GM Seedphrasers 👋 Welcome to the crypto circus, where the only thing more unpredictable than the performers, is the market.

📓 Today’s Agenda:

• 🔥 Hot Headlines

• 🚀 The Path to New ATHs

• 🗓 Entering May

• 🖍 Customizable NFTs

• 🧑🏽‍🌾 Inside the Mind of Blur Farmers

• 🧘🏼 Taking a Step Back

🔥  HOT HEADLINES

📈 Market Headlines

• Someone sold $2M worth of $PEPE in one transaction - Take a look!

• PNC, JPMorgan putting in final bids for First Republic Bank in FDIC auction - Read more

• Elizabeth Warren Is Pushing De Facto Ban on Crypto in the US - Read more

• Venmo is now allowing it's customers to withdraw directly to a non-custodial crypto wallet - Read more

• Mastercard partners with Polygon, Solana, Ava and others to launch Crypto Credential system - Check it out

🖼 NFTs

• New ATH sale of 17.69 ETH for Keungz Genesis - Take a look

• DigiDaigaku Ordinals NFTs are coming soon - Check it out

• Former EVP of Development at Epic Games, Mike Seavers Joins Yuga Labs as CTO - Check it out

🚀 THE PATH TO ATHs

Bitcoin and Ethereum are both up 100% since all-time lows but they’re both still down bad from their ATHs of $69k and $4.8k.

So how can we get back to those all-time highs? Well here are 7 things that need to happen before we can start talking about $100k BTC again:

1. Regulatory Clarity

2. Scalability Solutions

3. Institutional Adoption

4. Enhanced Security

5. Education and Awareness

6. Mainstream Integration

7. Market Stability

This list is easier said than done but each is just as important as the rest in order to push forward not only to new price highs but more importantly, new adoption highs!

A Seedphrase Take: Some of the items on this have a domino effect. For example, regulatory clarity and enhanced security will naturally lead to institutional adoption. Right now, many companies are unsure how to treat crypto. Is it a security? Is it a commodity? These questions need to be answered before we can move forward!

🗓 ENTERING MAY

Welcome to May! The weather is getting nice, pollen is going away, it’s a great time to be alive!

Even more important than that, May is historically a great month for crypto.

Since 2013, BTC averaged a 14% increase in price during May. This is the 3rd highest monthly return behind October and November. Plus, of the 10 years of data, 6 years have been green.

For ETH, the average return in May is a whopping +40% since 2015! This is the 2nd highest monthly return behind February. In the 7 years of data, 4 years have been green.

Does this mean up only in May?! No, it obviously doesn’t. Historical performance doesn’t guarantee future results…blah blah blah.

We know it’s not a guarantee that prices go up in May, but it is a good signal. And that’s what matters.

Now it’s up to us to filter through the rest of the data to determine how the price in 2023 will be impacted.

Here are some important macro events that could impact crypto prices this month:

• May 2nd & 3rd - FOMC Meeting

• May 5th - US unemployment rate

• May 10th - CPI report

TLDR: Crypto is a market driven by narratives. The fact that May has been a good month historically for BTC and ETH is a strong narrative that has the power to drive positive price action. That doesn’t mean that it will though. Think back to last May, Terra Luna collapsed which caused BTC and ETH to be driven down. There are potentially stronger forces that nobody knows about that could impact market price.

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🖍 CUSTOMIZABLE NFTs

Doodles officially released The Stoodio beta access on Friday.

What is The Stoodio: The Stoodio is the home base for Doodles holders. More specifically, it’s the place where Doodles holders can customize their Doodle in the Doodles 2 character build.

Why it matters: Doodles was one of the original Blue Chip NFT projects. They caught fire and rose to a floor price of 20 ETH in May 2022.

But, they’ve run into a lot of FUD recently. The creator of the project even said the project is “no longer an NFT project”

The release of The Stoodio comes at a crucial time for Doodles. Community sentiment is at an all time low. The team needs to find a way to bring back the energy.

How did everyone respond? The general sentiment on Twitter was overwhelmingly positive. The videos released by the Doodles team were creative, professional, and captivating.

The floor price responded well too, moving from 2.2 to 2.9 over the weekend. BUT, that might just be the result of some Blur airdrop farming…more on that later.

On top of that, the experience allows holders to customize their NFT based on how they’re feeling on any particular day. Want to dress your Doodle up and look fancy? You can do that! Feeling lazy and wanting your Doodle to match your energy? You can do that too!

Our Take: The past few months have been filled with negativity and jokes made at the expense of the Doodles team and their holders. This was a nice move in the opposite direction.

🧑🏽‍🌾 INSIDE THE MIND OF BLUR FARMERS

After the Doodles Stoodio announcement, an NFT whale “purchased” 248 Doodles for 694 ETH ($1.3M).

Purchased is in quotes because the buyer was a Blur airdrop farmer who had been the top bidder on Doodles. In total, this buyer is up to 341 Doodles and is continuing to make bids.

This isn’t the first time they’ve done this either. The same thing happened with CloneX, Beanz, and Opepen.

Why do this? $BLUR.

NFT whales have been airdrop farming Blur for months but with Machibigbrother and Franklin out of the way, a hole is being filled by newcomers.

Over the weekend, NFTstatistics.eth wrote a thread detailing the how behind this airdrop farmer.

Here are the biggest takeaways:

• The airdrop farmer is effectively a market maker. The farmer owns 71% of the 478 Doodles which have traded in the past 3 days.

• The farmer is patient. They don’t dump the NFTs right away, they wait for the right time

• He doubles down on projects he just got dumped on by having the highest bid. This makes other bidders feel safe.

• This strategy worked with Beanz as the farmer actually came out profitable on his trades

• The farmer spreads these NFTs across over 800 wallets making it extremely difficult to track all of the activity

• Good airdrop farmers are hard to predict. That’s what makes them effective.

Takeaway: If it feels like all of the NFT market has been talking about Blur airdrop farmers the past 2 months, you’re right. That’s exactly what it’s been. But that doesn’t make it less important to talk about. Any NFT we buy right now could be impacted by farmers so it’s important to know the projects that NFT farmers are spending their time on so we don’t get rekt!

Positive Vibes: We could all use some positivity this Monday. Watch this 3-minute video from NFT artist Sam Spratt explaining the impact NFTs have had on his life. It’s a powerful message.

🧘🏼 THROWING IT BACK

We’re almost a full year removed from the collapse of Terra Luna and the start of the current crypto bear market. Sometimes we can get lost in the weeds of day-to-day price movement but it’s important to take a step back and look at the whole picture.

Today, we’re going to take a trip down memory lane. A trip to December 17, 2017, to be precise.

Why this day? It was the peak of the 2017 bull run. And here are the top 10 coins by market cap as of that day:

A redditor analyzed the top 100 coins at this time and the price movement we’ve had in the last 6 years. Here’s what they found:

• 7% of coins have had a positive price change since that day 🤯 

• 24% of coins are down > 99%

• The asset with the largest increase in price is BNB up 5,081%

• Of the 7 tokens with a positive price change, two of them are BTC and ETH

What this means: It’s extremely unlikely that we’ll be able to predict the tokens that will succeed in the next bull run. It’s just a really hard thing to do. But, one of the safest places to park your money in crypto is BTC and ETH. They continue to the most reliable crypto tokens.

Takeaway: Just because everyone is talking about a token right now, does not mean it will last forever. Narratives change fast, especially in crypto. Just look at this list above. 4 out of the top 10 tokens are down 90% since December 2017. At the time, those were considered the “safe” options.

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.