able to expand its jurisdiction and wrongly label ETH a security"
• Pantera announced its raising a $1B crypto fund, just a few days after writing that "memecoin trading creates gigantic opportunities"
• Robinhood Wallet's cross-chain swaps feature went live, allowing users to swap any tokens from supported chains onto Arbitrum's L2
• Immutable launched the biggest web3 gaming rewards pool ever with $50M in prizes

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $CHICK (+700%, $26M market cap, Base)
• $MICHI (+85%, $35M market cap, Solana)
• $BOOMER (+78%, $17M market cap, Base)
• $POPCAT (+60%, $520M market cap, Solana)
• $CATGPT (+53%, $26M market cap, Solana)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Skyborne (52%, 1.49 ETH Floor)
• BAKC (37%, 0.69 ETH)
• MAYC (34%, 3.29 ETH)
• Moonbirds (34%, 0.68 ETH)
• Grapes (33%, 0.28 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a busier day of new mints and potential announcements.

Many have hinted that something big is coming from Blur and/or Blast today - so let's see if it delivers.

Frenpet is launching the next version of its app, and many PFPs are dropping across Base & Blast today.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Oogaverse (9:00 a.m. ET)
• Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Frenpet new version (12:00 p.m. ET)
• sneaky - buddies (2:00 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 to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

TylerD's Market Summary

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by Arcade, the leading protocol for NFT lending.

Arcade allows users to hold on to their NFTs and still get liquidity when needed via their flexible time-based lending terms.

They changed the game with their Smart Vaults, allowing users to store their NFTs in vaults during the loan process - enabling them to claim airdrops sent to the NFT after paying off the loan.

It's a major unlock.

The protocol has seen an explosion in user growth (+130%) and monthly loans (+300%) over the past 8-9 months as more and more users find the platform.

And of course - users are being rewarded.

Lending and borrowing on the Arcade protocol earns points which convert to $ARCD tokens.

So check Arcade out today, give or take some liquidity and start earning!

🫂 SocialFi Spring Is Here

Spring is setting up quite nicely for SocialFI enthusiasts.

Headlines and big events on the horizon:

• Stars Arena v2 goes fully live (launched yesterday)
• Fantasy Top Mainnet launches (today) and first $4M tourney starts Monday (4.29)
• FriendTech V2 kicks off Monday (4.29)
• District1 on Blast receives 2nd biggest Blast Gold allocation

The most notable highlights from that list from yesterday though are definitely the traction Fantasy Top has seen and the Stars Arena v2 launch.

Fantasy Top Sees $60M+ In Deposits Ahead of Launch

Money is flooding into Fantasy Top, the "first social trading card game" to come to SocialFi.

As of this morning, the app has seen $63M_ in deposits across nearly 20,000 depositors.

To make the top 10 list, one would have to deposit 238 ETH ($735,000).

And the mainnet isn't even live yet!

It launches at 11 am ET.

Why Is It Seeing This Traction?

For one, Blast gold rewards. 

Pacman and the Blast team made it pretty clear in their last Blast Gold allocation update on Friday that SocialFI apps would be rewarded.

Fantasy Top and District One received 733k Blast Gold each, tied for 2nd behind Thruster.

So farmers are flocking.

And Fantasy Top is kicking Fomo into overdrive with its latest announcement:

• Pack opening and trading beings today at 11 am ET
• Competition starts Monday with 222k Blast Gold in prizes (roughly $4M)

The premise of the game is pretty simple - collect digital trading cards of Crypto Twitter (CT) and NFT Twitter's biggest personalities and score points based on their engagement.

Cards like Ansem will be heavily coveted and will likely skyrocket in price.

Which presents a few ways to play the app:

• Farm somewhat passively by buying up packs and setting lineups
• Actively trade and flip cards

With this amount of prizes on the line and all of CT's attention - expect fireworks next week.

Stars Arena V2 Goes Live

The Arena is back with a new UI and big roadmap.

V2 officially launched yesterday with a slick new UI which mirrors Twitter (X) but with a bit more of a financial ("fi") twist.

The user's wallet, trending tickets and top most traded participants are highlighted in the primary differentiator from the X UI.

Along with the new UI, Jason Desimone and team rolled out a new roadmap.

Their primary goals are to onboard a bigger & more diverse users base, find new partnerships, develop better creator tools and monetization paths and continue building the Arena Brand.

Notable ighlights from the roadmap itself:

• Release of $ARENA & First governance vote on Arena subnet — Details coming soon
• Public API Access — Access for any developers within the community to build tools on top of The Arena
• Lowering fees to 7.5% 
• Expanding login options (Instagram, TikTok, Reddit)
• Expanding tipping options
• Fiat on-ramp — In-app features for fiat to $AVAX conversion.
• The Social Exchange — A new way to buy and sell digital assets on a social feed + new forms of creator monetization
• Direct NFT minting — Create and mint NFTs instantly within the app
• New wallet solution — Improved wallet management solutions, including self custodial wallets.
• Arena Groups — New features and tools to support existing communities (memecoins, NFTs) and launch new ones. Leveraging clever cryptoeconomic incentives to revolutionize existing web2 incumbents, such as Reddit

It's a pretty lofty vision.

While many will focus on the token launch, the expansion of login options, new social exchange and group creation seem to be the most intriguing aspects.

If the team can pull those off, the Arena should have a bright future.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• ETH led NFT trading volume with $7.9M on the day (+12%); BTC was next with $7.3M (+23%) and then Solana with $4.5M (-16)
• ETH NFT leaders saw big green with BAYC +11% to 14 ETH, Pudgy +3% to 11.8, Captainz +3.5% to 3.4 and MAYC +7% at 2.4
• Azra Games & InfiniGods were notable winners, jumping 33% each
• Runestone led the BTC NFT board again with 29 BTC volume, jumping 10% to 0.025 BTC post-airdrop (more below); Prometheans ralliee 30% to to 0.058 as the team promised more details today on the runes
• BTC PFP leaders rebounded big after yesteday's dip; NodeMonkes +20% at 0.39, OMB +7.5% at 0.44 BTC, Quantum Cats +7.5% at 0.41, Bitcoin Puppets -2% at 0.32
• Ink announced a $10M raise from community member Caesar Eon, with $2M going to the team for operations and $8M pegged for IP development (Ink +20% to 0.018 BTC on the news)
• Solana NFTs were mixed on the day; Mad Lads +1% at 90 SOL, Tensorians +3% at 14.5, sharx -4%
• NFT Stat's project "GM Photography" minted out its 205 NFTs at 0.5 ETH in just 20 minutes on Blastr 
• Yuga Labs will create a new golden key that will stay in the BAYC ecosystem (after the divest with Faraway), airdropping it to the owner of the key
• BAYC holders can now "bring their apes to life" with 3D downloads available via their profiles
• The Opepen website got a facelift, enabling a new way for users to view sets and submissions 

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are very red this morning; BTC -4.3% at $63,500; ETH -5.5% at $3,090; SOL -8.5% at $144
• Memecoin majors were even more red; DOGE -8%, WIF -15%, PEPE -8%, BONK -10%; MANEKI outperforms (+38%)
• WIF Perp futures went live on Coinbase International and Advanced
• The SEC is expected to deny the ETH ETFs next month 
• The CEO and Founders of Samourai Wallet were arrested and charged with money laundering and unlicensed money transmitting in a shocking move on Wednesday 
• Sergito revealed new details on his company Popset, a mobile-focused product which is a "personal tokenization engine" with early access launching this week

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $CATGPT (+2000%, $16M market cap, Solana)
• $BUNNY (+134%, $17M market cap, Base)
• $ELON (+83%, $25M market cap, ETH)
• $BOOMER (+36%, $10M market cap, Base)
• $MANEKI (+35%, $190M market cap, Solana)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Azra Games (33%, 1.3 ETH Floor)
• Smowl (30%, 0.22 ETH)
• Infinigods (23%, 0.18 ETH)
• Early Retired Cats Club (38%, 0.15 ETH)
• BAYC (11%, 14.1 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is another slower day of mints but a big day of events.

The highlight is definitely Fantasy Top's mainnet launch going live at 11 am ET, where packs will be openable and trading begins.

Magic Eden is also expanding to Base today as it looks to corner more of the NFT market.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• $SOMO presale (1`:00 a.m. ET)
• WizOrds (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Fantasy Top mainnet (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Magic Eden - Base launch (1:00 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 to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

TylerD's Market Summary

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by Wasabi, THE leading NFT leverage protocol.

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🤯 The Institutions Are Coming...For Memecoins

The highlight of Q1 for many active in the crypto trading space was the explosion of memecoins.

Solana led the action, with tokens like BONK and WIF soaring to multiple-billion dollar market caps with a wave of tokens following in their wake.

But then the rally got overheated (see Bome's opening weekend), Solana got congested and attention shifted to Runes on Bitcoin.

Well, attention is coming back to Solana.

And institutions are watching.

What Happened?

A Bloomberg post from yesterday hinted that some serious institutional investors are looking at memecoins.

Hedge funds like Stratos (with limited partners like Marc Andreesen and Chris Dixon) along with Brevan Howard and Pantera Capital have either written about memecoins or already made investments in the sector.

Pantera went as far to write that "memecoins are here to stay" and that "memecoin trading creates gigantic" opportunies.

Thanks for confirming what we already knew, Pantera.

There are signs of serious whale and/or institution investment in memecoins already happening.

Mando posted a wallet which has accumulated $12M of BODEN, $6M of WIF and added $250k of HARAMBE in one clip yesterday.

While not confirmed, he alludes to that being a sign of institutional buying vs retail.

Mando goes on to warn memecoin holders "the institutions are here and they are coming for your memes."

Don't let the institutions steal your memecoins!

Market Impact

Let's just say, yesterday was a green wave.

PEPE went live on Coinbase Advanced and soared 18% to a $3.3B market cap kicking things off.

Then the Solana coins took over.

Some notable gainers from the day:

• WIF +22% to $3.46B mc
• BONK +37% to $2.6B mc
• MEW +28% to $590M mc
• BODEN +35% to $540M mc
• POPCAT +24% to $460M mc
• PUPS +25% to $450M* (on BTC and SOL)
• MANEKI +62% to $150M mc
• NUB +38% to $88M
• SC +70% to $79M
• HARAMBE +120% to $39M mc

It's the biggest day that I can remember, across the board.

Why It Matters

Even after the monster Q1 for memecoins, many had their doubts on the sector's staying power.

And many still do.

But the longer these tokens see sustained gains, the more durable this sector becomes - and the more capital it will attract.

Clearly the institutions are paying attention, and some are even investing.

And with other notable protocols making negative headlines like Renzo depegging (after releasing bad tokenomics and perhaps misleading its community) and Worldcoin inflating their $WLD supply - no wonder some participants simply opt for memecoins this cycle.

No execution risk, no inflation risk - just memes.

And guess what - they're here to stay...

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• ETH led NFT trading volume with $7.7M on the day (even); BTC was next with $6M (-20%) and then Solana with $5.3M (even)
• ETH NFT leaders were mixed with BAYC -1% to 12.7 ETH, Pudgy +3% to 11.4, Milady +6% to 5.2 and MAYC -3% at 2.2
• Art Gobblers and Schizoposters were notable winners, jumping 72% and 56% respectively 
• Squiggles were swept up to 7 ETH, a 40% gain on the day
• Runestone led the BTC NFT board again with just 28 BTC volume, dipping to 0.023 BTC; Prometheans fell to 0.045 as well as Runes interest wanes
• BTC PFP leaders took a big hit with most falling 20%; OMB at 0.41 BTC, Quantum Cats at 0.385, Bitcoin Puppets at 0.345, NodeMonkes at 0.32
• Magic Eden has facilitated more than $6M in Runes trading volume in the past 1.5 days since launch, though most Runes are down
• Solana NFTs were mixed on the day; Mad Lads -5% at 89 SOL, Tensorians -8% at 13.5
• NBA Top Shot announced its Playoff Pack sales deadlines and the respective probabilities of Rare or Legendary Moments for every NBA Playoff team
• Own the Doge acquired the first-ever exclusive license for the famous Doge image

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are slightly green this morning; BTC +0.3% at $66,400; ETH +2.8% at $3,270; SOL +1.7% at $158
• Memecoin majors were very green on the day after PEPE futures went live on Coinbase; DOGE +2%, WIF +20%, PEPE +15%, BONK +33%; SC (+75%), BODEN (+35%), & MANEKI (+30%) outperformed
• Renzo ezETH depegged after its tokenomics release led to a wave of FUD over some misrepresentation of data and lack of community rewards (has since re-peggeD)
• Jupiter announced its Jupiter Mobile Initiative where they advertise trading "any token, anywhere, with 1 click and 0 fees," with Beta coming in May
• Safe introduced Safe{Pass} to actively reward users for being safe while participating on-chain with its smart accounts

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $HARAMBE (+120%, $40M market cap, Solana)
• $SC (+70%, $80M market cap, Solana)
• $MANEKI (+62%, $145M market cap, Solana)
• $NUB (+38%, $88M market cap, Solana)
• $BONK (+37%, $2.6B market cap, Solana)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Art Gobblers (72%, 0.13 ETH Floor)
• SchizoPosters (53%, 0.53 ETH)
• Infinigods (48%, 0.15 ETH)
• CryptoPhunks (44%, 0.15 ETH)
• Remnants (27%, 7.5 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is another slower day of new mints and events.

Laurent Castellani is the meme card artist today, and Casey Reas is back with a team for "Wet and Saturated Process."

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Calamity (10:00 a.m. ET)
• Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Casey Reas - Wet and Saturated Proceess (1:00 p.m. ET)
• Froogle (1:00 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 to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

TylerD's Market Summary

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by Arcade, the leading protocol for NFT lending.

Arcade allows users to hold on to their NFTs and still get liquidity when needed via their flexible time-based lending terms.

They changed the game with their Smart Vaults, allowing users to store their NFTs in vaults during the loan process - enabling them to claim airdrops sent to the NFT after paying off the loan.

It's a major unlock.

The protocol has seen an explosion in user growth (+130%) and monthly loans (+300%) over the past 8-9 months as more and more users find the platform.

And of course - users are being rewarded.

Lending and borrowing on the Arcade protocol earns points which convert to $ARCD tokens.

So check Arcade out today, give or take some liquidity and start earning!

🟠 Runes Infrastructure Is Arriving

Some of the most common feedback around the hyped Runes launch was around the user experience.

It sucked, in short.

And it wasn't much better than the previous BRC-20 trading experience many already knew.

So where was the upgrade?

Well it may be arriving.

What Happened?

We knew infrastructure was coming for Runes, and yesterday we got the first glimpse.

Magic Eden made the blockbuster announcement that its Runes Marketplace was live yesterday afternoon.

And the user experience is pretty slick:

• Navigate to the Runes tab on ME Bitcoin
• Select a Rune from the drop down and a new Runes Table View pops up
• Use a sliding bar to buy as many as you'd like (and see the price + network fees) and then buy

It's just a handful of clicks, and in some ways, it's even easier than buying (sweeping) Ordinals on Magic Eden.

The fomo concept is still in play from the Ordinals experience, where users can see which Runes buys are still pending.

And the team has alluded to new features like a "Swaps View" coming soon, so this is not the final product.

You can read more about the team that built it in this feature from CNBC about Magic Eden's "hacker house."

But There's More

Magic Eden wasn't alone.

Xverse also launched its Runes Mint App, allowing users to mint or etch their own runes directly from the wallet.

And then likely the most important headline of them all - Taproot Wizards founder Udi Wertheimer introduced BIP-420.

BIP-420 is a formal "Bitcoin Improvement Proposal" tied to the OP_CAT proposal the team has been pushing forward for months now.

The premise is to better enable a crypto economy on Bitcoin via:

• covenants
• smart contracts
• secure bridges
• onchain trading
• zk proof verification

More key ETH features, on Bitcoin. And more usable than they are in current state (onchain trading is available now but admittedly clunky).

It's a grand vision, and if Udi and team are able to pull it off, it may go down as one of the most important proposals / implementations in Bitcoin history.

Why It Matters

There are several reasons why this matters and is a hugely important proposal for Bitcoin.

But dialing in to Runes, the topic of this newsletter - we are early.

Ordinals launched about a year before they really took off, largely due to improvements in UX and more meaningful project launches that took time to rollout.

There's a good chance the same happens with Runes.

Runes infrastructure is getting better already, and Magic Eden made a big jump with its debut yesterday.

But we still have a long way to go to come anywhere close to the trading experience on ETH or Solana.

The BIP-420 proposal will help Bitcoin get there - but it will take time.

Now is the time to pay attention to Runes, but also to be patient - it will get better.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• ETH led NFT trading volume with $7.6M on the day (+5%); BTC was next with $7.4M (-37%) and then Solana with $5.3M (-7%)
• ETH NFT leaders were very mostly green with BAYC +4% to 12.8 ETH, Pudgy +6% to 10.9 and MAYC even at 2.3
• DeGods jumped 18% after Frank DeGods showed a screenshot touting "bridge success" back to Solana
• My Pet Hooligan NFTs fell 35% after its KARRAT token debuted at a $100M mc and $800M FDV (hit $1B+ at peak)
• A Skulls of Luci sold for 85 ETH to Kanbas and a Hoodie CryptoPunk sold for 195 ETH, leading notable sales on the day
• Runestone led the BTC NFT board again with 39 BTC volume as volume and attention shifted to the Runes launch on Magic Eden; most leaders fell 10%
• OMB is the PFP leader at 0.487 BTC, then Quantum Cats at 0.44, Puppets at 0.4 and NodeMonkes at 0.385
• Solana NFTs were mostly red on the day; Mad Lads -8% at 93 SOL, Tensorians -even at 15, SMB Gen 2 -12% at 40; Exiled Degods jumped 234% after the news of DeGods bridging back to Solana
• NFT Stats announced his first ever NFT collection of 200 "gm" photos from around the world, to launch via Blastr on Blast, a new protocol offering full refunds for minters who are not satisfied 

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

• Portal's first launchpad token sale, $SOMO from Somo Games, will take place this Thursday, Apr. 25 at 11:00 a.m. ET.
   
• Runestone's $DOG debuted on Whales Market as $0.005 which equates to a $500M mc (and would mean a $4500 airdrop per NFT)
• Maneki launched on Monday and saw $130M volume in just a few hours
• Arcade facilitated a $250,000 USDC loan against a collection of six Pudgy Penguins, including a Gold Body
• Fren Pet announced it will launch a new version this Friday with improved mechanics and new games
• Fantasy Top introduced Fantasy Stars, providing users with a points-for-prizes system based on deposits

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are slightly green this morning; BTC +0.3% at $66,300; ETH -1% at $3,180; SOL +0.7% at $155
• Memecoin majors were mixed on the day with a notable move of PEPE flipping WIF; DOGE -1%, WIF -4%, PEPE +4%; GUMMY and POPCAT outperformed on Solana, up 75% and 40%
• Maneki launched and reached $110M market cap in less than a day; POPCAT also outperformed, jumping 26% to $375M
• TN100x jumped 55% after its new tipping mechanism circulated on X
• Runes saw a mixed day as ZZFEHU soared 75% to $2.37B but prior leaders RSIC (-18%) and Satoshi (-33%) both fell
• Unisat confirmed reports that some users had Runes burned during transactions on its mp, saying it has since fixed the issue and it is now safe to trade Runes on UniSat marketplace
• Udi Wertheimer introduced BIP-420 as a formal proposal for Op_Cat which enables covenants, allows for smart contracts, secure bridges, on-chain trading, zk proof verification, and more
• Two SEC lawyers resigned after being sanctioned by a judge for "gross abuse" of power in a crypto case against DEBT Box
• Animoca Brands Japan will help with global marketing for the Square Enix game "Symbiogenesis"

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $MANEKI (+18000%, $100M market cap, Solana)
• $TN100X (+55%, $45M market cap, Base)
• $KEYCAT (+52%, $45M market cap, Base)
• $BIAO (+50%, $21M market cap, Solana)
• $POPCAT (+26%, $375M market cap, Solana)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Coolmans Universe (90%, 0.11 ETH Floor)
• Yogurt Verse (53%, 1.15 ETH)
• Lasogette (32%, 0.83 ETH)
• Dooplicator (21%, 0.13 ETH)
• DeGods (18%, 1.65 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is another slower day of drops, mostly focused in PFPs and art across chain.

Post Photographic Perspectives III is likely the highlight, as the AI art group releases its 3rd body of projects.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Evolution of Curis (9:00 a.m. ET)
• PunkAApepen (12:00 p.m. ET)
• The Paper Crane x Rich Pool - IsoMetro (1:00 p.m. ET)
• Post Photographic Perspectives III (1:00 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 to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

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🟠 Runes Debut with Mixed Reactions

This was arguably the most hyped Bitcoin halving to date.

The ETFs have brought new attention and money into the ecosystem, and of course Casey Rodarmor's highly anticipated Runes protocol going live with the halving.

But was it overhyped compared to what was delivered?

What Happened?

On Friday night around 8:15 pm ET, the Bitcoin halving took place and Runes launched.

Teams raced to etch the first 10 (and then the first 100) and some saw surprising success.

Some notable top runes that were etched:

• Runes 0: Uncommon Goods
• Rune 1: Z...FEHU...Z
• Rune 2: Decentralized (Prometheans)
• Rune 3: Dog Go To The Moon
• Rune 4: The Runix Token
• Rune 8: RSIC Genesis Rune
• Rune 13: Pups World Peace
• Rune 17: Magic Internet Money (WZRD)
• Rune 21: RSIC Season Two

So the CyberKongz team came in with the #2 runes in a big surprise. Leonidas and team got #3 for Runestones. And the RSIC team secured #8 (seemingly on purpose for the Asian tie-in) along with #21.

There is still a lot of mystery around some of the early runes including #1.

They also minted in different styles, with some operating as free mints and some having huge pre-mines. But given fee spikes, none of the mints were truly "free" and many minted at market caps between $6M and $30M.

Those who minted and sold early still saw some nice profits, and being in the trenches Friday night was the right place to be.

Market Response

A few clear winners have already seemingly been named.

• RSIC Genesis Rune has the top market cap at $305M (on $1.8M volume)
• Satoshi Nakamoto has seen the most volume with $40M+ on Gate.io, but fell 34% on Sunday to $103M mc
• Wanko Manko Runes is next up at $36M mc and then Meme Economics is the only other Rune over a $10M mc (at $11.8M)

You can track some of the leaders at OKX Runes Marketplace and trade them there or on Unisat.

Apparently the launch of a new 9-figure coin and some nice ROI on early mints wasn't enough for many who called the runes launch a "bust."

Those funding mostly point to lack of improvement over existing BRC-20 tech, lack of infrastructure and the high Bitcoin fees making for a bad trading experience.

And to be frank, that's mostly true. Right now.

But Runes are 2 days old and virtually none of the expected infrastructure has arrived yet. And it's still coming.

So likely best to be patient, and curious, for those who still view runes as a viable investment sector.

NFT Impact

The Ordinal PFP leaders had a great weekend, and a new "big 4" has separated from the pack:

• OMB at 0.52 BTC
• Quantum Cats at 0.469 BTC
• NodeMonkes at 0.412 BTC
• Bitcoin Puppets at 0.404 BTC

These 4 have been leading and jostling for position, and it seems that jostling will continue (especially given their varying supplies).

But the good news for holders is all those floors are up from weekend lows as many are already moving on from Runes and back to Ordinals (or perhaps cycling early gains back to Ordinals).

The pre-runes Ordinals had more of a rocky ride.

• Runestone dipped from 0.07 BTC to 0.035 after last night's snapshot for the $DOG airdrop (not a surprise, in fact it's holding up quite strong)
• RSIC dipped to 0.042 after its lotto happened at the halving (but also holding up strong due to Season 2)
• Rune Pups fell to 0.09 BTC as the PUPS token fell over the weekend
• Prometheans emerged as a new leader at 0.065 BTC after securing the #2 runes, though there are still open questions on when those runes will be delivered

So expect more volatility with this group.

RSIC was the first to complete its airdrop and reportedly spent at least 6 BTC doing so.

Do the other teams have this kind of money to execute the airdrop? We will see.

The other wild card for pre-runes and runes right now - Binance.

Last night they hinted at some new Bitcoin (i.e. runes) listings in a cryptic tweet.

Many interpreted it as a nod to the PUPS token being listed first, briefly sending PUPS as high as $60 (back to $45 now).

And that leads to a key next step for the runes and pre-runes leaders.

What Next?

For runes, the launch hype is starting to wear off and not many new mints are reaching escape velocity.

Interest is already dwindling and focus is likely to revert back to the existing leaders.

What will propel and cement early leaders?

CEX listings, and Binance is clearly ready to make a move.

Whatever gets listed first on Binance likely takes the early lead. It's just clear that the masses (and liquidity) want an easier trading experience that what currently exists for runes.

As that experience improves, expect more attention and perhaps more winners to emerge.

I expect the winning runes to outperform while many go to 0, which is not different from how the memecoin games goes on other blockchains.

I also expect rotation to Ordinals to happen this week and to continue, driving the next leg up.

Many were wondering if runes would take liquidity away from Ordinals, at least in the short term, and the answer seems to be "no" on that question.

With 4 clear winners, and a few feisty newcomers in Prometheans and Runemilios, expect more fireworks on Ordinals than Runes in the weeks to come.

But the runes leaders will have their day - that day may just be down the line.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• Bitcoin led NFT trading volume with $11.6M on the day (+65%); ETH was next with $6.9M (+16%) and then Solana with $5.9M (+20%)
• Runestone led the BTC NFT board again with 189 BTC volume but fell 50% to 0.035 BTC post-snapshot; most Ordinals leaders were green
• OMB was the top notable winner, jumping to a 0.52 BTC floor and leading the PFPs; Quantum Cats next at 0.469, then Nodes at 0.412, Pups at 0.4
• Runemilio was the top gainer on the day, rallying 500% to 0.05 BTC
• RSIC held at 0.044 BTC after its Season 2 was confirmed, meaning the NFts will continue mining runes
• ETH NFT leaders were very mixed with BAYC -2%, Pudgy even, MAYC +15%, Milady -2% and DeGods +5%
• Sappy Seals and Pandora led top movers jumping 18% each
• An XCOPY "Last Selfie" edition of 10 sold for 277 ETH ($849,000) marking a new ATH for that edition
• Solana NFTs were red on the day; Mad Lads -3% at 100 SOL, Tensorians -1% at 15, SMB Gen 2 -13% at 46

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the weekend:

• Blast released its latest Blast Gold distributions on Friday along with a blog post explaining that active NFT and token communities may be rewarded next
• $PAC rebounded 25% after that Blast blog post, reaching nearly $0.09 at peak (now at 0.085)
• The Runestone snapshot for the $DOG runes airdrop happened on Sunday, though there is at least 1 more airdrop coming for holders
• Friend Tech announced its v2 will launch on April 29
• Arcade teased its upcoming Bitcoin integration again on Saturday

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are green this morning after a weekend rally; BTC +1.5% at $66,080; ETH +1.3% at $3,210; SOL +2% at $154
• Memecoin majors were mixed on the day; DOGE -1%, WIF -4%, PEPE +6%; GUMMY and POPCAT outperformed on Solana, up 75% and 40%
• Binance hinted at Bitcoin Runes being listed, using a face that many interpreted as a Bitcoin Puppet; PUPS soared XX%
• ethOS launched their version of the blockchain phone for ETH, which can be minted and redeemed on Base

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $GUMMY (+75%, $175M market cap, Solana)
• $FUNGI (+43%, $16M market cap, Base)
• $POPCAT (+40%, $300M market cap, Solana)
• $TOOKER (+33%, $80M market cap, Solana)
• $EPIK (+23%, $28M market cap, Solana)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Sappy Seals (18%, 0.78 ETH Floor)
• Pandora (16%, 2.54 ETH)
• MAYC (15%, 2.33 ETH)
• BAKC (14%, 0.5 ETH)
• Imaginary Ones (10%, 1.15 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a slow day of drops to start the week.

Expect Bitcoin drops to be slow for a bit until fees and runes hype settle down.

ETH has another art drop and a new meme card from Cemhah, and then a new PFP launching on Blast in Exo Spirits.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Wubbushi x Verse - Past Forward (2:00 p.m. ET)
• 0xfff - Honest Work (3:00 p.m. ET)
• Exo Spirits (3:00 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 to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.