GM

Welcome to the 12 new subs who joined yesterday.

Some people don’t know that I get alerts whenever someone subscribes. They’re loud.

On good days they’re enough to get me kicked out of my local Dunkin Donuts. So just know that whenever you refer a friend, somewhere in the world I'm getting thrown out of a Dunkin, and this is a good thing.

In today’s edition:

• How to buy great art NFTs early

• Updated rankings

• New drops (including one added to Watch List)

More info on Mint/Watch lists HERE.

Did you know?

We have a premium pass that gives you access to a directory of every drop we cover, complete with detailed information on how to get on every whitelist (including those underrated ones that aren’t already full).

And for those curatooors out there, you can get free NFTs just by finding drops that end up on the Mint or Watch list.

Lastly, hang with me and the MoS team in a private discord with weekly voice chats. The vibes are great.

How to buy great art NFTs early

There were a lot of high-fives thrown around last week when Punk6529 purchased Ringer #879, aka The Goose, for $6.2 million.

But honestly, I’d much rather be Pixel Pete. Who is Pixel Pete? He’s the guy that previously bought that same Ringer for 1.2 ETH and then later flipped it for 1,800 ETH.

That’s a profit of $5.8 million, in less than a year, from a single NFT purchase. GGs in the chat.

Now, Dear Readers, I know this all might seem weird.

Perhaps you’re someone who feels very lost trying to buy or understand NFT art.

Maybe you even saw the news about The Goose auction and it made you confused, angry, or perhaps even scared.

Why is it that some go for millions while others get sent expeditiously to zero, and is there any way of figuring that out early?

Well luckily, this week some whales gave us their playbooks. Thanks to Punk6529’s big purchase, NFT Twitter has been alive with debates around the best ways of finding Great Art early.

Here are some of my favorite highlights.

Punk6529

We might as well start with the man who bought The Goose. His thesis was pretty simple:

1. Generative Art is special because neither the artist nor the collector knows what the final art will look like.

2. Most of the time the art looks totally random.

3. But sometimes, the algo can produce rare properties – like The Goose.

4. This can lead to attention, memetic value, etc., because of how unique/rare it is.

5. Look for these emergent properties.

Zerobeta

Zerobeta was a partner at Osprey, an institutional fund that invested in NFTs. This angle is very much the investooor approach:

Start by imagining a future world. What does this world look like? What are some catalysts that could completely change the game for a certain genre (“Value Unlocks”)?

For example, at Osprey they believed that Digital Displays were going to be a huge trend in the coming years and that this would favor Dynamic art vs Static art.

Next, find out what consensus is. What artists are collectors gravitating around? The easiest way to do this is to follow the transactions and see which wallets are buying in.

Not all consensus is equal. Look at the quality of the wallets. Some transactions tell you that the consensus is “Ponzi”, meaning people are in it just to make a quick buck. Others tell you that the consensus is “in it for the art” or “Lindy”.

Both can work in the short term, but long-term trends are shaped by Lindy consensus.

Btw, we talk more about this in our Understanding NFT Value which you can get by simply referring one friend to the newsletter.

Buy consensus low and sell it high. Once you figure out that something is getting the right consensus, and likely to get more of it in that future world you imagined, then you buy it before the consensus gets too “expensive”, aka others start sharing your view.

DC Investor

DCInvestor is another investor (and sometimes curator) that found a ton of success buying early “grails” like CryptoPunks and Autoglyphs. He responded to Zerobeta with some points of his own:

Consensus will grow dramatically. The space is tiny, for now. The current “consensus” could get outweighed by all the new collectors expected to join in the next few years.

Power laws are important. The big get bigger. Things like financialization (DeFi) can compound value for grails that get consensus early. So while Zerobeta tries to buy consensus for cheap, DC Investor thinks even “expensive consensus” NFTs are still undervalued.

Rich Crypto Nerds run the show. Until the space grows, consensus will be mostly determined by a specific niche – tech nerds. It’s good to think about what trends they favor over others.

Sam Spike

Sam was the artistic director at Fingerprints DAO, a group of collectors buying NFT art. This is where you’ll get more of a curatooor perspective.

Side note – a cool thing about DAOs is that you can typically see their financials. In this case, they’re sitting on an unrealized profit of 5,900 eth (367% gain), or about $10 million. Salute!

Here’s how they go about it:

Four pillars. Unlike Osprey, which looks at macro trends and shifts in consensus, Fingerprints DAO takes a more introspective look at the art itself. Specifically:

1. On-chain storage. Is the art fully on-chain?

2. Dynamism. Does the art change or react to on-chain activity?

3. Coordination. Does it incentivize any human behavior?

4. Value and ownership. Does it critically examine financial value or markets?

Focus on artistic excellence. Sam believes that, over a longer period of time, financial value will track artistic value.

This strategy relies heavily on having good taste. And that’s why their curation committee includes popular artists like 0xDeafbeef with first-hand experience in making great art.

Now of course, there’s more to their playbooks

So I recommend reading through all these threads and replies if you’re getting serious about NFT art.

And if the Next Pixel Pete is reading this – don’t forget to send Your Generous Author a little aged gabagool if you strike it big.

NOTE: These drops are lightly curated. Our only requirement is that they have recognizable founders. As usual, DYOR. To learn more go here.

Nitro Nation World Tour - Car Presale

Nitro Nation World Tour, an upcoming web3 mobile game by Mythical Games (Blankos Block Party anyone?), has started a presale for in-game car NFTs. These come in three tiers, each with its own drop rate for rare items and guaranteed bonus items.

However, lackluster sales from their previous presale for Workshops, which have only sold ~14% of the supply so far, might point to some consumer uncertainty, perhaps due to the absence of gameplay footage.

COMMUNION by KING XEROX

Popular glitch artist KING XEROX (active in the NFT space since 2021) is launching his fifth Nifty Gateway collection, COMMUNION, this Thursday.

Featuring two works that seemingly depict the idolization of web3 figureheads, the sale starts with SAINT, a 20-hour open edition priced at $69 (currently the cheapest entry for the artist’s ETH work), followed by PILGRIM on Friday, a free limited edition raffled off to collectors of KING XEROX’s Nifty Gateway works, including SAINT.

Vintage Editions by Tony Babel

As we impatiently await news on the Tony Babel x Typical Friends drop, the artist has surprisingly announced two more limited editions that’ll mint in the meantime: Emotional Hell and Hell Of A Dish.

These will be the artist’s first editioned works in two years, and from what we could see, his first ones on Ethereum (he does have some on Tezos), potentially making them appealing for big and small collectors alike.

✨ Added to Watch List ✨

Yue Minjun LiveArt NFT Collection

Acclaimed Chinese contemporary artist Yue Minjun is releasing his debut NFT this summer on the LiveArt platform.

While LiveArt has faced challenges recently, evidenced by the underwhelming sale of the LiveArtXCard NFT, it’ll be interesting to see if an artist of this caliber can turn things around for the platform.

Yue Minjun’s past record-breaking sales and controversial attention from Chinese nationalists make this an interesting drop to watch, especially since other cynical-realist artists have had success with NFTs.

The Mint List

1. Taproot Wizards. OG Bitcoin meme inscribed as ordinals

2. Project Animus. RTFKT's biggest launch since Clone-X

3. FewoWorld. New PFP by Fewocious, a rising star in the art world

4. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT

5. Garbage Friends. New PFP from the creator of Invisible Friends

6. 10KTF PFP. Drop from a team that includes Yuga and Beeple

7. Dimensionals - EVE. Free gaming PFP from doxxed studio

8. Tony Babel x Typical Friends. Limited edition from the popular artist

9. Ether. Anime PFP collection by viii, an artist with a cult following

10. World Flag by Gerrard. AB x Pace drop featuring an established artist