(Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)
Gm Folks and Happy Monday! A relatively quiet week in the internet picture industry compared to what we’ve been experiencing all year. Most projects have been flat all week, with mini pumps/dumps occurring while ETH dumped from the ~$3,500 range down to <$3,200. In times like these, it’s important to digest the recent moves and think about how you want to reposition your portfolio heading into Q2. It’s rare we get an “uneventful” week so we’ll discuss some of our thoughts on balancing an NFT portfolio going into Q2. We’d like to stress that nothing in this newsletter is financial advice but instead the thoughts and opinions of anonymous internet penguins. Have a great week everyone!
Updates:
Our next newsletter next week will be going out on Tuesday April 19th. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming thereafter.
MC Pass: If you’re interested in joining our Community:
Another great jobs section at the bottom of the newsletter courtesy of TheChild if you’re interested in breaking into web3!
Shoutout to the continued support from our in-house Meme Meister, TokyoSunbather.
Macro Update
Transaction volume and overall value has been relatively flat. The broader NFT market seems healthy and it feels like it’s digesting a lot of big moves in the last 2-3 weeks. Nothing too notable regarding the blue-chips here and most remain unscathed, sitting relatively close to their all time high floors.
Bumpy week with new mints, with some struggling post-reveal and others doing very well like Los Muertos and MOAR. This feels like a generally positive sign that we’re not currently too overheated.
Although they feel completely oversaturated, PFP projects are still running the market. Every time we experience doubts about the medium-term sustainability of the market, we’re reminded of the various growth catalysts on the horizon, like Coinbase’s NFT platform or Instagram’s integration of NFTs which we dove deep on a couple weeks ago. I mean, imagine there was a section on every IG profile where you can view someones of the NFT collection – the ultimate flex.
One trend in particular which we’ve been taking notice of is a pattern of projects who have ambiguous roadmaps, inevitably evolving into alpha groups where holders get WL access to other projects. While we do believe that collaborating with other quality projects is generally positive, we think that this trend is encouraging an unsustainable, pump-and-dump environment. Be wary of PFP projects with no real roadmap, starting to brand themselves as a community with the best alpha in the space – it’s a race to the bottom.
Another noteworthy observation we’ve had, is that a lot of projects which were never able to surpass the ~1 ETH range, are now in what we think is a permanent downtrend. Many of these had their “pump” and now many bag holders are inhaling their hopium and riding to zero. Projects like Little Lemon Friends, Wonderpals, and The Littles all have their “strong community” but never really were able to sustain above 1 ETH. Even an old winner like The Wanderers has basically lost all its demand. A lot of these older quality projects and short-to-medium term winners are now slowly fading away, as owners seek liquidity.
Right now we’d wager that the reason most people are seeking liquidity is not to save it, but rather to be able to move onto the next shiny object, since everyone is *still* looking for the next big mint. An interesting factor we’ve been contemplating is what happens when mass adoption comes. Will those who cannot afford blue chips buy into legacy projects that have done good but not great, or will they buy the new, shiny object? We think they’ll be looking for new mints, and Artchick seems to be on the same page.
At the end of the day, we remain cautiously bullish on newer projects led by great teams as more and more money flows into blue chips. We’ll only be covering one new mint this week. We have a bunch of projects on our radar but it’s a bit too early to discuss - expect a handful of in-depth project write ups next week.
Luca Netz Interview
We were lucky enough to get a brief interview with the new Chief Penguin Officer at Pudgy Penguins, Luca Netz. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the situation, Luca and his team purchased Pudgy Penguins earlier this month for 750 ETH (check out this piece from Bloomberg). See below for Our questions in bold and Luca’s answers in italics.
1. Who are you and what has your NFT journey looked like? What was the first NFT you ever bought, and how did you wind up becoming a penguin?
My name is Luca Netz and I am a 23 year old self-made E-commerce Entrepreneur. The first NFT I bought was a Pudgy Penguin which started my obsession for NFTs.
2. What are the best ways for NFT projects to sustain long term value without having to continuously find new buyers to pump floor price? How do you plan to implement these strategies with the Pudgy Penguins?
In my opinion, creating a brand that sustains itself beyond royalties is one of the most important parts. We plan on creating businesses within the Pudgy Penguin ecosystem that will live on their own. We plan on doing this through initiatives in children's books, toys, merchandise, and more.
3. Where will the Pudgy Penguins be in 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? Be as specific as possible.
Our intent and driving motivation behind acquiring Pudgy Penguins was to create a legacy brand. Over the coming years we plan on building Pudgy Penguins into exactly that. We plan on doing this by spreading love and positivity in both the meta and physical worlds through our marketing efforts, product launches, events, and partnerships.
4. If a non Penguin owner is reading this and considering joining the community, what are the 3 primary reasons, as you see it, why they should consider jumping in?
Mission - I hope that as we push our mission more people will join the Penguins because they believe in our message and mission. Pudgy Penguins, above all else, will be a brand that will help people with their mental health. If you support this mission, then to me, that would be a great reason to jump in.
Brand appeal - unlike most NFT projects, Pudgy Penguins are aligned for mass adoption. The Pudgy Penguins have a very neutral art style which expands our horizons endlessly.
Team - early on in my investment career I was taught that the most successful investments were made when the investor bet on winners. The Pudgy Penguin team is a team full of winners with proven track records. Twitter spaces introducing team
5. What advice do you have for NFT enthusiasts looking to start their own project? Is that the best way to break into the NFT space full time? If not, what is?
Starting an NFT project bears huge responsibility, and I would encourage enthusiasts to work on projects as a service provider first so that they can grasp and understand all the moving parts within an NFT project. Once you have some experience and you understand what it entails you can then move forward.
6. Do you intend to grow the Pudgy Penguins core team headcount? If so, by how many and what types of roles are you looking to fill?
Yes. We're currently onboarding strategic advisors and members to the core team. I believe in strength in numbers, and I am open to all proposals from top tier talent.
7. Do you think the future of NFTs is going to exist solely on Ethereum or multi chain? If multi chain, how do you plan to leverage other chains to grow the Penguin brand?
I believe that if Ethereum fixes the gas issue that the majority of the market will live on Ethereum. I expect this issue to be fixed within the next 12 months, so until then my focus will remain on Ethereum. If nothing has been addressed 12 months from now, then we will explore avenues of supporting other chains.
Monkey Kingdom
Mint Date: 4/15
Price: .3 ETH
We spoke with one of the founders of Monkey Kingdom, an extremely popular project in Asia, which launched in Nov 2021 and is arguably one of the biggest projects on SOL, with multiple sales over $100K USD. MK has enjoyed mainstream adoption with many celebrities and some of the richest people in Hong Kong involved in the project (check out this past auction). They also acted as one of the official launch partners of Opensea during the Opensea launch of Solana NFTs. They’ll be dropping their Gen 3 collection this week on ETH, and we think this is a project worth keeping on your radar.
While constantly among the top Solana projects by floor price and total sales volume, it will be interesting to see if this success will transfer over along with MK to ETH. With the previous collections both in the 2,000 supply range, 10,000 definitely seems ambitious, but at the same time, ETH NFTs have a much larger addressable market, so we don’t think they’ll have any issues minting out.
The Gen 3 collection will be 10k 3D avatars that are “metaverse-ready” and have cross-chain utility. This is the first time we plan on minting an NFT where the original collection is not on ETH – demand seems extremely high with an oversubscribed WL. While we still see this as secondary to the OG SOL collection (MK floor is ~$4K USD on SOL), we have no real idea of a reasonable price target due to the unique nature of this drop. While supply here is larger, ETH NFTs have a larger, hungrier market of buyers, and the art sneak peaks are also much more aesthetically pleasing than the pixelated pfps in our opinion – this could play out in a variety of ways.
Mint price of .3 ETH is quite high. While MK is run by a top team which can command a premium, it’s tough to justify the mint price when so many other projects have been successful with 1/4 the same entry price. While this may be to weed out flippers, it can also be a huge drag if volume slows down. We think this is a project with a good risk/reward to it but if you plan to mint we recommend monitoring the volume to make sure it mints out.
Musings and Strategy
Again, we’d like to stress that none of this is financial advice whatsoever. We constantly get asked what *we’re* doing with our jpeg portfolio and what we think of the market going forward.
We are extremely bullish on the future of ETH. We don’t trade, we simply try to accrue as much ETH as possible. Right now, we think NFTs are one of the best areas to do this, and view most of our jpeg investments as a way to simply accumulate more ETH. As mentioned 100 times, we *do not* value our NFTs in USD, we value them in ETH. The goal is to find projects that are going to go up in value (in ETH terms) faster than ETH itself goes up in value.
Long-term, we don’t really see any reason to own multiple mediocre collections. This is because money always flows to the top, and it’s better to hold 1 blue chip NFT rather than 10 average collections. One of our favorite contributors, BowTiedBeachBum, mentioned that he views NFT investing as similar to VC investing, where you need to buy into a ton of projects with the expectation that most will go to zero, but the value from the winning minority greatly outweighs the losses. We agree with this view but to take it one step further, you have the ability to liquidate these NFTs before they go to 0 (unlike in traditional VC), and in many cases they will 2x+ your original investment before dying, meaning average returns on a percentage basis should be even higher than the average VC if you deploy this strategy effectively.
We’re bullish on the NFT industry as a whole and don’t think that the bear market is here yet. Mass adoption is well on its way and some of the next blue-chip projects are currently being built as we speak. That being said, while we still think new mints and under-the-radar projects are the best way to play the *current* market, we have slowly been decreasing our “non long-term” NFT bags in exchange for ETH. Mainly dumping projects that haven’t done well in this bull market as well as medium-term winners who we feel may not go the distance.
Finally – profit taking. How do *we* go about taking profits on flips? First of all, we have separate “degen” wallets for minting (this is also safer incase you get involved in a rug). We usually take about 50-75% of profits and hold it in ETH (remember the goal is to stack ETH). After this, we keep the remaining 25-50% + the initial investment in the degen wallet for future bets.
That’s just a bit of insight into how we think. Maybe you agree with our methodology or maybe you don’t, either is fine. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy; different strokes for different folks as they say, and this is again, not financial advice, so please do your own research in an effort to form your own opinions. Good luck to everyone out there!
Conclusion
While we tend to feel that most VCs who engage within the NFT space are cash grabbing pump and dump artists, we want to conclude this newsletter with an extremely interesting chart by one of the very few VCs who is seemingly acting in good faith, A16Z. They recently put out a report on the NFT market, including an analysis on new mints, and stats surrounding their level of success based on mint price.
It’s reassuring seeing the numbers on paper like this to prove what we’ve been saying all along – projects whose mint prices are ~.2 are *usually* cash grabs (except for the rare occasion where there is a costly IRL component to the project).
We’ll keep preaching until our faces turn blue – quality projects, with quality teams, offering fair mints to authentically engaged communities, will be the only projects to survive when the dust settles in the future.
Be well anon – we’ll see you next week for a jam packed edition of Mint Calendar.
Love,
Wilson & Paul
Web3 Careers:
Hey MC’ers! Boy oh boy do we have a good selection for you this week starting with an opportunity to be Employee #1 at DNNR, an exclusive NFT Dining Club being launched by a community member! We also want to flag an opening with UNICEF to help them build their Discord connectivity and further their digital reach across the Web3 space. This is one of the first times we’ve watched an NGO get into the NFT space and it seems like a cool way to do good too!
We love highlighting roles from within the community and giving our job seekers useful leads, so if you’ve got an MC Pass please hop in our job talk channel to join the conversation!
Let us know if you’re hiring for incredible roles or if there are other types of opportunities you’d like to see in this section! Tweet/DM us @MintCalendar, @TheChild1996, or send an email to hello@mintcalendar.com.
Community/Social Media
Analyst, NFT Content Moderation (Coinbase, Remote)
Consultancy – Community Manager, NFTs (UNICEF, Remote NYC)
Marketing:
Web3 Marketing Manager – Brand Experiences (Mammoth Media, Remote Worldwide)
Marketing Manager (GFX Labs, Chicago, 85k-125k)
Product/Miscellaneous:
Employee #1 (DNNR, London)
Partnership Manager (Contribute, Remote Europe/UK)
Finance Lead (Foundation, Remote)
Director, Creator Relations & Activations (Nike, LA or NYC)
Software Development:
Senior Developer (Galaxy Guild, Remote San Francisco)
Senior Solidity Developer (GFX Labs, Chicago, 200k-350k)