Weekly Wrap: 8th May - 15th May

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The most exciting scary thing this week was Ethereum experiencing finalisation issues. Usually Ethereum transactions can be considered finalised within about 15 minutes, but this week it took much longer on two occasions (up to an hour). During this period transactions could potentially be reorganised. While this may not sound significant at first pass, with so much value locked in DeFi protocols, time assumptions are often baked in and things changing an hour later could potentially mean the difference between losing an entire position or not.

It is likely due to a bug in a single validator implementation but full details are yet to be revealed. Hopefully this isn't a symptom of a wider issue as much of the promise for DeFi is dependent on chain finality.

- @nuconomist

Crypto Market Cap: 1.18 Trillion Dollars 🔻-4.06% (Was 1.23 T)

Bitcoin Dominance: 44.44% 🔻-1.46% (Was 45.10%)

Ethereum Dominance: 18.86% 🔺+2.06% (Was 18.48%)

Other Crypto (excl. BTC & ETH): 36.70% 🔺-0.77% (Was 36.42%)

Comments:

Crypto fell a little this week, however it is still stuck within a range and not moving definitively in any direction. With a lot of the scheduled financial events over for summer, it feels like this sideways chop could go on for a long time. But in Crypto, one should always expect the unexpected and if this breaks out of the range in either directiom it could move fast. Recent events like rumoured sales of governmet holdings have led to double digit changes overnight so it pays to remain aware.

NFT Market Cap (ETH): 7.7 Million 🔻-2.53% (Was 7.9 Million)

NFT Market Cap (USD): $13.79 Billion 🔻 -6.95% (Was 14.82 Billion)

30 Day NFT Volume (ETH): 449k 🔻-15.44% (Was 531k)

Comments: Another week of down only across the board for NFTs. Short term flips and longer term trades seem to be the play here, but if you're holding for the medium term the trend is definitively against you here and has been for weeks. Volume on larger collections can also mask just how quiet it is for the medium ones. If NFTs as a collectible financialised asset class are to reclaim the heights of 2021, they likelu have a long path ahead of them.

In the meantime, speculators can now ride upwards momentum with short term loans on Blur's lending platform and bet on their downfall with NFT Perp. Non-Fungible Tokens certainly look a lot more fungible these days, and real collectors will need to step in if this is to become a more established market segment.

At the same time, collections like Milady Maker saw a massive boost this week after a meme tweet from Elon Musk moved markets again. Was this his intent? It's hard to imagine he isn't aware of his impact on markets after prior tweets pumped the Memes by 6529 Collection and his Twitter Doge stunt moved the memecoin needle and arguably foreshadowed the recent memecoin mania.

1. Mutant Ape Yacht Club:

2. Milady

3. Bored Ape Yacht Club

4. Wrapped Cryptopunks

5. Azuki

Comments: Mutant Ape Yacht Club jumped to the top for the wrong reasons (see below). Milady saw massive volume following an Elon Musk tweet and the other three continued with their place near the top.

1. Milady: 3490 ETH PnL (Was 1357 ETH PnL PnL)

2. Redacted Remilio Babies: 1271 ETH PnL (640 ETH PnL)

3. 🔺 The Captainz: 500 ETH PnL

4. 🔺 Emblem Vault V4: 498 ETH PnL

5. 🔺 Bored Ape Yacht Club: 398 ETH PnL

Comments:

Milady kept up it's winning streak and in fact doubled it after a tweet from Elon Musk made the collection and go viral. Once again, these wins appear to have spilled over to their secondary collection in the second spot which also got a boost.

Outside of that Captainz hit a new all time high leading up to it's reveal. Sometimes it really is that easy for traders, buy early, hold, and sell into the reveal date.

The inlcusion of Emblem Vault here is an interesting thing to observe as it isn't a traditional Ethereum NFT collection. In fact, it is a wrapper contract for NFTs on other chains including Bitcoin Ordinals, something that has really been taking off recently. With so much activity happening on other chains finding its way back onto Ethereum, it could be worth looking at the wider NFT ecosystem beyond Ethereum, even if the volume is currently lower elsewhere. It could be that the future path for NFTs is already being experimented with on other chains. This space is still far too early for any one chain to claim a win.

1. 🔺 Mutant Ape Yacht Club: -11527 PnL

2. Moonbirds: -668 ETH PnL

3. Otherdeed for Otherside: -384 ETH PnL

4. 🔺 Invisible Friends: -260 ETH PnL

5. 🔺 Cool Cats: -237 ETH PnL

Comments: Mutant Ape Yacht Club's descent has accelerated this week putting them squarely at the top of this list. Perhaps cracks in the Ape aura are taking hold now they've reached an age where long term capital gains are possible for some, and the NFT bull run has well and truly calmed down.

Invisible Friends and Cool Cats make an appearance this week, knocking off the two of the three fallen angels often mentioned together, Moonbirds, Doodles and Clone X. Maybe sellers are finally exchaused on the latter two collections. Does this mean they are due for a reversal? Either way as a holder of at least one of those projects it is nice to seem them given a break.

Cool Cats focus has been on a new Shadw Wolves collection, so that could have led to some dilution and as it hasn't really taken off, the appeal for cats may have faded too after they've fallen >90% for their ATH. It will be interesting to see if their appearance in the Macys Parade later in the year and associated physical collection will have an impact on floor prices leading into and following the event.

Having said that, Invisible Freinds are launchin a physical collection and they also made this list, so if that is anything to go by, the launch of phsyical products alone isn't enough to save a falling NFT project.

Comments:

While looking at the charts alone for an NFT project might get you down, it's important to remember that there is more to NFTs than their floor price. The community and associated intangibles are often far more valuable than the NFT itself. This tweet summarising the community effforts behind some popular apes is a great reminder of that fact.

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