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Welcome to another edition of the Weekend Degen Report.
What to expect: 1648 words a 8-minute read.
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GM GM.
For those who celebrate, hope you had a wonderful thanksgiving. If you don’t hope you had a good weekend.
After talking with a couple ppl, I wanted to run the same poll but instead of snapshot do it here until we have a more seamless process/integration. As a refresher this is for the 52nd issue/collab piece.
This week, I have another deep dive I will be doing for premium subscribers, so stay tuned. On December 4th, I will be hosting another livestream where I will be opening up pokemon cards and we can hang out to chat about anything, you can register here.
I recently got to watch the final episode of Attack on Titan. 10 years since launching this series has finally wrapped up and man oh man was it a roller-coaster. Here are the five biggest things takeaways from the series:
Don't Give Up In The Face Of Adversity. Something I personally try to make my motto. And for those that know me, I strive for every day.
Everyone Loses In War. I think many movies and shows glamorize War and this show did the complete opposite. War is depicted as a tragic event where both sides suffer immense losses, showcasing the devastating impact on individuals and societies.
Anyone Could Be The Devil In Someone Else's Story. It goes to that saying that someone’s freedom fighter is someone else terrorist.
Be Grateful For The Smaller Things In Life. I learned this one through my parents, but this is a skill that I try and practice everyday.
The World Isn't Black & White. Perhaps the most profound lesson, the series dispels notions of absolute good or evil, portraying the world in shades of gray. The world is a messy place and this show encapsulated it well.
Bonus: History Always Repeats Itself. The closing scene was a thing of beauty. It really sent the message home, that we are nothing but dust in the grand scheme of time. For all the work, decisions and shit that we do, we are bound to repeat some of the issues of our ancestors. It explored the cyclical nature of history, suggesting that the patterns of conflict and violence are difficult to break, echoing the challenges of achieving lasting peace.
Let's start with the Nakamoto Rare Pepe card, which has reached a 200k floor or 104ETH floor. The Nakamoto card is one of the first NFTs in the space. So its historical context is nothing to sneeze at. I went deep into Rarepepes during the height of of the last bull and never got out. Lets see if we see a sale of one of these to kick start the bull.
On December 1st, Rarible will sunset their Tezos blockchain integration, redirecting resources to other projects, likely focusing on ETH. It appears that Tezos marketplaces such as Object are better at supporting the Tezos ecosystem, leading to Rarible's withdrawal.
The Crafter, a 1/10 piece from Lucrece, released through the Rarible x Tezos integration was one of the first pieces to be minted/celebrated at the launch of this, back in 2021. But Rarible has been having issues with this since launch. Which is probably why they are shutting this down and moving on.
Music NFTs haven't taken off as expected, despite being an interesting concept. It's unclear how they should be supported or used, whether through apps like Spotify or a dedicated Web3 app. However, Parrot Radio, a native Web3 app, has emerged for curating music NFTs on ETH, Optimism, and Stax. Is this the app that kicks start the music nft space? I don’t know but it is great to see this development. This is likely driven by the Stax ecosystem as parrot radio seems to be an homage to bitcoin birds. Shotuout to MannyMoe for introducing me to Stax early on before the ordinal hype.
ACK’s Avant Arte drop finished this past week with winners getting announced. Immediately after, rumors around how many pieces actually were raffled started circulating. WL/AL are nothing new in the space, and I have no issues with them really. We don’t know if 6 really only made it to raffling but Avant Arte has not really come out saying otherwise which leads to this speculation and takes away from ACK and this phenomenal drop.
The SEC is charging Kraken with operating as an unregistered security exchange. The lawsuit includes other cryptocurrencies like Solana, Cardano, and Polygon as securities as well. Kraken disagrees with the claim and plans a vigorous defense without halting or disrupting their services. A smart statement to make as a “bank run” would harm Kraken's bottom line in fighting this out. What I found odd about this all is Kraken's exchange has been less accessible for US-based users compared to Gemini and Coinbase, and it's surprising to see the SEC's action. The crypto community largely supports Kraken.
CoinDesk was acquired by Bullish (CEX)/BlockOne(Parent) which will be run by former Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Matt Murray. This raises questions about the independence of media sources in the blockchain industry. This would be the “equivalent of Binance acquiring Coindesk”-Jason Yanowitz. Jason also had an interesting thread for everyone to read (note: he runs a competitor business). But he makes a right call out. Coindesk is huge crypto media company, and them being acquired by the creators of EOS (for those that remember them), not sure if it is the move we should be celebrating for other than someone got cashed out.
OSF won a boxing match against Ovie. Although physically Ovie had more reach than OSF, his determination, hard work and leveraging his previous boxing experience came through. Congrats OSF on not getting rekt publically.
In Argentina, libertarian Javier Milei won a political victory, and rumors suggest the country might follow El Salvador's lead in making Bitcoin legal tender, a response to long-standing hyperinflation. This speculation comes right after Milei said he was closing the Argentina Central Bank. For those not familiar with Argentina, it has been a hot bed for BTC and Libertarians due to the economic uncertainty. Early on in my crypto journey, alot of the people I encountered pre 2015 were people from Argentina due to the popularity of having a safe place to store your money which Bitcoin excels at.
Finally, the Blur airdrop announced a new layer two Ethereum network named Blast, aiming to reduce transaction costs. Something interesting about this announcement that stuck out to me is that, technically anyone can create an L2 or a blockchain really. But what makes a market or something viable, is the people and the money it brings with it. I think of Polygon and how it was an L2 but no one really used or it got made fun of. But Polygon recently has gone through a transformation and it has brought the right people and degens into its tech. Pacman understands this and with them taking away the power OS had on the market, should be interesting to see how Blast does. However, it's currently a multi-signature wallet with plans for future development so DYOR.
Remember, none of this is financial advice.
The Zealy.io word for this weeks read is, “blast”. Make sure to get in on the fun and giveaways.
Congrats to ACK on his recent drop, already over 48eth in volume. A huge success and well deserved. The highest sale of a Warothy so far is 12.8eth.
Sunday Sermon by Grant Yun sold for 33eth.
Someone bought a “Moonbreon” on Courtyard for $795.00 which is not a bad day at the office. Also, wanted to take the time to say great work to TomX on building that Courtyard twitter bot, will help keep track of sales. A great addition to the community tools.
Things I am looking forward to this week.
Early in the week Dan and the Farcaster team are hosting Balaji for an AMA. Balaji used to be the CTO at Coinbase and most recently bet $1m on a bet that BTC would hit a certain price target in 90 days (it did not). Balaji’s is known for his hot takes so this should be a spicy one.
OG will be hosting Sam Spratt this week on his show. OG has had some of the biggest names in the space on his show before, I have even covered some of those episodes on here (you can find them on my archive). So make sure to check out this fireside chat with OG, DieWithTheMostLikes and Sam Spratt.
Lucrece is COOKIN and it is heating up. I am looking forward to getting more details around this physical nft drop with Iconic. You can sign up here, to get more details.
Des is also planning on launching a plushie in December, but the sneak peeks on the packaging and branding are getting me hyped. Take a look below, Des’ attention to detail is insane.
If you are a Niner fan, this one cracked me up.
Have a great rest of your week!
CIAHOAD-Rick James
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Collect this post as an NFT.
