Unless you are a full-blown degen like our newest team member, @NFT_Nom, I’d reckon you’ve tuned out of the blistering shitstorm of an NFT nor’easter hitting the markets and culture today. Luckily, our eyes and ears from the field came through yet again with another inside scoop. So, if we are indeed your sole channel into web3, bear with us (pun intended) for a brief weather report. And/or commercial. Still not sure if we read the script correctly.
The team behind Azuki, the 2nd highest NFT collection by volume on OpenSea today and 6th highest of all time, made headlines, in typical metaverse fashion, for being doxxed. It carried marginally more impact than normal, though, as it revealed one of the founders to be none other than a user known as @ZAGABOND — the mind behind at least three rugpulls in the past year.
This sparked rumors that the project will be sold out to the Venture Vultures circling around every rotting PFP community. INB4 Yuga Labs snatches Azuki up and pretends like they invented anime.
(Bro. Like. What if… a bunch of action hero characters drawn in the manga style… had their own TV series???)
What was once a question of if, not when, Azuki joins the ranks of the Doodles or Crypto Punks is now settled as the dust reveals the ugly truth at the core of the largest NFT projects. Even the scammiest among them will have a long second life being drained to empty shells of IPs by profiteering VCs, so long as they meet a certain threshold of initial adoption. But what gives with the rest of the NFTs?
While Ethereum and the crypto market at large are plunging towards losses unimaginable to first-timers, the crypto whales are diamond handing the blue chip projects at their current ETH floors, while other projects with hodlers of less conviction are having a fire sale. In their attempts to achieve liquidity and convert gains to fiat faster than the tokens can bottom out, floors on lower profile projects are dropping more than 50%. Essentially, NFTs — being a derivative dependent upon the token value in which it was recorded — are losing value at twice the rate of coins, because of these mechanics.
Nevertheless, as Eva Longoria put it in a Twitter space earlier today, “I’m not complaining, but why are all of these projects on sale??” If, against all odds, you’ve had your eye on a Catalina Whale Mixer for a while, now may be your chance.