Welcome to another edition of the Weekend Degen Report.
What to expect: 1212 words a 6-minute read.
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Creative Corner
GM GM.
I minted two new piece this week. One is for my U Got Mail collection on the right. And the other is for my new onchain collection called High In The City, inspired by XCOPYs piece (on the left below). If you look closely you can see someone paddling in the middle of the water. I’ve been messing around with gameboy emulators and ran a couple of my recent images through it which I enjoyed.
Last week I did not launch a premium article but I plan to this week. I wanted to make it just right and spend my time on it. So this week I will be dropping my piece on KAWS. I look forward to sharing it with you all.
Knowledge
I’ve been listening and reading more this past week. I have nothing I wanted to share as I am still ingesting data. But I did want to call out that if you have not listed to this episode on Tucker Carlson on the All In Podcast, I would definitely give it a go. I was pleasantly surprised by the conversation.
NFT Space
The market is heating up. Much of the hype seems to be around ETF approvals around the corner. Rumor is BTC ETF will be approved early 2024 per WatchGuru.
BTC also recently crossed over 50 million wallets for the first time ever. As a note, wallet count shouldn’t have too much weight as some of us have more than 1 wallet address at least I know I do. But this is still super bullish news.
The last bit of Bitcoin news that I want to cover is solo miner with only 2 machines, recently won a block aware for 6.25 BTC which is over $230k. A nice reward for those who are still mining out there.
But its not just BTC that is hot right now, Solana as well is on a tear. It has recently cooled down a bit from the highs of last week. But Solana NFTs and crypto are prime for a real run. (h/t NFTstats). Although the decentralization aspect of Solana leaves alot to be desired, I will be keeping an eye on this a bit more this time around. It has strong VC backing and the younger generation really loves Solana.
Other news that may be driving this frenzy is Coinbase plans to integrate with Solana on a deeper level. With its recent launch of base, Coinbase is exploring ways to make Base not just a Coinbase layer but one that can integrate to lightining (BTC L2) and other fast blockchains to do more fancy swaps is my assumption.
452b (formerly known as Moneyclicc) dropped Frame by artemis. As a Basquiat fan, I appreciated this question by Bastien “love the piece, were you by any chance influenced by Basquiat in this or other pieces? I see some similarities to his works”. And Artemis’ response
Yes, expressive and bold colours and strokes from Neo expressionism, and for example basquiat, I find myself drawn to.
These rough and expressive strokes is something I find a lot of fun working with across both machine learning and classical generative algorithmic work.
Across my early 1/1 works to my larger series like TTSHR, this attraction to these types of strokes and use of colours becomes apparent I think.
Gondi dropped a new feature that I think will change the defi game for the better. You can now repay and keep the difference on loans you have on an NFT. The illustration below drives the point on the new feature. This type of thoughtful feature will make it so more people will feel inclined to loan their NFTs if they are bullish on the overall project. No more defaulting just because you can’t accept the offer on the piece.
Noble Gallery announced all the season 2 finale artists and it is EPIC. They have been dropping bios on each artist every day, definitely go check those out as they have been great. Latest example is here on Jake Fried.
Joyn has been really pushing the boundaries on artist drops recently and I have been enjoying the diverse usage from artist. This comic book drop by elysia is amazing a highly worth checking out.
Lastly, m1racl recently solved a public puzzle where he won a MAXPAIN. He details how he did it here. I personally love a good puzzle and enjoy reading when people figure them out and win. Congrats m1racl on getting that MAXPAIN.
The Zealy.io word for this weeks read is, “gondi”. Make sure to get in on the fun and giveaways.
Notable Sales
XCOPY remains hot during this market. A Rabble sold for 16.99eth. RESIST sold for 12eth. The highest SIMULACRUM from launch to now is 7eth.
Also congratulation to Lallement on trading his way from a Damager to GOBSHITES by XCOPY. This was a trade for a Damager + 4.5eth for an epic piece. Perseverance pays off!
This Ringer sold for 82eth after being bough for a little over 1eth and sitting there for a while.
A Warothy by ACK sold for 16eth. Making it the highest sale of this collection since it dropped.
Staying on ACK we had two Piano sells this past week. One for 21.5eth and one for 18eth.
Lastly, 17mile and some DAO members did a full sweep of Ripcache’s DataSwamp collection for about 10.68eth.
Upcoming
Things I am looking forward to this week.
6529 announced Bryan Brinkman was the next artist for his collection.
Efdot seems to be cooking something and this piece is a beauty.
Looks like Vinnie Hager may be thinking about a pfp collection (h/t 787).
Kirth is waiting for gas to go down to drop some new onchain pieces.
I am cooking up my popcorn and waiting to see how this post by Dan Robinson (Paradigm who backed Blast) develops as it appeared he wanted to speak up against the idea of using a multisig wallet for Blast L2 before it has officially launched from a product perspective.
I’ll be tuning into this Spaces Dave & Goose regarding Lucrece and his drop with Iconic.
Lastly, Artifaction teased us with what appears to be an Artblocks x Noble Gallery drop or even underlying tech. Definitely bullish and excited what comes next.
Meme Of The Week
If you follow me on twitter, this past week I won SIMULACRUM by XCOPY after owning a MaxPain since mint day. It solid week but this meme by fomobaggins had me rollin.
Fin
Have a great rest of your week!
CIAHOAD-Rick James
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