Gramajo’s Corner
GM GM.
This past week has been prepping for this week. On Wednesday I am dropping a new artist feature with Bastien. From there we are doing a text based AMA on Farcaster and then on Friday I plan to rip open some Pokemon packs.
On Friday I finished recording my podcast episode with OMGiDRAWEDit, which is an artist I have admired since the first day I joined the NFT space. I am cleaning up the audio and editing it right now and hope to have it ready by NFT NYC.
I am currently working on getting more interviews lined up, so if you have anyone you would love for me to feature, let me know.
Knowledge
With tax season around the corner and bonuses hitting the bank accounts figured this would be a good one to include for this week. If you get RSUs make sure to have a plan so you can degen appropriately.
Yet so few people understand:
- how they work
- how they are taxed
- and how to maximize them
If you have RSUs, you need to this:
372
Web3
As most of you have seen, memecoin mania is back. Whether you participate or not, stay safe out there. A lot of what you will see is the wins on social media and never the losses. It is like on r/wallstreetbets, very few post loss porn. I personally will not be messing around but god speed to those that do.
EIP-4844 went live this past week and boy oh boy is this a great upgrade to Eth. The gist is blobs (think temporary storage for roll ups) will make it way cheaper to transact on L2 networks. And it comes at a timely point in time as well. Eth gas has been pretty bad the past couple of weeks and L2 like Base, Optimism have been having a resurgence of usage during the past couple of months. As an example, it used to cost me about 40 cents on an L2 to mint my podcast onchain, now it cost less than a pennies to do. This in my opinion will make transacting on L2s even more enjoyable and frictionless as those experiences get better. With the recent news on EIP-4844, Manifold being the awesome company they are decided to decrease their fees across the board for those using their Farcaster frames. L2s are primed for the bull especially for those in the Farcaster ecosystem.
A new app caught my attention this week. Family is a new app that leverages the XMTP, is crypto native and it looks really slick. Could be a good use case for group messages over Telegram. But the group messaging space is heating up with Signal, Converse, Farcaster DMs and more. A telegram web3 focused app is always welcomed in my books and an app I will be definitely keeping an eye on.
Pods a web3 podcast hosting, discovery and collecting tool launched a frame for Farcaster making it extremely easy to collect episodes of your favorite podcast. I’ve personally posted almost all of my episodes on there for collecting and will be using the onchain data to do an airdrop in the future. One of the benefits of moving more and more onchain. I can quickly grab addresses of those that have collected and when I reach a certain milestone, reward them for their support. So make sure to grab your free episode!
Ordinals continue heating up and with this announcement from SuperRare we can assume ever more high quality artist are going to drop on Ordinals. The current top 10 in BTC land are mostly PFPs but as more artist launch on Ordinals we should see some more changes.
But its not all memecoins and flowers in web3. Starbucks Odyssey will be closing its door at the end of the month. Ending one of the weirdest experiences in web3. An example of a disastrous deployment from the go in my opinion. This had a ton of potential to be a success but without user input or a product manager that understands web3 this fell flat from the go. Starbucks has revolutionized the space with their rewards programs and other big brands have tried to copy the success of this program for a while. It is estimated in terms of liquidity locked into their rewards program can put Starbucks in the top 20 biggest banks in the USA which is nuts to think about since they are not a bank. But with the recent changes in the reward program and this launch, Starbucks has lost the plot a bit. I hope this does not deter them from trying again in the future, but the bear continues eating those who can’t stick it out.
The Zealy.io word for this weeks read is, “bitmon”. Make sure to get in on the fun and giveaways.
Notable Sales
Happy Consume by XCOPY sold for 8ETH. One of my favorite pieces by XCOPY.
Happy Consume - RadiCards V2
View item history and listings
Smile by ripcache sold for 1.3ETH, which is essentially robbery at this stage. I called it a couple issues back, but this is the time to acquire some ripcache pieces for cheap or really any artist as people are selling to get into memecoins or need money for taxes (here in the USA).
Love me some Gengar, so when I saw this CGC10 Red Prism Gengar sell for 1.5k, I had to include it. For those not familiar with these cards, they released to the lead up of the games of Pokemon Red and Green (in Japan it was green, not Pokemon Blue). So these cards are really underappreciated in my opinion and this pick up is a STEAL.
Upcoming
Things I am looking forward to.
With the raffle winners announced and people having burned their DEFY passes. I am looking/praying your boy gets one of the monochrome Bitmons, Rainbow ones. The hype on these is palpable and I suspect we will see some crazy activity on these once they drop this week. Check out this dope Bitmon mural by Joc.
One of the biggest names in the web3 photography space, Cath Simard is dropping a new collection this week. Tasmania is location I have always wanted to go to and it appears this collection partly takes place there. Cath stated is a couple other tweets, that she has been working on this project for over a year; consider me hyped to see what she drops and the stories behind them.
Chemical Messiah who has been in hibernation mode for over a year, has a new Open Edition you can collect, titled Nihil. Not the biggest fans of Open Editions, but glad to see Chemical Messiah come back and mint.
TransientLabs recently launched Stacks, a minting platform/solution for artist that focuses more on the art, story and visuals compared to Manifold. Not throwing shade at Manifold, this to me seems like a direct response to the current solution from Manifold but with a TransientLabs twist. Either way this looks very interesting to see. And Tiffatronn will be the 1st I know of, or that I care about that will use this new platform with her new piece titled FUTURE LULLABY IN A RED ROOM. A piece I am hoping to add to my collection when it is ready.
Collectibles
I guess I’ve officially reached fatherhood because I am going to talk about New Balances lol. But this whole season of MiUSA New Balances (thanks Chefspin) are pretty dope. My favorite ones so far are these Macadamia ones.
Meme Of The Week
With memecoin season upon us, this one felt right to include.
Fin
Have a great rest of your week!
CIAHOAD-Rick James
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