Paper 65: Twitter becomes "X" Corp
The implications of the "everything" app
GM - this is the BCheque Papers, edition #65.
Welcome to the 11 new subscribers this week - we are at 1,787 subscribers now!
I write about NFTs/crypto, and trying to make it independently in web3.
This is what we’ve got this week:
This Week In NFT/Crypto World - ETH is UP with Shapella upgrade; Azuki and Memeland crushing
Notable Sales - Azuki goes WILD
Creator Corner - The Implications of Twitter becoming X Corp
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Have a great day,
B
This Week In NFT/Crypto World - ETH is UP with Shapella upgrade; Azuki and Memeland crushing
Crypto rips UP
Crypto is UP.
NFT Volume is UP.
NFT Price is DOWN.
With new protocols it is easier to dump NFTs into fast increases in crypto prices. This will be the new normal when crypto rips up.
Why is ETH up so much?
Because of the “Shapella” upgrade.
Many people have been staking ETH for ages to secure the network and have been receiving ETH rewards for doing that. But they could not unstake their ETH and withdraw.
Now they can.
People wondered if this moment would cause a huge amount of sell pressure.
What looks to have happened is that the asset is now “derisked” - many people, who wanted to stake but didn’t like the idea of it being locked, can see the ETH coming in and out easily - and have gained confidence in the asset.
Everything is working - so price goes up.
NFT NYC
Whilst many expressed scepticism around NFT NYC this year, it still looks like a lot of fun to be in NYC for the main NFT conference of the year.
Mr Medici’s yearly exhibition in Times Square continues to grab attention as always.
Azuki announce huge partnership
This is a huge announcement for Azuki and the future of Web3 IP.
Elena’s thread on Azuki partnership
As Elena points out in the thread above:
IPX is a South Korean digital IP platform and parent company behind LINE FRIENDS, a beloved ensemble of animal characters popular globally but particularly in APAC.
LINE Friends, the most popular sticker brand in the APAC messaging apps, is a global character brand featuring 11 characters that have taken on personas of their own
Line, the app behind Line Friends, makes $270M a year from sticker sales
LINE users send an average of 6 billion stickers per day
This is the future of Web3 native IP expanding into more traditional lines of business.
Chimpers hit 100K on Instagram
In a similar vein, Chimpers celebrated hitting 100k followers on Instagram.
It is increasingly obvious building broad audiences for IP is essential for the next phases of these Web3 businesses.
The Memeland ecosystem on fire - and building huge network of validators
Not only did the Memeland ecosystem rip up this week.
They also announced they would be be building out an army of ETH validators. What is this for?
Memeland commits to 69 validators
First, a validator is for participating in the decentralisation of the Ethereum network. For participating by staking ETH, validators are compensated with ETH rewards.
So Memeland are going to get a ton of ETH by setting these validators up. What could it be for?
Well, they seem to like making things fun and interesting - so I would not be surprised to see this flow *in some way* to holders.
That would be pretty wild. I’m keeping a close eye…
Notable Sales - Azuki goes WILD
The Azuki collection - one of the most popular, stylish PFP collections - was on fire this week.
These two humongous sales of almost $1M were brokered by no less than 3 people.
Scared that AI is going to take your job? The tech always provides new roles…
Huge sale brokered by EB7, sen_eth, and ArtofConviction
The seller of those “grail” assets, Dingaling - a huge NFT collector - proceeded to buy up a huge number of the cheaper Azuki NFTs.
As such, the Azuki floor price had risen to 15.3 ETH (over $30,000)!
In art land, Fidenzas - the fine digital art classic by Tyler Hobbs - continue to slide in ETH terms. The $82,000 sale is particularly low, since the floor price is above $100,000.
Turning our attention to digital land, this Mega Koda with a weapon and its land deed for the Otherside ecosystem (the Yuga Labs game ecosystem) sold for a titanic $407,171. Why?
JRNY Crypto, the buyer, said he bought it “to use, not as an investment”.
Remember: these Otherside Deeds will be part of the strategy game Yuga Labs is building out - Legends of the Mara.
And finally a twist for this section…
An influencer who was part of the promotion of a recent project decided to dump all of her NFTs whilst she was telling everyone how great the project was. Amazing!
Ms Benham’s admission in full here
Super smart too - as she moved the NFTs from one wallet to another thinking people would not notice.
People did not notice.
The cherry on top? Her explanation read: “there were mistakes made in a wallet that I controlled.”
May this saying live on forever!
Creator Corner - The Implications of Twitter becoming X Corp
Things might be about to get very interesting on Twitter.
It is no secret Elon has been taking a sledgehammer to the business model, wants to make it profitable, and wants to reward creators more.
This week it emerged he has folded the social media giant into a newly formed shell company called "X Corp”.
This led to speculation that this is the move towards the “everything” app - similar in style to WeChat in China - which can be used for payment processing, to booking events, to messaging.
Hot on the heels of that news, we also found out this week Twitter will be partnering with eToro to see real-time prices of stocks, crypto and other assets - taking one step closer to potential future crypto integrations…
Via a new partnership with eToro, users can now make use of eToro’s market charts on a range of financial investments, simply by searching for the relevant "cashtag," usually by putting a "$" sign in front of the ticker, like "$TSLA" for Tesla stock.
Whilst the end game is not perfectly obvious, I believe the direction is clear: financialisation / monetisation on Twitter.
Big cryptocurrency trader, Moon, speculates
It is on everyone’s mind.
I think it is coming.
So if you are entrepreneurially minded on this bird / X app, start to think what your most popular content is, how your content can be best expressed, and how it can be produced more prolifically.
That’s what I am doing.
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