GM 👋 Welcome to the world of crypto, where the only thing more impressive than the price fluctuations is the community behind it!

📓 Today’s Agenda:

• 🔥 Hot Headlines

• 🖼 NFT Market Overview

• 🎟 The Ticketing revolution

• 🤯 Y00ts-fluencers

• 💣 Upcoming NFT Drop

🔥  HOT HEADLINES

📈 Market Headlines

• Mainnet for Sui, a Layer 1 blockchain, is live - Read more

• The Fed hikes rates 25 bps and is prepared to do more if warranted - See more

• The U.S. Treasury will design a program to buyback government debt with plans to execute purchases beginning next year - See more

• Popular meme coin $WSB rugged and crashed to zero - See more

🖼 NFTs

• Big Inc, the company associated with the new Truth Labs project, announces a partnership with Amazon - Check this out!

• Meebits introduces Living PFPs where users can customize their Meebit without changing the metadata - Read more

• An Azuki whale sold 60 Azuki into Blur bids driving the price down and worrying Blend lenders - See more

• The largest DeGods sale on ETH just happened for $129k - Take a look

• LimeWire raised $15M for a new token, $LMWR - Read more

🖼 NFT MARKETS?

Good news: We saw a slight uptick in daily NFT volume to the start of May.

Bad news: We’ve been hanging out in the $20M - $30M daily range since March now.

The story of the week is the impact Blur’s Blend program has had on the NFT market. At first it seemed like everything was sunshine and rainbows. Anyone could buy a 15 ETH NFT for 0.04 ETH…what could go wrong?!

Well, it turns out not just ANYONE should be able to. Let’s look at Azuki as an example.

At the time of the Blend announcement, the FP of Azuki was 14.7 ETH. In the first 24 hours, the floor price ran all the way over 17 ETH (up 16%). But reality set in.

Long term holders of Azuki decided to cash out on the unexpected run up and the floor price came crashing back down to 16.30 ETH overnight.

But the story’s not over.

Now the traders who purchased Azuki’s with borrowed money are getting nervous. They could be liquidated and lose everything. So what do they do?

They close out their positions which drives the price down even further to 15.5 ETH. In a matter of 48 hours the price went from 14.7 to 17 and back to 15.5. This volatility is expected in new up and coming projects, but with an established project like Azuki? It’s a lot less common.

Takeaway: Blur’s new Blend program isn’t inherently good nor bad. Putting up a portion of capital is and borrowing the rest is common in almost every industry. But NFTs are a different animal and more specifically, NFT traders are a different animal. The average person buying an NFT is much more of a risk taker than the average person buying a house. Initial volatility is expected with these types of events. What will be important is how the market adjusts to this in the long term because at this point, the financialization of NFTs is inevitable

🎟 THE TICKETING REVOLUTION

If your normie friends ask you what’s a real-life example of NFTs, ticketing is the layup answer.

The ticketing industry is complex, highly centralized and littered with fraudulent tickets.

Enter blockchain technology: If tickets to concerts and sporting events were on chain it would wipe out the thousands of fake tickets sold through online marketplaces.

It would also have saved us from the T-Swift x TicketMaster fiasco!

So who’s taking action? This week, Sports Illustrated announced they’re launching “Box Office” in partnership with ConsenSys and powered by Polygon.

SI wants to combine blockchain technology with traditional tickets to create a new experience for fans.

One of the most powerful quotes came from the CEO of SI Tickets, David Lane:

“Blockchain is the future of ticketing, and now owners, promoters, hosts and attendees have access to an advanced ticketing experience that transforms the antiquated barcode into engaging and collectible content.”

Did someone say mainstream NFTs?!

The Seedphrase Take: Tickets & NFTs are like PB & J. It just makes sense. SI is joining Ticketmaster as giant web2 companies entering the NFT ticketing space. And there is plenty of room for multiple companies, the ticketing industry is expected to reach $79 B in revenue in 2023. Yes, billion with a B. Makes sense that these companies are making some noise!

🤝 TOGETHER WITH MASTERWORKS

Microsoft Co-Founder’s $1.5B+ Sale Highlights “Safe Haven” Asset

Last November, Paul Allen’s historic art collection shattered the record for the largest-ever sale in auction history.

The fact that the blue-chip art market is still setting records amid major drawdowns in financial markets, and macroeconomic turmoil, highlights why it can be such a strong alternative diversifier. In fact, the high-end art market also remained resilient through downturns like the dot-com bubble and Great Financial Crisis in 2008.

But this time around, it’s not just billionaires benefitting.

Thanks to Masterworks. This award-winning investment platform allows people to invest in shares of multi-million dollar art by names like Banksy and Picasso. So far, all 11 of Masterworks’ sales have been profitable, the last 3 realizing 10.4%, 35%, and 13.9% net returns respectively.

Due to high demand, offerings can sell out in just minutes, but [Newsletter] readers can now skip the waitlist with this referral link.

🤯 Y00ts-fluencers

Is it just us or does it feel like every NFT influencer is rocking a y00ts PFP?

Driving the news: Moritz, a popular NFT trader, changed his PFP from his iconic Pudgy Penguin to a y00ts and the reason he did so is because he wants to build his branding around it.

And he’s not the only one. Legendary, another popular content creator, also recently rebranded his content around his y00ts PFP.

So it begs the natural question, is y00ts the PFP for content creators. I received a great response from NFTNics:

“it's quite logical, the floor is at a perfect level both accessible and luxurious with a nice art work known by the whole web3!”

Why it matters: Azuki has done a fantastic job “acquiring” talent by giving positions to Wale and Elena. They represent the Azuki brand and the more popular they get, the more popular Azuki gets.

It seems as though the same thing is happening with y00ts. Except it’s all happening organically!

💣 STAR WARs NFT

Today is May the 4th, and for you Star Wars fans out there you know that means it’s a big day.

Veve, a popular digital collectibles app, is dropping a Luke Skwalker collectible today at 11 AM PST.

Veve has been up and down over the past 2 years but if there’s anything that has the potential to bring it back, it’s Star Wars!

Here’s the link for more information.

🐧 PUDGY PENGUINS WORKBENCH

Something is happening in the world of Pudgy Penguins on May 7th.

What do we know? Pudgy Penguins released a teaser video this week for “The Pudgy Workbench”. There’s a variety of objects on the bench including a radio, scissors, a trojan horse and a clock counting down.

We’ve been told that there are secrets hidden within the bench. In fact, there’s an interactive website that allows users to explore the workbench in more detail.

Luca Netz and the team have been building their IP empire over the past few months and this could be the next big announcement for them.

How’d the market respond? Slightly up before pulling back. Anticipation is the lifeblood of NFTs so we shouldn’t be surprised to see the Penguins’ price increase as we get closer to the announcement.

What else is going on in the Pudgy world? In short, a lot.

After doing some more exploring on the Pudgy Penguins website we stumbled upon a Community Pitch Deck and a Brand Bible. Not only is the Pudgy team building a Web3 IP empire, they’re also making it easy for their community to build a brand around their Penguin.

Why do this? Free marketing. It’s like when an Instagram influencer wears new Nike shoes in their latest post. It’s free advertising for Nike.

Seedphrase Take: Pudgy Penguins continue to play to their strengths. They know their greatest asset is their (objectively) cute IP. This workbench is their latest version of utilizing their IP to build the story of the Pudgy Penguins.

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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.