GM - this is The Snapshot, edition #117.
This is what I’ve got for you this week:
This Week In NFT World - BTC Runes Mania
Sponsored Post - Lil Nouns surge to 0.11 ETH from 0.05 ETH
Notable Sales - Alien, FeWo, MVP, XCOPY, Autoglyph
Investor Focus - Why Content Creation Is The Best Investment
For sponsorship enquires, please DM me on Twitter.
Have a great day,
B
This Week In NFT World - BTC Runes Mania
Rune Nodes dropped to NodeMonkes trading at 0.04 BTC as Rune Pups rise to 0.11 BTC & Runestones hit 0.09 BTC
"With the Runestone floor up to 0.0933 BTC, the overall market cap for the project is now $740mn, more than any NFT/ordinal project other than Cryptopunks."
Why are Runes ripping so hard?
First, we need to understand what Runes are. Shoutout to Defi Monk for this explainer, from which I select key info here.
Ordinals: Ordinals are arbitrary data inscriptions (in the form of text, images or videos) inscribed onto individual satoshis (that's the smallest possible unit of a Bitcoin - think quarks in physics).
Runes: Runes is a novel protocol developed by the same mind behind Ordinals (@rodarmor). Runes are more akin to ERC-20 tokens, enabled by a distinctive UTXO model which is cleaner than BRC-20. These are fungible, and will be the go-to standard for $BTC "tokens".
Now - why are they moving up so aggressively?
Runes won't be out until the halvening. But @PupsToken and other soon-to-be Runes protocols are pre-launching as pre-Runes and will migrate over to the Runes infrastructure at launch.
$PUPS are up over 1,000% this week, because people, and by people I mean @blknoiz06, realized that these are essentially the first representative memecoins on Bitcoin. Here's the main character shilling it himself:
As we approach the BTC halvening later this month, expect crazy things to happen with Runes. The first memecoins on BTC narrative is strong right now.
One day this week XCOPY editions see > 260 ETH of sales
There was a huge run on XCOPY art this week. Editions were flying, and there was a 1/1 sale for 255 ETH ($890k).
Hackproof sold for 39 ETH
"An anonymous collector acquired seven XCOPY editions yesterday for a total of over 125e (approx. $450,000). The collection includes four early X's KO editions, one NiftyGateway, one Kolectiv, and one Fresh Hell."
Pudgy Penguins founder: “there will be multiple 100E NFTs this cycle”
Luca’s article on culture tokens
Highly recommend having a read of Luca’s article here.
The idea is that everything will be tokenized, including culture, and although people look down on it now, it will become more obvious in future.
A paradigm shift is happening at the intersection of finalization and culture, and this shift is not just present in crypto, it is also happening in traditional finance. Crypto moves at laser speed and that speed is giving us a glimpse of what the potential of financial markets may look like in the near future. In the 90s you had Bowie Bonds, in 2020 you had $GME, and today you have $DJT all in their own respect representing some version of culture. For $GME, it was a representation of "screw the bankers and the short sellers", for $DJT you’re speculating on Donald J Trump and in its own way, it's a social token. Unfortunately for traditional finance, this future may or may not materialize into peak form due to the significant barrier to entry. Regardless, this notion of financial assets powered by cultures and trends is not new and with the speed and access of crypto, it is only becoming more prevalent.
Financialisation x Culture
SEC moves to sue largest DeFi protocol Uniswap; Uniswap ready to fight
USA regulators continue to be hostile to crypto, as they let major DeFi protocol Uniswap know they are coming after them.
Price action for the Uni token was down, but general crypto was resilient, as BTC was unaffected at $70k.
"Today @Uniswap Labs received a Wells notice from the SEC. I’m not surprised. Just annoyed, disappointed, and ready to fight. I am confident that the products we offer are legal and that our work is on the right side of history. But it’s been clear for a while that rather than working to create clear, informed rules, the SEC has decided to focus on attacking long-time good actors like Uniswap and Coinbase. All while letting bad actors like FTX slip by."
From founder @haydenzadams
Sponsored Post - Lil Nouns surge to 0.11 ETH from 0.05 ETH
Lil Nouns DAO NFTs have surged in price after the collection has come into focus with the release of $NOGS.
What are the details?
NOGS has been designed to be a memecoin, a utility token and a nounish infrastructure for the world.
40% of the total supply will be incorporated in the NFTs of the most active nounish DAOs as a way to support their growth and participation, forever.
The first DAOs that will be supported are:
Nouns
Lil Nouns
Gnars
And that little bit of speculation is why the price has really surged recently! Although as I have outlined many times over the weeks, the DAO has continued to support all sorts of cool initiatives over the last months and is committed to continuing to do so.
If you are curious about contributing to a cutting-edge DAO and getting paid to bring your ideas to life: check out our website.
Notable Sales - Alien, FeWo, MVP, XCOPY, Autoglyph
CryptoPunk, Alien - 320 ETH
Fewocious, Hurt Feelings - 25 ETH
Memeland MVP - 55 ETH
XCOPY, The Deadness - 29.5 ETH
Autoglyph - 145 ETH
Investor Focus - Why Content Creation Is The Best Investment
One of the most profitable decisions I ever made in this space was to produce content every day.
I’ve been writing this newsletter for 117 weeks (sponsored), writing The Snapshot daily on the timeline every weekday for more than a year (also sponsored), and running the Modern Market show every weekday for around a year (also sponsored now).
This week we announced a term deal with Mintify, a top NFT marketplace.
You might think that the main way to make money from content is the traditional model by selling sponsorship. It is true that sponsorship is a core way to make the money, but the value of the content is not limited to that.
The even bigger profits have come from building a reputation on a daily basis which has led to building trust, more connections, and offers to invest in various protocols.
There is a broader trend that is happening where content creators are becoming the educators, the product creators, the VCs. When you capture so much attention, you basically have scope to monetise that attention in a variety of ways.
So far I have sold sponsorship and invested in protocols, but I would love to build a product one day.
In the meantime, I love that with the Modern Market, the show we run every day, we can build as a “product” even though that simultaneously is building distribution.
I like the quote that “first time founders think about product, second time founders think about distribution.”
Something to think about.
Have a great day,
B
Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered as investment advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
I hold some of the NFTs mentioned in these newsletters
Literally reading this in the background while you just mentioned it on MM!
Going to circle back and read the entire Luca piece you linked. Thanks, B!