#124 Iggy Azalea Interview: Celebcoin Reflections
Why Iggy Might Surprise You & Celeb Coin Expectations
GM - this is The Snapshot, edition #124.
This is what I’ve got for you this week.
This Week In NFT World - $PEPE overtakes whole NFT market
Notable Sales - Azuki Spirit, Azuki Fire, Milady, BAYC
Investor Focus - Iggy Azalea Interview: Celeb Coin Mania Reflections
For sponsorship enquires, please DM me on Twitter.
Have a great day,
B
This Week In NFT World - $PEPE overtakes whole NFT market
$PEPE is now worth more than every single major NFT project, across blockchains, combined.
Earlier in the week, $PEPE ripped more than 10% to hit $7.2B marketcap: up 80% in 7 days at the time - now up 133% on the month.
If there was any confusion left, memecoins are 100% taking from the liquidity that once flowed to NFTs.
I don’t know if that continues for the whole cycle, but this type of violent move up can simply not be ignored.
This was probably helped by the ETH ETF approval last week, and if that goes well and starts trading well, I suspect these memecoins will go further.
(It wasn’t just ETH memecoins: $ DOG on BTC is also up 87% on the week and another 140% on the month to a $700M marketcap.)
Luca Netz proposes bet that Pudgy Penguins will go to at least $100k
Pudgy Penguins currently cost around $40K
As everyone wonders whether real liquidity will come back to NFTs, Pudgy Penguins founder Luca wanted to bet on his own collection going past a $100k floor in the next 12 months.
I find it funny that people think there is no liquidity in NFTs when these 3 Penguins would cost around $120k to buy.
$120k (!) - that is pretty wild.
Nevertheless, pretty bullish on the Penguins - mainly because the founder has information which none of us have - and if he is willing to go on record to say it’ll go higher, I have to think he knows he can make the price go higher.
(I know we always say this in crypto and get disappointed lol so take that with a pinch of salt - bear in mind Penguins have the most to lose as the poster child for NFTs right now - and the rumours of a potential token…)
Of course legendary trader Cirrus figured out how to hedge the bet to win in either circumstance. An absolute legend and must-follow:
Blast announces 4th Gold distribution: 10M gold in penultimate drop
"Raising my (still conservative) gold estimate to $7.36 from $6. What changed? A lot less gold dilution than I expected... lowering total gold supply guess from 100m to 81.5m."
Some key thoughts from me on the latest Gold distribution from the most hyped L2 airdrop which is due on June 26 (p.s. gold is getting more valuable according to Stats’ estimates above…):
the full list and gold allocations google doc
- clear focus on social apps still with fantasy top and district one getting huge allocations (1.3m + 870k respectively)
- renewed focus on gaming with captain and company still high + wolf game coming in straight to number 6 with 525k gold
- juice still the favoured lending protocol
- thruster still the favoured dex
- blur not included for some reason - guess it has such an outsized allocation - mintify has 10k gold and routine flash trading challenges
something you may have missed:
- etherfi - biggest restaking protocol now live on blast - 10k gold here to earn on top of its already expected large 2nd airdrop - will probably try to move my eETH over to get a slice of the gold too
Paypal stablecoin now available on Solana providing "faster, cheaper transactions for consumers"
Pretty big that Paypal are moving to Solana. They were on ETH, now on SOL too. Hyper bullish on stablecoins as a payments mechanism in the future.
"Solana, 2nd blockchain to support PYUSD after Ethereum, boasts rapid transactions & low costs, ideal for commerce. Seamlessly connect PayPal accounts for fiat-to-crypto ease."
See also Coinbase in NY facilitating stablecoin payments for pizza. Delicious.
My favourite artist @jackbutcher "1 of 1" ordinal sells at Sotheby’s for $36,000
But there is way more to it:
- There was an identical open edition called "1 of ?" which minted 33,554 times last week raising $167,770 for charity.
- A corresponding physical piece called "Proof of Work" was signed with hand drawn signatures in the exact quantity of the "1 of ?" open editions minted.
Why produce these related scarce + non-scarce works?
"The paradox of artificial scarcity on abundant mediums, the transformation of fungible to non-fungible, the perception-altering stamp of approval from legacy institutions, and the ever-expanding gap between the value of labor and leverage."
In addition I think that as we push forward into an increasingly virtual, automated, AI-powered world and traditional institutions are less trusted as arbiters of truth and bestowers of value, the proof of personhood/personality behind the work will be where the value sits.
In the same way that there is a distinction between handmade clothes/bags/accessories, so will there be greater value on humanmade art, articles, tweets, videos etc.
Authenticity is value.
Notable Sales - Azuki Spirit, Azuki Fire, Milady, BAYC
Azuki, Spirit - 100 ETH
Milady, Alien - 18.49 ETH
Azuki, Fire - 21.6 ETH
BAYC, Cheetah - 15.5 ETH
Investor Focus - Iggy Azalea Interview: Celeb Coin Mania Reflections
Well this was a crazy week: I interviewed Iggy Azalea (famous rapper, entrepreneur, millions of followers) on Wednesday this week for an hour on our show. The result might surprise you.
She joined because there was drama around a token, $iggy, which was launched in her name by a scammer (this token went to 0) - and because her own token $mother was released to broad CT scepticism.
After all, there have been numerous examples of celebrities entering the crypto space and extracting maximum value before disappearing promptly.
So is this any different and what were my take aways from the conversation?
she considers herself a ‘disruptor’ as an artist and as an investor - exploring meme culture is in line with that
she noted some bad examples of ‘celebrity’ launches - and hopes she can be pointed to as a good example
she was more knowledgeable than i expected on crypto/meme culture
And to be honest, that is it.
I noticed the huge outrage on the timeline this week from people who want to expel/judge/condemn all celebrities.
I would agree that people are right to be deeply sceptical based on historical celebrity intention and performance.
But on a deeper level I think the crypto ethos is for anyone to tokenise anything they want in a permissionless fashion.
This means that we will get everything good, bad and ugly tokenised - but this is where crypto already is: a new coin comes to market and people need to decide if it goes up or down. This is how crypto operates on steroids already. Just because someone is famous doesn’t mean the risk profile of the memecoin has changed - or that you have to participate. Memecoins are always exceptionally risky.
The Iggy Azalea tweet about her appearance on our show
I think there is additional strong emotion inspired by celebrities because they are part of this exclusive club (which we are not a part of ) AND we view ourselves as an exclusive club (which they are not a part of) + so they should have to pay their dues if they want to enter over here.
GMoney, founder of 9dcc and prominent crypto investor, pulled back the curtain and explained his experience with onboarding celebrities in this long form tweet
A few of my key learnings from celebrity interactions last cycle:
Last cycle was my second cycle, but the first where I felt I could make an impact. I ended up talking to a decent amount of celebrities of different tiers of fame. I'm sure there are things to this list that others can add as well, but these were some of my takeaways.
First and foremost, just like everyone else, they are interested in making as much money for as little effort as possible (No surprise here). The higher tier the celebrity, the higher that amount is as it's opportunity cost of them doing something else. Sometimes there's guaranteed mins, sometimes it's a percentage, sometimes its guaranteed mins with a percentage. And the higher the tier, the more they guard their reputation, as they don't need to ruin their rep to make a few million dollars on something.
Usually, before getting to the celeb, you have to make it past some form of interview process with someone trusted in their circle. Someone that understands crypto more than they do, their "crypto/tech" guy, and whose recommendation they trust. Sometimes there's multiple layers of this.
Some of the scammers we see associated with these pump and dumps, have the access to these celebs bc they're in their circles, so they're able to say "hey, give me the rights to your likeness on this, and you can make $x real quick. All I need is some posts from you and we're good." And through this all, there are managers and agents that get their carveouts as well. There's alot of people that eat off a deal.
So even though on the headline, it may look like they made x, in reality, they made a fraction of that, probably somewhere around 20% of the headline number.
I think I probably spent more time convincing celebs not to do nft projects, than to do it, as I told them that it would be alot of work on their part. And frankly, the people we would want in here the most, were the ones that were too busy to really bring this into their lives in a meaningful way.
Whenever I was approached by a celebrity project to come onto the podcast, it was always a double edged sword. Of course I wanted to have this person on, but I also knew, that by giving them a platform I would implicitly endorse what they were talking about.
It's not an exact science, but I would try to gauge how interested they actually were in the space, and whether they were actually willing to put the resources behind it. Mind you, this is tougher than it sounds as almost all celebs are super charismatic, and media trained, so they will tell you exactly what you want to hear.
Part of what I and my team would look for, and to this day even, is what we dub internally the "web3 tax". Are they trying to mark up things to us and tell us it's different and special, when in reality it's not.
Now this isn't all celebs, there are plenty that I'm in group chats with that shitcoin like the rest of us, have integrated their own ip into crypto rails, and are genuinely interested in the space.
I'm bringing these points up, bc I don't know what the right/wrong way to onboard celebs is. Everyone will onboard differently, just like all of us that are here now.
Hopefully some of my learnings can help some others as they onboard celebs into crypto.
It’s worth recognising from this that almost all people are trying to optimise to make the most money possible with the least amount of effort.
People should probably not launch coins/projects as their first foray into crypto as they don’t realise how much hard work it is.
In any event, none of this means YOU have to buy the coin and speculate on it.
In the end you can’t control what other people do or how they react; you can only control what you do.
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