Metacoin

Covering Bitcoin, the Blockchain, Altcoins, and Fintech

Rocks and Bored Apes; AlphaBettys and Prison Raccoons; and Our Own #Sketches2021

Welcome to the wonderful world of NFTs. The alternate title for this post is “NFTs are crazy, right?”

As we have discussions with people in and around the cryptocurrency universe, we feel we’re almost always needing to provide evidence of our own bona fides. Typical conversations:

“Oh, you got $4,000 from Uniswap? Well, have you ever made $150,000 off of airdrops?”

“I bought my first Bitcoin at $20!”

“Gee, you shouldn’t have sold your $ETH; I met Vitalik once and he’s the real deal.”

These discussions remind me of the typical indie-rock tropes, like “well, I saw Arcade Fire when I was a student at McGill,” or “I saw Fishbone at the Lost Horizon in Syracuse in 1991.” (The second one is true for me; for the record, though, none of the crypto ones are my own story.)

The subsets of crypto have developed their own parlance, and the early adopters are known by the lingua franca of “yield farming” and “LPs” (for DeFi) and, for today’s it girl, NFTs, things like “1:1” or the “Floor” or “Up Only.” (To say nothing of the overriding crypto lingo that is, simply, the word “Few.” As in: “Few understand.” As in: “check out this LP from the band Morphine, they’ll be bigger than Pearl Jam. Few.”)

Enter the Rocks and the Bored Apes.

Item: someone paid a lot of money for a picture of a rock. These rocks (all of which can be found here: Ether Rocks ) would be “selling like hotcakes” if there were tons of them but there are only…wait, you’re telling me there are 100 of these? Hold on one second, someone paid $2m for a JPG of a rock?

A couple things should be noted here: one is that this is a limited supply JPG — only 100 total here, which is REALLY limited — and it’s also what’s called a “1:1,” or “1 of 1.”

Other projects have decided to make their artwork limited but not limited to only one piece. Like this collection, from a startup called DADA, which has five or ten of each piece of artwork.

Well, it appears we missed the boat on the rocks. Maybe there’s another project we’re not too late on…ah, I see here there’s something called the Bored Ape Yacht Club and we might be able to get one of these beautiful Bored Apes?

Oh, you have to call Sotheby’s?

Good thing we got in on THIS one early…oh…wait…we missed it.

N.B. these are limited to 10,000 different 1:1s. So it’s possible a lot of people are sitting on a lot of money today; it’s also possible that you aren’t one of those people.

What to do, what to do…

Not Too Late For THESE NFTs, Are We?

Still time to jump into the pool with both feet. Right? Here we go…AlphaBettys!

One of these didn’t cost us too much — 0.19 ETH for this one, number 7888 in the collection — and there’s a chance that the market will heat up. Or maybe it won’t, and we’re holding onto an asset class that’s going to be like our POW Tokens. Time will tell.

Other projects we’ve dived in on include something called Space Shibes (DISCLOSURE: we were part of the early group of investors in this project) and Shael Onions and some sort of panda/raccoon prison/pool party mashup. (See below.)

If You Can’t Make Sense Of It All…

Neither can we. So we launched another project of our own.

The Official Logo

The first couple projects were lower-price experiments with NFTs. We began our journey with the Obvious Statement Collection. Next was the “One Hundred NFTs.” Both were more graphic design projects than art projects.

And the above projects are best described as NFT Avatars: if you get a Crypto Punk, your goal is to use that punk as your PFP (profile photo). (In case you’re wondering, we missed the boat on that one, too.)

Actual NFT artwork, like DADA or the work of someone like Meg Thorpe, is the same animal but a little (or a lot) different.

Our goal with our own project, “Sketches2021,” was to create one-of-a-kind pieces; modern, simple sketches with bright colors. We’d also make it a limited number (we settled on 256 thanks a little to a suggestion from our friend Von who calls himself “Lazy Crypto Guy” on Twitter) and we’d go for a floor of 1 ETH.

We’ve released the first 100 pieces and they’re all on OpenSea as we speak. The entire set is complete — we worked on them during Summer 2021 — and the rest will be launched in short order. Perhaps with a giveaway or two, stay tuned. (For now, we started with the first dozen on the web page here: Sketches2021 on Metacoin.

What’s The Point?

We’ve been asking that question about a lot of what’s in the crypto universe since it launched. Will Bitcoin really disintermediate the banks? Will Ethereum really have a layer that allows for transactions and tokens everywhere? Will these DeFi lending platforms do anything? Will these digital avatar JPEG thingies make me rich?

Time will tell, folks. Time will tell.

Time For Our Own NFT Collection

As we’ve been telling you from the get-go, this site is mostly an experiment. How much of this cryptocurrency stuff is for real? (Turns out…a lot of it.) Does Bitcoin have staying power? (I think the answer to that one is yes.) Should we invest in that “crap”coin? (In most cases, no. In some cases, maybe.)

One Hundred NFTs

So we’re experimenting, again, and this time it’s with NFTs. We’ve bought a few — we’re not “OGs” but we did pick up some two years ago — and sold a couple along the way. No riches gained. But lessons learned.

Our first experiment started a couple months back; we called it the “Obvious Statement Collection” and we enjoyed that; but it’s not the reason for this post. Today, we have a fully baked collection and we’re ready to rock and roll with it.

Behold #OneHundredNFTs

The mission was simple: create 100 pieces of artwork, each different, and each numbered from 1 to 100. No more will be created in this collection of artwork; each item will only have one minted.

The entire collection is linked to here: One Hundred NFTs.

When we soft-launched the collection a month ago, we decided to follow a formula that goes like this (with some exceptions we’ll note):

  • Items 90-100: 0.025 ETH
  • Items 80-89: 0.05 ETH
  • Items 70-79: 0.075 ETH
  • Items 60-69: 0.1 ETH
  • Items 50-59: 0.125 ETH
  • Items 40-49: 0.15 ETH
  • Items 30-39: 0.175 ETH
  • Items 20-29: 0.2 ETH
  • Items 11-19: 0.225 ETH
  • Items 1-10: Auction, with minimum sale price of 1 ETH.

The exceptions:

  • Every fifth item, starting with the 15th, is auctioned (minimum 1 ETH).
  • Every ninth item, starting with the 18th, is to be given away (save for 99, kept by the founding team).
  • Numbers 13, 42, 43, 52, 66, 77, 85-88, 91, and 99 are reserved for “Friends, Family, and Fools.” (We’ve given a couple of those away already.)
  • There’s a TEST item; we’re not sure what to do with that one yet.
  • AND we semi-deliberately lowered the price of a couple of them.

It’s Early, So…We Don’t Know Yet

We’re honestly not all that sure what happens next: we’ll continue, as they say, to test and learn. That means an ad campaign, some more Twitter posts, perhaps some Facebook marketing.

But we like how they look and would love to get your feedback.

Obligatory Blog Post About NFTs

We actually thought about posting an article that was just a bunch of Greeking text: you know, “Lorem ipsum” and the like, over and over again, for paragraph after paragraph. We’d drop in a couple NFT references, maybe say OpenSea with a link to OpenSea, and we’d be sure to include hashtags.

After all, #NFTs are having a moment; so much of a moment that Saturday Night Live tried to explain them on last night’s show.

(Metacoin Grade: B+. Clever, some cute references, just nerdy enough. McKinnon’s Yellen wasn’t too convincing, though.)

Of Course We Have Our Own NFTs

That’s right, it wouldn’t be a crypto bandwagon without everyone jumping on board, and that includes Team Metacoin, whose Obvious Statement collection aims to take advantage of the intersection between memes and finance. For instance, here’s one piece we’re auctioning off:

(If you think we think anyone’s going to bid 10 ETH on this, you misunderestimate us.)

But Why, Though?

A rather apocryphal story from college goes like this: Philosophy professor arrives for final exam, hands out the little blue exam books, and writes the final exam question on the chalkboard. “Why?”

Student opens his exam book, writes his response: “Why not?”

Student gets an A.

Akin to the wise student, most of the involvement in NFTs these days — by everyone from athletes to gamers to Taco Bell — is a little about chasing the shiny object and a lot about sensing an opportunity whose opportunity cost is minimal. While it took Metacoin years to understand what the heck is going on in this whole crypto universe, it really only took a few minutes to create an NFT and plop it on the blockchain. Can you really blame Mark Cuban for leveraging his billion-plus dollars to try to make a billion-plus more?

Here’s a brilliant point from a recent interview with Bloq.com’s Phil Gomes (and you can watch the 5-minute snippet below): People love to collect things. You can’t really do much with a collection of dollars, or Satoshis, but you sure as heck can do a lot with a collection of NFTs — you can admire them, you can collect more, you can brag about their one-of-a-kind-ness.

Where’s This All Going?

Often, you’ll hear Bitcoin and crypto pundits say things like “it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” or “we’re in the first inning of a nine-inning ballgame.”

And you’ll also hear traditional financial pundits ask if you’re old enough to remember the Beanie Babies craze of the 90s, and how kids were bankrolling their college educations with just a few collectibles — but the same pundits are also suggesting that it is just that, a craze whose time was just a blip on the financial timeline.

The answer is probably somewhere in between. Some of these things have sorta kinda jumped the shark. Some others? Real staying power — we think.

And, since this is an obligatory NFT post, we should use an obligatory close:

Watch this space for more.

Interview with Phil Gomes from Bloq

Our HQ is near Chicago, and there’s been no stronger Chicago-area cryptocurrency and blockchain firm than Bloq.com.

The company continues launching products and services and its most-recent #DeFi launch, Vesper, already has north of $300m Total Value Locked (TVL).

Metacoin’s Dave Van de Walle chatted with Bloq’s Phil Gomes recently, and our discussion went nearly an hour with a ton of information shared.

Here’s a link to the full interview:

And, if you just want to watch highlights (which is okay with us), first here’s Phil talking about the industry’s need for yield giving rise to #DeFi:

Then, here’s Phil’s take on NFTs:

We hope you enjoy this lively discussion.

What Hath (The First Six Weeks of) 2021 Wrought?

We’re a few weeks past the GameStop Short Squeeze Apocalypse. Bitcoin has gone from $28,000-and-change on New Year’s Eve to north of $40,000. Altcoins seem to be flying off the shelves. Decentralized Finance is also on fire — if you pick the right one, natch — and the “degenerates” might be having their day.

So…what next?

Here’s some potential calm for the coming storm: a few ideas that, while they’re not financial advice and you need to DYOR (Do Your Own Research), could help you successfully hedge against the coming storms.

1. Just Buy and Hold Bitcoin

We’re reminded of a couple of conversations we’ve had recently with this little nugget of advice; both of the convos centered around “how do I get started?”

Bitcoin is…well…Bitcoin. If it’s not the centerpiece of a portfolio, that’s fine; but it’s also the core concept behind every single coin anyone uses. Without it, no crypto.

Ignore the fact that there’s a guy with a Twitter handle of “@russian_market” and somehow he got a blue checkmark — which gives him some sort of authority, right? — and take a look at his Bitcoin prediction for 2021.

Also consider the fact he may be smoking something.

[TIME FOR A CLEARLY MARKED AFFILIATE LINK: Get some BTC, or other crypto, on Coinbase here. We’ll both get a bonus with a qualifying purchase.]

But, if our Russian friend thinks Bitcoin is doing a 5- or 6x this year, shouldn’t we look down the list and…and…

2. Ethereum Is on Fire

If you’ve followed this space for a few years, one of the things you have learned is this: without Ethereum, crypto apps don’t work. In addition to being a currency unto itself — and one that’s trading at around $1800 as of this writing — on pretty much any of the app-centered parts of crypto, you absolutely have to have “gas” to operate. That gas is ETH. Without ETH, no trades on Uniswap, no liquidity pools on any other #DeFi app, and no yield farming to speak of.

Chart from CoinGecko, Graphics from Metacoin.co

Even if you don’t understand any of that previous paragraph — and, let’s face it, most of that is Greek to the everyday Joe — realize this point: Bitcoin’s market cap is inching towards $1T, and BTC is four-and-a-half times that of ETH; ETH is NEARLY TEN TIMES AS LARGE as the next crypto coin (Cardano, ticker of $ADA). Ethereum is big, it’s very important to the crypto economy, and it is not going away.

3a and 3b. #DeFi Building Blocks

We’ve made a few mistakes here — without a “warts and all” approach, we don’t think this site would have lasted, actually; we’d rather you read up on the $50 we blew on some crypto app than invest in it yourself and lose your own money — and a couple of those mistakes are related to two trades we made with Decentralized Finance (“DeFi”) coins that have caught fire.

First, item 3a. Yearn.finance is $YFI and, defying logic (er, “DeFi-ing logic”), had you gotten in on the ground floor — or, more accurately, the basement; only really truly early adopters got this price — you could conceivably have turned a grand into $1.4M.

Wait, what?

A more accurate description of the “woulda, shoulda, coulda” factor here is that you may have gotten in on perhaps the first or second floor of this high-rise. Our own experience had us taking a chance (by “taking a chance” that means a hundred bucks or so) on YFI when it was priced at $2000 to $3500. So we’re still doing okay. But…

3b.: Uniswap. $UNI. This beaut was an airdrop. Last year, the UNI team decided that the best way to get users on board with its coin was to gift it to ANY account that had used the platform. The airdrop gave 400 coins (or so, as one of ours got a few more than 400) that were valued at around $3 each. We hodled some, sold some others, and it has turned out nicely, hovering above $20 for most of this week. (TBH, though, the fact we sold some a couple weeks ago does irk us more than a little.)

4. Take a Chance on These?

We added a question mark because — AND AGAIN DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH — you are more likely to lose your entire stake in any of these coins than you are to make mad bank (as the kids say).

If you want a couple ideas, though, here goes:

Sushi ($SUSHI), which forked from Uniswap, has done well this year (currently trading in the low teens).

Dogecoin ($DOGE) is the love of folks like Elon Musk; it’s also projected by the Russian guy up there to go up at least 10x this year.

Kimchi ($KIMCHI) was thought to be dead — and may actually BE dead, in that there don’t seem to be any active developers still working on the project; this is called a “Rug Pull” and we explain it a little more in this post — but it is still throwing off triple-digit APY.

N.B. on pools such as KIMCHI: not only are pools like these highly risky, these interest rates will fluctuate wildly; you’re betting that KIMCHI stays stable (it has been ranging from $0.0002 to $0.0004 for the past few months) and that you don’t get totally whacked with growth of the other coin you pool it with. If one of the coins goes way up while the other stays at roughly the same value, you’ll be kinda okay; if one goes up and the other goes way down, you’re going to have some “impermanent loss” from the coin that doesn’t grow. We explain more here:

A lovely YouTube video from Dave

And A Final Few Notes:

We hope this post gives you a few ideas about how to maximize your investments. We need to share a couple other things here:

  1. Past performance (DUH) is not indicative of future results.
  2. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.
  3. None of this is financial, legal, or tax advice.
  4. Of the coins mentioned above, we own small positions in the following: $BTC, $ETH, $UNI, $YFI, $SUSHI, and $KIMCHI.